What in the hell …

At least two. And now I can only see one. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

EDIT:

The story so far:

Trent and Angelica and I were up late playing Boggle (incidentally, it turns out several friends of mine who I know from a few different things I’m involved in are all into Boggle, and all of them said some variation of “I’m totally going to beat you when we play!” which is what Trent said shortly after he moved in and somehow the subject of Boggle came up; we played tonight and I won, I don’t want to brag but I’m not bad at Boggle - I usually win when we play around here, though we’ll see how I do when we get around to hosting this Boggle party I want to have, but anyway I digress). We were about to turn in. Trent and Angelica were having some revolting conversation about coprophagy in order to deliberate antagonize me because they know I’m squeamish. Then Trent said “there’s a bat in the living room.” At this point I had tuned them both out in irritation. He said it again, Angelica said “what?” then something like “oh maybe it’s a moth.” I tuned in here, saying something astute like “huh?” or “youwhatnow?” I don’t know who caught the first glance but we all saw it swoop about the same time and gave a collective shriek.

We ran and hid in Angelica and my bedroom. We calmed down, had some discussion, made some plans. Trent and I went out into the hall, saw the bat swooping again, went out the back door. We propped the back doors the apartment and the building open, then propped the front door of the building. We opened the front door of the apartment, watched the swoop a bit and realized there were two bats. We hurriedly fumbled for the light, flipped it on, then crouched low and ran for the light in the dining room. The bat(s) headed for the front room of our place, the only unlit room, a sealed up sun porch kind of thing. We shut the door to that room.

After some relievedness, I turned on the light in the front room. I could see one bat (I believe it was a little brown bat) perched on the wall through the glass door. But only one. I went outside and looked in the windows to that room, still only one bat. Where was the other bat? That was a disconcerting question. All of this was particularly disconcerting because Minnesota bats tend to carry rabies and Minnesota has relatively high rates of human/bat contact, humans getting rabies, and bat transmission of rabies. (I can’t remember how we knew this, probably from public radio, probably something Angelica knew and told me about.)

High on adrenaline, feeling not very comfortable at home, and feeling hungry, we went out for a bite to eat (it was maybe 2:30 am by now).

That took a long while, till about 4:30 (some fuck up at Denny’s due to inexperienced cooks, and a botched attempt to buy gas at a closed gas station which involved a guy shouting fuck you at me and banging on the windshield and kicking the side of the car while his friend smiled and apologized). From there we decided to stay up longer until the farmers market opened at 6am, to kill time until animal control opened at 7:30. We got some heirloom melon that promises to be awesome, two jars of fantastic salsa, and quite a large quantity of tomatoes, among other things. Then we came home.

At home, neither bat seems to be anywhere. This is even more disconcerting. (And according to some place on the internet August is the peak time for human/bat contact in Minnesota, I think about 40% of all such contact occurs in this month. Happy birthday to me, I guess.) I called animal control, who were very nice but basically said “if there’s not an animal all up in your face right this second then we’re not the ones to talk to, call a pest control expert.” I called the landlord, who was nice about it and is supposed to come over later and look around and then hopefully we’ll get someone out to batproof the place. And hopefully once it’s dark again there won’t be another fucking bat or bats swooping around my apartment. Bastards.

It is now 8:12 am according to my computer. I am for sleep. With a suitcase placed in front of the door to keep it shut. I am most definitely afraid of bats. [Angelica tells me this makes me brave, since a) bravery is not the absence of fear but action despite fear and b) I took action toward/about these bats; I’m not convinced this is so, however, as that definition of fear would actually make one braver the more one feels afraid, which is far too counter-intuitive to be acceptable.]

I’ll keep you posted. Unless I get rabies and die. In that case, umm … well, in that case I have nothing to say except: fuck! damn it! stupid bats!

Nature can fuck off.

SECOND EDIT:

Bats nowhere to be seen. I used cardboard and duct-tape on what I think are probable entry points and I’m keeping the door to that room shut. When it gets dark I’ll see if I see anything swooping around in there. I got my phone, laptop, and the books I need right now out of there (that room is where I do my work, of course). Landlord says if they come back then we’ll call someone to take care of it. So if any bats are reading this, please stay out of my apartment so we don’t have to involve the authorities. Thank you.