Our Nighttime Visitor

A couple nights ago, we were having game night in one of our apartments. It was a pretty typical night: we played some Bananagrams, ate some Pocky, and talked about teaching. It was calm and relaxing. After a while, Jenna left to go get something from her apartment. When she came back, she slipped through the door and said, "I think there's a bat in the hall."

We all had varying reactions to this:  A few of the girls and Soren jumped up to take a look; I didn't really care so I stayed in my spot; Maddie is terrified of bats and she started freaking out.  I was a little mystified as to how the bat got up to our 5th floor hallway, but then I remembered that there are holes in the wall in the kitchen area, the door at the bottom of the stairwell is always open, and the window at the end of the hall has no screen. So the mystery quickly faded.

Soren was the hero.  He went out into the hall and played with the lights, tricking the bat to go towards the stairway.  The bat exited and that was the end of that.

Or so we thought.

The next night, Maddie, Morgan, Jenna, and I were chatting in Jenna's room.  As it was getting pretty late, I decided to call it a night and went out into the hall. Jenna's room is the last one on the floor, so I had a good view of the entire hall. I thought i saw something fluttering in the distance and I was pretty sure our batty friend was back.  This didn't alarm me, but I thought I should warn the other girls.  To avoid frightening Maddie, I whispered to Jenna, "The bat is back.  I'm going to shut the door."

But Jenna wanted to throw caution to the wind. "I wanna see!" She exclaimed and threw open the door. She stepped out into the hall just in time to see the bat dive bomb toward my head.

Seriously, I thought I was going to die.

We both screamed and jumped back into the room. I'd never been that close to a bat before (except at Disney's Animal Kingdom--and that was a very controlled situation). I opened the door once or twice and stepped out into the hall, but it seemed like every time I tried to make a move toward my room, the bat would head straight for me.  We all made a fair amount of noise.

My room was the farthest from Jenna's and finally I decided I just needed to go for it. With nervous shrieks and squeals, I maneuvered my way down the hall. I was to Krista and Morgan's door when the bat came for me. With a short scream, I thrust myself into Krista's room.  Krista happened to be right there watching a movie on her laptop.  She took out an ear bud and asked, "What's going on out there?"  "The bat is back." Was all I could muster.

Unfortunately, all our screaming had disturbed one of our neighbors down the hall. She popped her head out and gave Jenna, Morgan, and Maddie a light verbal thrashing. They told her we'd been spooked by a bat in the hall, but she didn't seem to care. Perhaps in the bat had come flying at her head, she would've started caring a little bit.

This is not the actual bat...but it looked pretty similar

I did finally make it to my room.  My nerves were shot.  I told Soren what happened and he was like, "oh."  He's a calm, brave man. I'm lucky I married him.