Living in this old, stone farmhouse all these years has been an unexpected gift. She sits sedately on a knoll, her square shape softened by the roundness of the stone from which she is built. Her cottage-style roof suggests a humble grandeur. Those thick, stone walls create window sills that are deep – an ideal spot to settle in with a blanket and book. This lovely pile of stones welcomes all who come up the gravel laneway.
But the critters… These porous stone walls also bid welcome to a host of creatures. There is the usual fare of mice, flies, spiders, and wasps. There have also been the more disturbing fare of rats and bats. Squirrels too have burrowed into the walls. One time a toad sat on the basement floor. Another time an opossum sat serenely on a window sill in the cellar – though without blanket and book.
It’s the bats that are my undoing. They swoop in unannounced and unexpected at odd hours, furtive and elusive. Recently, my daughter woke in the night hearing someone strumming her guitar. CERReepy. She got up to have a look and there was a bat flying about her room. Less recently, she had returned from a trip to the Netherlands and was laying her jet-lagged head to pillow only to see a bat hanging from the rail of the bunk bed ladder, right by her face. “Mom”, her weary voice called, “there’s a bat in my room.” Can you be compassionate and cowardly? Compassionate coward that I am, I closed the bedroom door on both her and the bat and went and got my “better half”.
The other night as I laid awake (insomnia, that frequent bedfellow), I thought I saw a wisp of a shadow reflected in the mirror. Deciding I was seeing things, I closed my eyes. It didn’t work. Once you’ve seen a thing, it doesn’t get unseen. I needed to know. Opening my eyes, I watched and there it was – the mirror catching snippets of that telltale flutter and dip of a fly-by-night.
“Fred, there’s a bat in the hall.” He went to investigate, heeding my request to close the door so it wouldn’t find its way into our bedroom. Lights flashed on then off. I waited. Eventually, slumber nudged insomnia aside and settled in.
The next morning, I hear that the bat flew down the stairs and wasn’t found. Hardly a comfort. I walked around the house doing my things, all the while peering up into corners expecting to see a dark shape hanging and thinking about all the nooks, crevices, and hiding spots that are available in this old house. But alas, nothing. Could it have left the way it came? Wherever it was, I decided I can’t walk afraid in my own home.
That evening, I needed to put something away in a closet in the back room from whence bats have been known to emerge. I asked for accompaniment. We banged the closet doors a few times, but nothing greeted us. And just as we were heading off to our differing tasks, I saw that bat swoop in flight across the hall in the living room. I shrieked like a little girl (to amusement of my accompaniment) and ran to close the various doors that open into that room. The bat was captured with the help of a blanket (which was subsequently laundered) and released outdoors to carry on its role in the circle of life. May it live out its days – just not in my house.
I had a widowed aunt, diminutive and saintly. An aura of sweetness and kindness was simply a part of who she was. I heard tell of a time when a bat showed up in her bedroom window; she caught it and got rid of it by her very own small self.
To be someone other than ourselves is to be untrue, but I do aspire to her kindness and version of saintliness. And, I especially aspire to that kind of courage in the face of a bat. This dear old home will more than likely give me opportunity to develop that particular kind of courage.
