“Do you have a bat on your wall?!”

Tuesday morning I was sitting in the shop talking with my hairdresser while waiting for my cab. Squinting, I said, “Is that a bat? or .. what is that!” He turned to look in the direction I was indicating. “I do have a bat on my wall!”

“May I have it?”

He turned and looked at me hesitantly, if not a little surprised. 

“I would like to take it home and release it at my house. I really like bats,” I explained, “and I don’t like mosquitoes. I haven’t seen a bat around all Summer.”

Satisfied with my explanation, he immediately began looking around, “What will I catch it with?” Grabbing a small towel he climbed onto the chair that was conveniently there, then reaching up he neatly and quickly covered the little brown bat with the towel. Carefully wrapping it securely, he stepped down and picked up a plastic grocery bag. After he gently placed the towel into the bag we tied off the top to be sure its contents stayed inside during its relocation journey. Then my cab pulled up.

Settling the bag carefully on my lap, I began chuckling as we drove along. clickclickclickclickclickclick 

“Do you hear that?” I asked the driver.
He looked over, “What?” His radio music was quite loud.
“Do you hear that clicking?”
He turned the radio down and listened. “Yeaaaahhh?”
“It’s a bat.”
“A what?”
“A bat. I have a little brown bat in this bag.”
“Ooookaaaaaaaaayyyy.” The look on his face was priceless.
“Does that bother you? Is it a problem?” I asked him.
“Oh, no, … it’s not a problem.” He kept glancing over at the bag.
I explained what had just occurred and that I was taking the bat home. “I think it’s a fair trade. He didn’t want the bat in his house, I want it outside mine.”

The driver agreed it seemed fair. Then the conversation began, mostly about bats. He told me that one of the cab drivers got into her vehicle one morning and there was a bat in it. He said, “As soon as she knew the bat was in her cab – she wasn’t!” We laughed.

The drive was less than twenty minutes but it didn’t take long for the bat to find its way out of the towel. He crawled around in the bag, clicking, which I believe was his sonar .. trying to find distance so that he knew it was an opening to freedom. I checked the bag to be sure I had not mistakenly been given one with a hole in it. Even though I like little brown bats I don’t think I would appreciate one crawling on me.

After the cab left my yard I took the bat-in-a-bag up onto a little hill beside my house. Setting the bag down beside the trees I untied the top, stepped back and waited. It took maybe twenty seconds for the bat to find the way out. Soon his little head popped up over the edge and with a flurry of fast little bat wings … zip! zoom! … he was gone, silently flying away between the trees.

When I told my girls about my fun experience their teasing remarks varied: ‘weird yet cool’, ‘not cool’, ‘crazy bag lady’, ‘strange’, ‘way to preserve wildlife’, ‘odd’. 🙂 I told one daughter that I enjoy doing the odd thing once in awhile. She replied, “Well, that was it then.”

And you know, she was right. That was it … for this week. 🙂

PS
Would you believe … just as I finished writing the above my husband called to me, “There’s a bat in the house!” He had seen one flying around but lost sight of it, so we went looking. Sure enough, from the living-room he saw a little brown bat hanging upside down from the ceiling in the adjoining room. Hilarious!

I grabbed a towel … and released the little guy into our yard. Again. Could it have been the same one? 

How marvellous is that!  😉

What weird and wonderful thing have you done lately?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂