Just a Normal Friday Night at Our House

Mark and I are deep into Season 3 of Lost. Last night, we got the boys in bed, watched an episode, and called it a night.

About 2:00, I woke up. There was a noise in the corner of the room. It sounded like something rattling paper. We had a fan going, so I thought something might have gotten caught in the air flow. I gave it a minute. More rattling, then ZING! WHAP! The distinct sound of a mouse zipping across the floor and into the wall. Great, I'm thinking, I hope we have some D-Con under the sink - I can just put some out in the morning.....

Then I feel something fly very close to my head. I sit up. I hear more flapping sounds. I grab Mark. "Wake up! Something's flying around the room!"

Mark sits up. "Whah....." Silence in the room. He sits there stunned for a minute, then rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Now, in thirteen years of marriage, I have never woken Mark up in the middle of the night and sent him off after a noise. Not once. It's just not how I roll. And so it surprised me that he did not find anything alarming about my behavior. He just went back to sleep. Had I not been so scared, I might have smothered him with his pillow.

But I sat there, sure that our talking had frightened our guest and it would be on the move again if I was quiet long enough. I was right. I started hearing movement in the curtain by the bed. I smacked Mark and said "Wake up! Something's in here! I'm not making this up!" And I turned on the light.

We both saw a bird flying across the room. While I'm thinking "How in the heck did a bird get in here?", the bird turns upside down and hangs from its feet off the ceiling. Oh *&$#. Not a bird. A bat.

I learn something new about myself every day. Last night I learned that I am abnormally afraid of bats.

I wigged. I got down under the covers and started crying. "Whatarewegonnado Mark! Whatarewegonnado!" Mark cowered down there with me. Every now and then we would peek out, and that little bastard would be right there staring at us, or worse - flying at the bed. I was in hell.

Finally, Mark says "We've got to open a window and get him to fly out. If we open the bedroom door and he gets out into the house, we'll never get him out. So...go open your window."

"I'm not getting out of this bed. Why do I have to open the window? You open the &%$#&*! window!" I hear a smack behind my head. "What was that?!?!"

"He flew behind the headboard. I think he's under the bed." Needless to say, I got out of the bed.

We opened the window, but couldn't get the screen to budge. For some reason, there was a screwdriver on my nightstand, so we took turns trying to pry it loose. It's very difficult to concentrate on a task when you're constantly jerking your head back and forth, watching for flying bats.

I finally got it loose, pulled it out of the window, and leaned it against the wall by the bathroom. We yanked the bathroom door open, and hid in there while we waited for our plan to work.

Mark quickly realized that if we did not see the bat fly out the window, we would never know for sure he was gone, and we would have to sell the house. So he decides to go out there. "Give me something to hit it with. Just in case."

I gave him a big loofah on a stick. This was apparently not what he had in mind.

He went into the closet and came out with his racquetball racket. Not quite a weapon, but better than a big loofah. He goes back into the room. He runs back into the bathroom. "He's stuck in the screen. We knocked it over when we yanked the door open, and now he's trapped under it." We stand and look at each other, like two deranged fools. Mark says, "OK, I'll go back out and move the screen. Maybe he'll get loose and fly out."

Mark goes back into the bedroom. I hear the screen move. I hear sounds that are not at all human, but that have to be coming from Mark. Then I hear a loud THUNK. Mark says "I got him! I knocked the crap out of him. But I don't know where he is."

So Mark and I very gingerly tiptoe around the room, he with the racquetball racket and me with the big loofah, poised and ready to attack. Mark finds him. He's lying stunned just under the end of our bed. Mark slaps the racquetball racket down over him and traps him underneath. "Now what do we do?" Mark looks over at the nightstand. "Bring me the screwdriver," he says, calmly. Too calmly.

So Mark stabbed the bat with a Phillips-head screwdriver, twice, through the racquetball racket netting. When we were sure he had breathed his last, we scooped him up with the back of a magazine, threw him into a trash bag (double-bagged for safety) and tossed him outside in the garbage can. Game over, man. Game over.

We had too much adrenaline to go back to bed. So we watched another episode of Lost. It was the one where Hurley found the Sweet Pickles van and they miraculously got it running. Good times. Nothing like a quiet night in front of the TV with your spouse.