I think bats are cute.  I actually do! Just not when they are flying around in my house.
And I feel really bad when one of our dogs manages to catch one and it is lying on my living room floor, seemingly dead.  And I feel rather happy when I find out it is not dead, just stunned! But I go back to feeling bad after I manage to get it outside the house, leave it sitting on our doorstep, and then realize that they have problems launching themselves off of the ground and I see it crawling away rather dazed and lost.  I feel worse when I google how to help them and then can’t find the little creature when I go back outside.

This is the third time we’ve had a bat in our house.  Tonight was the second time in a week.  Our “Bat Man”, as we call him, is coming on Monday to seal up where it looks like they are coming in…this time.  The first time it happened it was a little funny.  Now? Not so much.  It appears our house is like swiss cheese.  We already know it’s leaky.  I mean, the financial hits just keep coming, you know? Bat-proofing was never something we thought to budget for when we bought this place.  I’m beginning to wonder if the previous owners were aware of these little tenants or not.  And now I’m going to have to call the vet in the morning to see which of our dogs is, or is not, current with their rabies vaccinations and whether or not our cats are either.  We have our suspicions about who caught the poor thing, but it’s still a line-up. And when you have a line-up, we have learned from past experiences, treatment becomes a sweeping, all-inclusive, “better safe than sorry” ordeal.

I’m going to have a hard time sleeping tonight thinking about whether that poor bat managed to find a tree to climb to launch itself off into the sky, or whether or not the dogs injured it so that it can’t fly at all anymore; all the while having the worry that it, or its relatives, will find a way back into the house sometime in the middle of the night.

I seem to have to learn things the hard way.  Always.  Like the time I had to get rabies shots because of a feral cat bite and ended up learning SO much about rabies! And like learning from the past few weeks that we really need to pay more attention to our mail. (Got another Toll Road bill this afternoon! What the hell!? Believe me, I’m not ignoring those anymore!) And when a bat first flew around in here, I learned a lot about bats.  This evening I learned that if your dogs are going bonkers barking in the living room and scratching at doors, that you really need to find out why they’re being so raucous – it could very well be that they’re chasing one. And it might need your help.

Things get battier around here every day.  Including myself.