Even more bats

 

Last night I think I would have slept. . . .

I went to bed comparatively early, as bed-going goes with me. And I literally had my hand out to turn the reading light off and . . . a bat HURLED herself through the bedroom door, aiming straight at me, or the wall—um, why?—or the canopy, or whatever. It was another of those occasions when I felt something—I assume a wing—graze me as she did a boomerang turn past me* and shot back out the door again. GAAAAAAAAAAH. There goes the old adrenaline, thanks so much. Someone on Facebook posted to last night's entry on the subject of bats 'yes, and they're bigger indoors.' Yes. Funny thing about that. And they're really amazingly gigantic when they're flying at you while you're lying supine in your bed.

I lay there gasping a minute. I could hear her caroming around elsewhere. This ludicrous Besieged by Bats situation makes me glad that my poor hellhounds are digestively challenged, which means that I'm still crating them every night—they are very clean, and I think they would cry to go out anyway, if they're in trouble. But crating them reinforces this—in my mind anyway, and I have enough trouble sleeping. Had enough trouble before there were bats. Anyway—at least I don't have to worry about hellhounds giving chase to low-darting bats in the middle of the night.

I got up—grimly—went across the hall into the bathroom and regretfully unvelcroed and bent back a corner of the lovely, bug-resistant screen in the window, and propped it open with my toothbrush mug. Which has a plastic bag over it these days, since I have a peculiar aversion to the idea of bats among my toothbrushes. It's been really nice not hosting a house party for every bug in this end of New Arcadia plus its friends and relations, but letting bats out, unfortunately, takes precedence over not letting bugs in. The attic window has been open for a while, of course, but bugs seem to like heights: if they come in the attic, mostly they stay up there. Mostly.

Then I went back to bed and listened to the caroming some more. I pulled the sheet over my head and dragged a pillow over that—stopping just short of making breathing challenging—but sleep? Noisy little beggars, bats. Although possibly the racket of the beating wings is less when they're not in the bedroom with you. This one seemed to figure out the canopy better than the one a while ago, but she really liked my dream catcher and kept flying through it. Tinkletinkletinkle. Tinkletinkletinkle. TinkletinkleAAAAAAAUGH.** If this was Hermione, she is definitely in the annoying adolescent phase.

Then she'd go take a loop or two around the rest of the first floor***. And come back. Tinkletinkletinkle. Tinkletinkletinkle. Flapflapflapflappityflappityflappityflapflap

Bats know when there's an open window. Yes. And I'm Deborah Voigt.†

Anyway. Not a lot of sleep was had last night. This on top of not-a-lot-of-sleep the night before, and we're now into Zombie McKinley territory. I've always hallucinated a bit when I get really tired, and this propensity has intensified since the ME. And I've already noticed an increasing tendency to identify all small dark blobs as collapsed bats—and any sudden zinging motions, especially in peripheral vision, as flying bats—probably coming to get me. There have been a lot of bats in my life today. Some of them even real.

Including three dead ones. I am a bat-killer! I am a bad hellgoddess! Yes but—but—bats aren't supposed to live in the human side of houses! They're supposed to stay up under the roof, in the structural gaps! The window was open! Bats are supposed to find the open window! I've found one dead one before, but I've been uneasy right along about the ones that don't collapse in plain sight, and today I went looking. One had got itself caught in a moth trap—pipistrelles are little, but moths are a lot littler, and it never occurred to me that the glue on the moth trap would catch a bat. I have now thrown out the moth traps. Another one was dead at the bottom of a vase. I found one in the bottom of a vase once before—that one was still alive—and assumed it was some kind of bizarre one-off. I've now turned all the empty vases mouth down—and let me tell you how silly that looks. The third one was just collapsed and past resuscitating, as the first dead one was a week or so ago.

I also found one barely alive at the foot of the stairs at around noon. Why are the little frellers wandering around in the middle of the day. Usually at least I find them late afternoon. I put her out under the honeysuckle with the now de rigueur tiny saucer of water, but I was pretty sure she was on to become an ex-bat very soon: as I keep saying I worry about the metabolisms of little tiny things, and it was about ten hours till sunset and bat-suppertime. I couldn't believe she'd last that long.

I rang the Bat Lady. The Bat Lady said, don't leave her under the honeysuckle, put her in a box and keep her indoors—you'd be surprised at the number of predators around. Magpies. Rats. —Rats. Ewwwwww. Rats are one of those things you know are there even if you don't see them. (If you see them you call the exterminator.) So I got a box and punched some holes in the lid, feeling like a kid doing a school project, and then I went out to catch her. . . . A drink and some cool shade had cheered her up a lot, and she didn't want to be caught. You know the wingspan on a common pipistrelle is about eight inches: that's actually a lot when you're trying to grab it, or it's flying at you as you're lying in bed.

I caught her. I put her in her box. There were tiny aggrieved scrabbling noises, which I ignored. The Bat Lady had made some suggestions about trying to feed her, but if she was feeling that lively she could last till 6 pm when she would become the Bat Lady's problem. I had a cup of tea with Oisin††—there was no way I was going to try to sing anything today—who suggested that I should start a rumour that Ground Bat Bones are an aphrodisiac. This would probably solve my problem. Sigh. On a day this ghastly it's almost tempting.

The Bat Lady came. I said, I'm sure they're getting in downstairs—and I showed her the awful channel cut in the ceiling behind the beam in my kitchen where the wiring now runs. I also showed her the splinters and crumbs of plaster I'd found on the hellhound crate this morning. And I showed her my linen cupboard†††. My linen cupboard is full of pipes, and the holes cut in the walls for the pipes to run out are big enough for a crack [sic] troop of pipistrelles to come through all together. The Bat Lady is coming back tomorrow—her own self—with polyfilla and a stepladder. Golly.

She also took Giselle out of her box and had a brisk, businesslike look at her. Claning—I think it was Claning—posted a while back that tiny bats can't actually open their mouths wide enough to bite you, nor are their jaws strong enough.‡ That would be the case here. Tiny. Bat Lady also turned her over, tummy up: not that I know bat anatomy from Newton's Third Law, but knowing that Giselle is likely to be a pregnant female, it was extremely easy to identify that swell in her belly. Awwwwwww.  She seemed surprisingly unweirded out by human handling. Cute. I do not like them flying and caroming indoors but . . . cute. The Bat Lady took her home for remedial feeding.

And I went to . . . bell practise. Gods. I was at least half-planning to give it a miss, because I am so . . . negligible. And it looked like we were going to manage to cancel: by five to eight there were only three of us. I was delighted. And then they started trickling in. My heart sank. I had only come at all because when I had cravenly emailed Niall that I might not he emailed back bracingly that I had to come because we knew we were going to be short. Frell. Yes, we did. But then we weren't. I almost crept back out again when the sixth person arrived . . . only Niall got in the way and called for Cambridge. This is not a good idea, I said. Sure it is, said Niall. Cambridge. And—gods help me—I was dragged through a plain course of Cambridge by the hair, more or less. The thing is that even with No Brain after all this frelling handbell stuff, I know the blue line extremely well, so when my brain has turned to mush and my ropesight is inventing bats, when someone shouts at me, double-dodge and become fifth place bell!, unfortunately I know what he means. So I do. I'm glad I went to practise but I did wish I'd had a brain.

Now I have to go back to the cottage and see . . .

* * *

* If larger things are described as able to turn on a dime—or, over here, a five-pence piece, which are the littlest in common use—what is a pipistrelle described as turning on? The tip of a hypodermic needle? The first 'a' in the Lord's Prayer written on the head of a pin?

** blondviolinist wrote: These bat posts are highly entertaining in the abstract, but I'm starting to worry for you a bit, Robin! (Well, for your house at any rate.)

Never mind the house! Worry about me!

*** Second floor in American.

† http://www.deborahvoigt.com/

†† Who is now saying next week he'll write a guest blog. I said that last week, didn't I? he said. Yes, I said. And the week before that.

††† Please don't laugh, I said. We moved out of a house with nine bedrooms and . . .

‡ Claning also posted last night:

Although if they eat bugs on the wing, why do they need all those TINY NEEDLE-LIKE TEETH? It's enough to give you the wrong idea. Birds that swoop after flying bugs in a fairly bat-like fashion make do just fine with beaks.

But bats are much smaller in relation to their prey. And they eat moths and other things that are slippery, and they do so in mid-air, so they only get one chance to grab them firmly — no shifting one's grip and trying again. This feeding on the wing business does have its drawbacks.