I've Gone Batty!

You might think that the title of this post refers to my new daughter. It doesn't although there are times... Our internet was down from Saturday evening until last night so I haven't been able to get on here and let you know what has been going on with us.

Bats. That's what.

Friday night we were all snug in our bed asleep. Alaina was in her own bed in her own room peacefully sleeping too. Praise the Lord for that! I heard our boy Smokey meow. I thought, "It must be about 0430 because Smokey always meows at 0430. I heard Alan get up and thought, "Good" and went right back to sleep. Suddenly I hear him yell out. Guilily I remembered the baby toys on the floor that I didn't pick up before I went to bed. "He must have tripped on one or hurt his foot." thought I. I asked him if he was alright. He said, "There's a bird in here." I looked at the clock and it was 0030. I thought, "Birds don't fly at night. There's no bird. He must have imagined it." Then I saw it fly across the room. I thought," This bird must be sick or something to have wandered in here at night." Then I saw it perched on our wall and thought, "Oh stink. That's a bat. Don't tell Alan it's a bat. He wont like that. Let him think it's a bird." Alan (my hero!) ran downstairs and got the broom handle. He hit it twice and it flew out into the hallway. Having no idea how to kill this thing, but thinking it was dead since it was lying on the floor, he sprayed it with a combination of Glade air freshener and some sort of German cleaner or something from the bathroom. It wasn't dead. It flew down the stairs. Alan went after it. He trapped it down there with the wicker basket we use for umbrellas. At this point I inform him that it is in fact a bat. He'd had his suspicions. We decide to leave it there until morning and deal with it before we get Alaina up. At this point (lol) he realizes that Alaina is not in bed with us. I'm not quite sure why he thought she was as we have never taken her to bed with us unless he thought it was earlier in the evening and I was lullling her to sleep with a bottle. At this point he said, "You were hiding under the blankets! All this time I thought you were protecting her, and you were hiding!" lol This was in response to the laughing comment I made about the manner in which he yelled when the bat surprised him.
So, the next morning we trepidiciously went down to the basket. The bat didn't seem to be there. We found its blood on the walls of the stairway but did not find the bat. I decided we needed to look closer at the basket. Alan held an old cookie sheet and I flipped up the basket while he covered it. The bat was in there and attached to the side of the basket. I took it all out side, put the basket down on its side, took my cookie sheet (yes it got washed and scalded) and watched to see if it came out while moving back toward the house. A few hours later I went out and looked at the basket. It was empty. Not a sign of it anywhere. We decided to throw the basket away.