The Vanishing Bat

By Louis Hart

I  was in my office in the back of the house when there came a shriek from the living room. My wife came running down the hall telling me there was a bat flying around near the ceiling. She had a sort of panicky look on her face. I followed her back to the other room and sure enough there was a small black bat zipping back and forth.

As luck would have it just as I arrived it flew into an adjacent bathroom. I ran over and closed the door. At least, for the moment, it was confined. But, what to do now? My wife presented me with a broom and wanted me to go in there and whack the bat with it.

I don't know what it is about bats that freak people out so bad. Maybe it's all those scary movies about vampires and monsters.

Well, anyway, I soon found myself sneaking into the bathroom with broom in hand. The bat was up on the ceiling and obviously quite nervous. Actually, I was somewhat nervous too. What if the thing turned into Dracula or something? (I"ve seen all those scary movies too.)

I watched it a moment or two and nothing happened so I started talking to it, hopefully to soothe it. Yeah, right!. "It's OK little fella...no one's gonna to hurt you." I learned that line from watching a series on TV many years ago. So there I stood, barricaded in the bathroom, brandishing a broom, sweet talking a bat, and feeling like a complete idiot.

Then, I had a bright idea.

I called to my wife to open the slider to the outside deck, hoping when I opened the bathroom door and waved my broom the bat would see the open door and fly out into the night.

No such luck. The bat flew out but not toward the open door to the outside. Instead it flew up to the top of a living room wall covered with stonework. It was dark in that area so I got a flashlight so I could find it. But...when I directed the light up there the bat was nowhere to be seen.

We looked everywhere. It couldn't have sneaked by us and gone out the open door because when my wife had opened it she had forgotten to also open the screen.

The bat had simply vanished.

I hope some dark night I’m not awakened by a closet door creaking open like Dracula is sneaking out. Hmm. You know...maybe I should check down in the crawl space under the building and make sure there isn't an old wooden coffin there.

Email: louishart@rocketmail.com