Bats

Bats creep me out.

I do not like them.

I never was really too fond of them, but a few incidents while living in Glendive, Montana sealed the deal that bats creep me out.

The summer Paul and I were married, I left Glendive at the beginning of July.  I was living in an apartment that was the top floor of a former house.  Above my apartment was an attic where our landlords stored items.  Paul and I were married on July 19th of that summer, then we returned at the end of the month.

At that time, the drive from Kellogg to Glendive was about 12 hours.  And it was a pretty long, and rather hot drive all the way across the state of Montana.  So when we arrived at the apartment, we were rather tired.  We had some boxes that we brought with us, and we brought them in the put them on the bottom landing.  We headed down and got some food at a local fast food restaurant.  When we arrived back to the apartment, we saw a dried up bat on the floor of the landing.  We thought maybe it had been on one of the boxes we had brought in, so thought nothing of it.

We ate, and then got ready for bed.  All the lights were off in the apartment except the lights in our bedroom.  As we laid in bed, all of a sudden we saw a winged creature fly down the dark hallway outside of the bedroom.

A bat!!

Well, Paul found out right away that, as the husband, it was his job to take care of the bat.  He donned his big cowboy hat and a flip flop, and went after the creature.  He determined it was in the other bedroom, in the folds of the curtain.

At this point, we decided to call our landlords, who happened to be our next door neighbors.  The wife was home, and seemed to think there wasn't a whole lot she could do to help.  Fortunately, when her husband arrived home, she sent him over.  Jim brought a bucket, and Paul and Jim eventually got the bat outside by trapping it in the bucket.

Jim confessed that while we were gone in July, he had been up in the attic and heard some bats in the eaves, and filled the eaves with mothballs.  This drove the bats out of the attic and into our apartment.

Before we went to bed for the second time, Paul decided to check under our bed.  Sure enough, he found a dead bat.

In the next few weeks, I think we found about 7 or 8 dead bats in our apartment.

Another time, I think it was the following summer, we were sleeping in the living room, because it was really hot in the apartment, and the air conditioner was in the apartment.  I got up and was heading to work.  When I reached the bottom landing, a small bloody bat started flying toward me, or rather veering, because I believe it was injured.  One of our cats could have caught it at some point.  I let out a blood curdling scream, and down came Paul to the rescue once again.  This time he got his own bucket and newspaper, and let the bat outside.

Later, while still living in Glendive,  we moved into a rental house, a bat visited us there, too.  Again, it was flying in circles around our bed.  There had been a warning about rabid bats in the area, so we decided we needed to call the police.  A police officer showed up, and said if you sprayed pepper spray on the bat's wings, it would break down the membranes on the wings.  Well, that didn't work all that well.  But eventually the bat left the house.

So, needless to say, to this day, bats are not my favorite of God's creatures.