This is a guest post from my good friend Lisa over at The Big Sheep Blog.
Steve, thank you for graciously agreeing to post this on your blog. At the end, I’ll explain to your fine readers why I felt it was best not to post it on my own blog. Lisa
If you have teenagers, then you already know that cleaning their bathroom can be a disgusting frightening experience. Usually, I’m pretty courageous and just go in there and get it done.
However, if you heard a shriek yesterday morning at around 9:20, that was me. It started out as a routine exercise in blasting the grossness with a variety of powerful cleansers and disinfectants. Then I opened the cabinet under the sink to put away the assortment of products designed to make teenage boys not smell like teenage boys. I peeked in to find some room and saw something on the shelf that looked like maybe a black crumpled up bandana. I reached in to pick it up. It was soft. It was furry. It moved.
That’s when I shrieked and simultaneously slammed the cabinet door shut. I bolted out of the bathroom and down the stairs to find my husband, who was working from home and in the middle of a conference call. “THERE’S A BAT! A BAT! A BAT!”
After ascertaining that I was not in immediate mortal danger, he calmly finished his call and sauntered upstairs about 15 minutes later. Armed with a bath towel and a plastic container, he caught the bat. “Wow, that’s a pretty good sized bat,” he commented, observing the critter in the container. “I wonder how he got in there?”
“Get it out, get it out, get it out,” I pleaded. (I don’t normally repeat everything 3 times, but once or twice seemed insufficient for the gravity of the situation.)
After the crisis was averted, I couldn’t help myself – I googled the implications of finding a random bat in your house. Apparently, 90 percent of the time, a random bat in the house is an indication that there is a colony of bats in your attic. Oh crap. After sharing this finding with my husband, I requested he commence an inspection, which is not as easy as it sounds because we don’t have a full attic, only a series of crawl spaces accessible from various places in my kids’ rooms.
It was critical to complete the mission before my 14 year old daughter returned home from school because if she had any idea there had been a bat in her bathroom, she would never set foot in the bathroom or the house ever again. In fact, we’d probably have to burn the place down and relocate to another galaxy, preferably a bat-free galaxy. And that is why I thought it was prudent to tell this story here, rather than on my own blog. Besides, I know that Brown Road Chronicles is very critter-friendly.
On a positive note, I’m thankful the bat didn’t bite me, I didn’t fall down the stairs or have a heart attack, and that my husband was home. I’m most thankful, though, that it was not my daughter who discovered our little visitor.
The Brown Road Chronicles 
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Thanks for the hospitality – I love it over here!
You’re always welcome at the Chronicles!
WHEW!!!! I’m sooooo glad you didn’t find it when we were there!!!
Brings back memories of our Camel back cricket!!!
Love,
Mom
xxooxx
WAS there a colony of bats in the attic? We had a house that was built with a crawl space underneath it (not a basement; a crawl space between the floor of the house and the ground, and found a dead rat on the top of the dishwasher once. It took us forever to find it. I wasn’t any help in removing it, either. I am still waiting to see that episode on a home improvement show, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Nancy
http://www.workingmomadventures.com
Nancy
http://www.workingmomadventures.com
Eww, eww, eww on the rat. Our bat inspection has not yet been conducted, though my husband is sealing all sorts of cracks and crevices with that spray foam stuff at this very moment.
I am so upset right now. I wish I smoked or something.
So sorry to have upset you. Surely there’ some vice you can turn to for comfort?
Chocolate usually works when nothing else will!
Have you noticed the bright light is hurting your eyes? Any extra interest in V-8 juice or people’s necks? Just checking.
I’ve enjoyed this field trip over to BRC. Just hope I don’t barf when I get back on the bus – I’m not a good traveler.
Not to worry – I’m always happy to share my secret stash of dramamine with a fellow bus-barfer, however, I’d prefer to travel after daylight hours. Is that okay with you?
Great story Sheep & Steve…very cool of you to let her post it here!
I am almost as upset about the fact that you thought it was probable that a nasty, old, black banana peel would be in your bathroom cabinet as I am about the bat – but I agree that a bat is more dangerous.
By the way, I recently found a great blog called Red Roan Chronicles, and it sounded familiar to me because the name reminds me of Brown Road Chronicles (but it took me a while to realize it).
No, not a banana, a BANDANNA (did I spell it wrong???).
I thought the same thing about the old banana. Must be these old eyes.
What a great story!
An old banana peel would be disgusting in itself, but a live creature, even better. Reminds me of the time my mom (didn’t have her glasses on) and was yelling at the neighbor’s cat. It kept sitting on her backyard wall and driving her dog crazy. The dog wouldn’t stop barking, so my mom went out and said “Scat. Go on.” and hit it on the rear…which the creature turned it’s head to my mom…she gasped as the glowing, beady eyes of a possum glared at her.
Sandi
http://www.ahhsome.wordpress.com
Lake Forest, CA
Possums are creepy! And I meant to say BANDANNA, not banana!
It does say bandana, so don’t worry, we won’t accuse you of storing old, rotten fruit in your bathroom cabinets!
Lisa, I probably would have squealed as well if I had grabbed onto the bat. I’ll share the story here that I shared with you. My wife and I awoke one night to a bat circling around our bedroom. I ran and grabbed a toy butterfly net from the kids room, and stood there in my underwear (perhaps like Captain Underpants!) flailing around with the net. Somehow I eventually caught the bat in the net and we were able to release it outside. We’ve had one other bat inside our house before and our cat recently caught and killed one outside. Fun stuff! I think its pretty normal to have the occasional bat incident.
You know, generally speaking I hate the whole Damsel in Distress sort of scenario. On the other hand, there’s nothing more heroic than a husband in his underwear catching a bat with his kid’s toy butterfly net. Well done.
I don’t hate the Damsel in Distress scenario when it comes to snakes, cockroaches and rodents. I infinitely prefer for my husband to deal with them. I finally learned to kill other bugs when we adopted our little girl out of self-defense; she won’t kill spiders.
Nancy
http://www.workingmomadventures.com
Also, I wouldn’t worry about a whole flock of bats in your attic. Don’t believe anything you read on the internet (especially on this site)! But its not unusual for bats to get inside a house through the tiniest of cracks and crevices. The two that got into our house, we think came through open windows that had storms and screens that were not very well sealed up. But, like lots of critters they can get through pretty small spaces. Not to freak you out or anything :-0
Bless you for that tiny ray of hope that this was an isolated bat incident.
eeeewwww I would definitely have screamed if not squealed. In our first house, a new build that backed up to a field, we had a mouse. I was pretty proud of myself for setting the mouse trap and getting it. But then my cousin told me, “They come in families.” She was right…several mice later, finally we were rid of them. Ohhh…good luck.
Thank you BRC for inviting me/us over.
Anything rodent-like is worthy of a good scream. I think I’d be too squeamish to set out traps – ick.
Thanks for sharing–I vow to not clean the bathroom, although finding a bat could be rather cool–when someone else does the exploring. Good field trip!
Thanks for coming along!
Reminds me of the bats which inevitably entered our bunks during camp in Maine… Tennis rackets seemed to do the trick after screaming, of course!
Since moving to the tropics, I’ve had the pleasure of a mouse in the house, a snake (either deathly poisonous or no problem… I wasn’t about to take the time to say red on yellow what a fellow, red on black put him back… REALLY?), various geckos/spiders, and of course… the palmetto bugs the size of private airplanes. EWWWWWWWWW. Glad your hubby takes charge… my ex… waited for the creature to magically disappear! Good move posting on your gracious friend’s blog! Your daughter would indeed require a move to a bat-free galaxy!
Tennis rackets – brilliant idea! I’ll keep one with me at all times.
This was quite funny 🙂
We used to live in another province where it was quite common to find bats flying around as soon as the sun set and it caused some excitement when one occasionally slipped in through a door or window.
Parents used it as a good scare tactic to keep their kids inside with stories like “don’t go outside or else the bat will get all tangled up in your hair and we’ll have to shave it all off”. Of course, there were some youngsters who didn’t care about it too much – at least not after covering their hair with towels before venturing outside.
Do you think my daughter would be suspicious if I instituted a towel over the head requirement inside the house?
We are more likely to find snakes or spiders. Thanksfully, bats are not common in my part of the globe (nothern Australia is a different story altogether).
Darn good reason to stand and order the troops to do their own dirty work, if you ask me!
I actually thought you were going to find a used prophylactic, given it was the teenagers bathroom!
I’m not sure what would’ve freaked me out more – the bat or a condom! Clearly, the consequences of finding a used condom would’ve been far more severe than the bat. Wow, you’ve given me a whole new perspective on the bat.
😆 Glad to have helped!
Quite giggle worthy. And I find that repeating things always helps process things better. Also, I find that repeating things always helps process things better.