Bats In My Belfry

It is Kate. I answer and immediately begin screeching very high pitched run on sentences at eardrum breaking decibels into the phone. I am breathing hard when I am done. I need a paper bag.

Kate says, "I didn't catch any of that."

I am heaving now. I slowly repeat most of  what I screeched moments before, only this time, two words at a time. And as an alto.

Then she screeches. But only for a moment. She needs directions. My brain is scrambled from adrenaline. I fumble through the names of streets and lefts and rights and landmarks and make her turn around in error about three times.  I am not great with directions on a good day and this is not a good day.  I am no longer a walking talking adult person, I am a two year old curled up on a dining chair, near the laundry room door. I have made myself as small as humanly possible. The fetal position actually with one hand out to hold my iPhone to my ear. (We'll call it the iPhetal position.)  I will not take my eyes off the bat, and it won't take its eyes off me.  I have no idea where the cat has scampered off to. My shrieking surely have her a headache and took all the fun out of catching the bat mid-flight. I am frozen in place.

Kate has a few minutes of driving to do and she lets me go to attend to the bat. It is her way of kindly telling me, "I'll ask a stranger for directions, thank you."  I call Charlotte for moral support. She's dropping her kid off at college and I need the moral support. Go figure.

Charlotte answers on one ring. "Hello -ho!" she says brightly.

I muster all the calm in my soul and say, "Ok,FYI,  I am washing the towels from your bathroom. And um, Momma's having a heart attack because there is a bat in your house."

She screams. I scream. She's confused. She thinks I am in her regular house.

"No," I say. "I am at the cottage! And Kate is coming up because she thinks her husband is an asshole, at least for tonight and she's coming to keep me company. And Trinket caught a bat."

We go back and forth asking and answering - and screaming to be honest - all the while with me in the iPhetal position and not taking my eye off the bat. Charlotte tells me where the broom is. I get it in my sights. I am not moving and drawing attention to myself without a really good reason.

And then I tell her I think the bat might be dead. Good Kitty!  You killed the bat!  Hooray.

But as soon as these thoughts cross the surface of my brain, I see it twitch. It has been laying there, stunned, flat on the floor with its wings outstretched since I noticed it. And it is now twitching. It gets one wing under itself. And then the other.

I slowly make my move for the broom.  The bat is preparing for takeoff.