Saving a Bat (Maryland)
LaVale, Maryland. Well, more correctly, helping a bat. But ‘Saving a Bat’ has a more of a ring to it.
(We’re taking care of my dad’s dad’s dad’s mom’s sister [my great great great aunt, I think] for a while and staying at her house.)
Anyway, my mom was reading Narnia aloud to my sister and I at bedtime. We heard some weird sounds, but dismissed the matter, figuring it was my dad pranking us, pretending to be a rat.
When my dad came up to say good night, he said, “Do you hear that?”
I heard it. “Then it wasn’t you making those sounds?”
He shook his head. The sounds were proceeding from the attic. We crept inside, excited, expecting an overweight rat (well, a mouse, but come on). We found the light (is it just me, or do those creepy attics in big houses seem like the light pull string is designed to be impossible to find?). We didn’t see anything, though. Until, that is, we did see something. A tiny bat, fluttering around helplessly. A bat was trapped in the attic!
We watched it for a moment, wondering how we could get it out of there. It flew across the attic, hit a wall, and plunked down somewhere. 😥 We weren’t sure where.
My dad asked me to go get a light. I raced down the stairs and grabbed my mom’s phone. I flew back up. We searched for the bat for a while before finding it–perfect!!–in an empty cardboard box. Of all the places he could’ve chose to land, he chose well.
Next we placed a clear box over the bat.
Then we carefully turned the cardboard box so that the bat slid gently into the clear box, where we quickly put on the lid. We had done it!
Hmm. The pictures/videos looked better on the phone. 🤨 Oh well. 🤷♂️
Aww, poor thing, the light’s hurting its eyes. 😭
Anyway, we showed him to my mom and my sister, and then we took him outside to set him free.
Farewell, bat! And fare well.