"Ohmygod, THERE IS A BAT IN HERE!"

Pictured: The perp!

I am prone to bouts of insomnia, and last night was like no other: it was 3 am and I was enjoying a pleasant issue of Real Simple magazine (I now know how to properly store anything from batteries to quilts and have found a very enticing chimichurri sauce for burgers - email me if you're interested). So, there I am, reading ,when I hear what can only be described as a burglar in our house (well, whenever I hear absolutely anything I think it's a burglar, especially after a Nightline episode this week on serial killers....but I digress). So, thinking there is a burglar, I immediately wake Matt up and hiss, "Did you lock all the doors??!!!?!!" "Umf," he said. "Damnit, Matt, did you lock the (bleepidy bleep) doors?!!" "YES!" he retorts. We both shut-up and listen.

Just as he's sitting up, a black BAT swoops out of our closet and begins circling the bedroom like a crazy-eyed killer! "Ohmygod, THERE IS A BAT IN HERE," I yelled. I then did what any rational person in this situation would do and immediately hid under the covers, panting like a dog and shrieking, "Cover my toes, there is not enough blanket to cover my toes, he's going to get them!" This is when Matt - being a male and thus a doofus - said, "Cool, there is a bat in here!"

After my toes were sufficiently safe, Matt took it upon himself to de-bat the house. "Maybe we should open the windows and leave the room, " I offered. "That's stupid," he said, "We'll never know if it left. It could hide." FINE.

Now, I can only recount what was audible at this point, since I was shrouded in my comforter. I remember saying every two seconds, "Did you get him?!" and I remember a lot of grunting, jumping, and "swooshing". I also recall Penny running out of the room at one point, as I heard her descend the stairs to safety - she is probably the smartest member of our family.

After about ten minutes of grunting and swooshing, Matt exclaimed, "I got him!" Matt was employing the sheet technique, as he'd throw a sheet over the bat, gather it up, and then shake the sheet out the window so the bat could safely escape. Once Matt said the bat was gone, I crawled out of the covers and looked around.

The first thing I saw was that Matt was sitting beside me, and had a very manly glow about him - or, a very smug look that said, "I outwitted a bat, look at me." He was obviously very happy with himself.

The second thing I noticed was that our windows where STILL WIDE OPEN. "CLOSE THE WINDOWS!" I shouted. My god, that creature of the night could swoop right back on in and get tangled in my hair, and then, my friends, we'd REALLY have a problem. Our dog, Penny, was still cowering at the foot of the stairs.

Matt was wide awake and positively giggling about this bat. "He could of had rabies and bit you!" I said. "He was cute!" Matt responded, "He had Elvis hair!" Matt then went into detail about the "cute" tuff of hair on the bat's head. After he recounted more of his bat-slaying, we went to sleep.

The next morning I Googled "bat in the house" and learned that when there is one bat, there is almost always more. The bat came from our closet, which is directly below our attic stairs, and where there are numerous holes. A bat only needs less than one inch to gain access to a space. Once I determined there was, of course, a colony of hundreds of bats in our attic, I called Matt at work (today was my last day at home, recovering from surgery).

"There is a bat colony in our attic a la Bruce Wayne's BAT CAVE in Batman and we MUST call a terminator IMMEDIATELY." Matt immediately started berating me because I used "terminator" instead of "exterminator" and, like a snotty 12-year-old boy, started making Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes.

"This is not a JOKE!" I said. "I want you to come home early and examine the attic." "I already looked up there; there is nothing there," he said. Now, in truth, Matt did climb the attic stairs last night after the bat debacle, but he was up there FOR 30 SECONDS TOPS!!!!! I told him OF COURSE he didn't see any bats because they were out for their nightly dinner of mosquitoes and he needed to come home immediately in the daytime to catch them "at rest" like little vampires. He responded he would leave as soon as he could. "When is that?!" I countered. "I don't know. Around five," he said. He obviously was not taking me seriously because "around five" is when he always left on Fridays.

I hung up and called my mom who told me to put on pants, long sleeves, a hat, and go and check myself. "Are you CRAZY?!" I said. "That's Matt's job!!" She told me to quit being a baby and that the bats weren't aggressive and they were sleeping now anyhow. I told her she was no help and then called my co-workers. (Are you noticing a pattern, here?) I then ran into two neighbors and recounted my horrific tale, and they said to call an exterminator and then, so very helpfully, added, "At least it's not termites like we had!" Great.

So, now here I am, on bat watch. It is, like, hour 12. I'm sitting on my bed, facing the closet and...well, watching. I SWEAR I heard rustling up there. Matt finally did find the time to make it home and donned my wide-brimmed beach hat with one of those "miner's" head flashlight thingys and proceeded to explore the attic. He also took up a pipe, which I can only assume was in case things got truly "batty". Ha.

After five minutes, he descended the stairs and said there were no bats in the attic. "What about bat POOP?!" I said. He said he didn't see any droppings. Now, this is the thing with Matt: the boy can never find ANYTHING. He is aloof. He also is not taking this bat-finding mission seriously. So that is where we stand. I'm still on bat watch and he is downstairs playing his X Box.

Stay tuned.