Saturday, August 24, 2013

My Bat Story

OK, I admit I had to look through my past posts to see if I had already told this story, yeah…all 246 posted blog entries. Man I like to talk a lot, good thing I know how to type pretty fast.

Anyway, I began thinking back since it is getting close to Labor Day, way back to Hurricane Katrina. Yeah, Hurricane Katrina happened in New Orleans, August 29th, 2005. I remember it well, not because of my concern for the people of New Orleans, but for what happened to me in the aftermath.
The day Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana my husband got a phone call, because of the situation of residents in New Orleans they needed federal officers to volunteer and go help secure federal facilities in New Orleans. At first I didn’t get it, and then I began to realize that all those lovely federal facilities have lots of expensive equipment in them. Anyway, Scott volunteered and within 36 hours he was out of here on a plane. I talked to him one time, the afternoon after he left. Then I didn’t hear from him again until a week later. It was horrible conditions and he worked 20+ hour days. When he got done, he had to go through decontamination procedures and be tested for diseases for several months after. 
But enough about what he endured…let’s talk about me.

Yeah, that was the week Erik started kindergarten and it wasn’t going very well. Also, my sister and mother left with Jason to go to a triathlon in California (that’s funny, no… none of them were competing, Jason was working security). Anyway, they left Kassandra for Donna and I to take care of on top of my husband being gone and Erik having some serious issues with the new school routine. Did I mention we were in the middle of remodeling our house and I had my bedroom in my dining room?

Anyway, I was a little stressed out, I went in to my bathroom to brush my teeth for the night when out of the corner of my eye I noticed something moving around in my toilet. Needless to say that caught my attention, so I walked over, and there swimming in my toilet bowl was a bat. I’m not proud of what happened next, it was definitely not my finest moment, and I should probably be required to turn in my Biology degree… So I called Donna and this was our conversation:

Donna – Hello

Me – THERE IS A BAT IN MY TOILET

Donna – What?

Me – THERE IS A BAT IN MY TOILET

Donna –What? Are you serious? How did that happen?

Me- THERE IS A BAT IN MY TOILET

Donna – I’ll be right there

I put the lid down (like that would have helped). Donna came over and we stood looking down in the bowl of the toilet and stared at the bat. He was pretty worn out and all wet, struggling against the sides of the bowl. I think one of us suggested that we could flush the toilet, but honestly the thought of that thing in my septic and possibly coming back up was more than I could handle. So I went and got a quart sized fruit jar, and my brave big sister scooped him up in it. We put the lid on and he looked pretty bedraggled. So we got some paper towels and stuffed them down with him, then I showed him to my children. I think Emily was in the bathtub upstairs (she wasn’t very impressed with a winged mouse). Anyway, then I took him outside, nestled the jar in my willow tree and opened the lid. The next morning he was gone.
And that is the story of the bat in my toilet.

No comments: