Attack of the bat!!!

So, Sunday night I was relaxing in the living room, with all of the lights off, laying on the couch and watching Dawson's Creek DVD's. All of a sudden, I see Charlie go FLYING through the air! Obviously he is chasing some sort of creature, but I can't tell what. He is RILED UP. Then I glance towards the ceiling and in the light of the television, I see a dark shadow swooping around and around! I think to myself? "Butterfly? Birdie? Yeah right. BAT! EEK!" So I ducked under the blanket and prayed it wouldn't land on me.

Adam was in his studio, which is relatively soundproof, mixing music rather loudly. I yelled "ADAAAAM????" But he couldn't hear me, so I pounded on the wall. "ADAM!!!!!!!" He opened the door and said, "What?" I said "THERE'S A BAT!" And he was like "Ahhh! Get on the floor and crawl to the bedroom and shut the door!!!" So I did that. But I couldn't stay in there for long because I was dying of curiosity. I actually think bats are pretty cool. I took a bat class once in Project Challenge when I was little, and I got to pet one! As long as they're sitting still, they're cute. Like little hamsters with wings! You know, like a pegasus! Except a hamster instead of a horsie! Right? Anyway. When they are flying around super fast with seemingly no direction in mind, they are not quite as cute.

After awhile, it swooped down the basement stairs and perched on the wall overhanging the staircase. Adam took this opportunity to run around and open all the windows up wide in the hopes that the bat would swoop out one of them. Right as he was done opening them, the bat took off again. Adam ducked and I dove between the open dishwasher and the counter, and huddled in that little area. The bat flew AROUND AND AROUND for ever and then finally disappeared again. We both thought it went back downstairs, but from our angles we couldn't really tell.

Eventually we went downstairs and looked all over for it, quite carefully in case it swooped back out at us. After lots of searching, we gave up. The bat MUST have flown out the window. Whew. We could sleep peacefully. I don't want rabies, man!

So today I come home from work and Scott is over. He says, "I heard you had a little bat problem!" I was like "oh, haha! yeah!" and he says, "It's still here." I was like "WHAT?!" and it WAS! It was perched up on that wall above the staircase again! It never left! We slept all night with a bat just hanging out down there! I'm not THAT afraid of it, but I was really terrified that the kitties would attack it and get sick! So Adam called Dad to see if he had any good tools and he sent over Elliot with some long nets.

Adam used a small net to knock the bat down from where it was perched sleeping into the bigger net. It grasped onto the wall pretty hard and screeched and screeched! Finally it fell into the net, and Adam tried to set it free out the window, but it was stuck. He shook it out, but it grasped onto the net. Elliot went outside to grab the other end of the net. After awhile, the bat was calm enough that it took off and flew away.