My Bats

I returned home after three days away to a note from a young friend who stayed in my house. “I had noticed and not been too bothered by one bat on the first night,” the inimitable Sasha wrote. I had warned her there were bats—usually they come winging in around 4 in the morning. They graze my head while I’m sleeping and if something wakes me up fast, it’s the breeze of bat wings. They so often come in pairs, doing an elegant swinging dance about my bedroom, as if they have come to perform for me. I’ve perfected my bat catching technique over the past month—once they land, take a towel, cover them, gather up gently but firmly. Lean far out the window and open the towel to watch the bat fly free.

 I’ve become fond of my bats, and think of them that way: my bats. I wonder a lot if they are the same ones, cycling through the house. Or do they get in and remember that inside is not nearly as fun as outside, which is filled with bugs and the dark night air. Inside is a woman screaming and ducking. Because though I say I am fond of my bats, I am still, hmm, I’m still scared when they come at me in that loopy, chaotic way that makes me think they will tangle in my hair and…bite me.

Sasha’s bat narrative continued: “But when there were 4 taking wing in the kitchen at 6 pm I had sort of a fright. And when I say sort of, I mean I was shrieking and ducking and diving behind furniture. [In this way, Sasha and I are similar.] I retreated to the guest room where I thought it was safe (I had kept the door shut all day). But after reading for about an hour another bat was charging about—finally landing on the bed, at which point I fled the house. This morning when I returned I found one snoozing in the bath tub. Thinking it to be deceased I removed it with a Tupperware [this is one reason Tupperware was invented] only to discover it was very much alive. It has been released and was unharmed.

Sasha goes on to tell me about a book she’s reading about the gentrification of San Francisco and decides that evicting the bats is more than she can do—it might, even, be morally corrupt.

I see getting the bats out as saving them. What, after all, can they eat inside the house. So on my return and after Sasha’s note, I went on a bat hunt. I found one in the curtain upstairs. Two in the silver pitcher on top of the book case. And one tucked on top of a book—the book being one written by my sister Becky. The two from the silver pitcher really looked bedraggled—skinny and incapable of moving. They lay under the viburnum in the back yard. I started to worry about them. Perhaps a neighborhood cat would get them. Perhaps they needed water and food. So I filled a paper cup with water, and placed it by the head of one of the little bats. It was half the size of the palm of my hand, its wings collapsed to the side, back feet sticking out. I brought the water to its face. It sneezed—too much water—then started to lick. And this is what I learned: bats have tiny pink tongues. It drank a bit, then I watered its pal. When I returned with more water, they were both strong-arming, or strong-winging their way over ground. They were revived. I watered another bat that sat cozy in the bat cloth high in the bushes (perhaps safer?). It was browner, more full-bodied, but also younger looking.

When I was a teen and went caving we were told that bats can’t lift off the ground to fly. So if we knocked a bat off the ceiling of a cave, we had to pick it up and put it on a ledge. Since I have seen bats lift off the ground I knew they could fly in this way. (Anyone reading this know about bat flight?).  Still, I was worried about my two on the ground. And then I saw one, half way up the viburnum, clinging strong to the trunk as if it has hands and feet. And I hoped that later they would wing off into the night. But not into my house.