My Batty Night

That was Friday night.  First I closed a heavy door over my left thumb.  I now have a brilliantly purple and green thumb.  Then I sat down in my study to work at the computer, around midnight*, expecting some calm time for creative writing.  Suddenly something quite large**, black and winged flew around the room.  It wasn't a swallow, my first guess, but a bat.

Now how it got into the house is still a mystery, though one window was open by about one inch.  Anyway, it wanted to leave the house, and I fervently agreed.

In my first shock I had left the room but then crawled back, below its circular and frenzied flying,  to open all the windows.  But when I crawled out of the room, the bat followed me.

Fun and games for several hours followed. The bat flew from room to room, I followed it, opening all windows and doors, while the bat decided to fly only in circles and not go out at all.  Except that it wanted to go out, only didn't know how.

When it grew tired (poor thing, I could see it panting), it would hang off the top of my bookshelves or a Finnish rya rug I have on the wall.  After a little bit of rest the flying resumed.  It was around 4am when an open front door finally did the trick.

So I didn't get a lot of sleep that night.  What was most interesting was the way my emotions changed from initial shock to watchful waiting to real empathy toward the poor little bat, to thinking that it looked rather charming, and finally to relief when it left the house.

I Googled "bat in the house" and found that I had done most things right, and that this was probably a teenage bat who wasn't very good at hunting yet.  It may now have learned its lesson concerning nice shiny lights in windows.

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* I may have some bat genes, because my creative period is quite late in the day.
** Lots bigger than the bats I have seen in Finland.  Swallow-sized.  Maybe a baby vampire...