pete+dana

So there’s this bat…

The story really starts on Monday night…. I think. I was in the office around 10pm, and heard some weird noise in the vent. Since we’ve had some issues with birds and mice I didn’t think too much of it, and I’m still not sure it’s related, but…

On Tuesday night I was driving back to work from downtown Milwaukee and Dana calls to tell me there is a bat in the house. I drop off all the equipment at work and then headed home. Dana tells me a story involving hiding in Emma’s room (with Tinkerbell the cat) and then climbing out the window to open both doors hoping it would fly out. She ended up closing both doors after about 5 minutes because she saw a dodgy squirrel, and was afraid it (or some bird) might try to come in the house.

So by the time I got home, I searched and searched and could not find the bat anywhere. I assumed it had flown out when the doors were open. Case closed. (But not really.)

Wednesday night, the kids were over, we had dinner, Emma was making cupcakes for Gallery Night, and I saw Tinkerbell sitting on a chair staring at the fireplace… Staring at a dark spot on the fireplace. The dark spot turned out to be the bat. I yelled “We have a bat!” and got a little frantic. By now I had read all there was to read about bat removal, so I was ready. I think I was just freaked out that everyone else would freak out, but everyone was pretty calm actually. Except me.

I grabbed my heavy work gloves, and a towel, and gently grabbed the bat from the fireplace, and got it outside. I was actually afraid of hurting it, and tried to be gentle with it. Once outside, I put it at the base of a tree, and it started to climb up.

The response from the kids on the subject of the bat: “it was cute!”

P.S. I’m Batman.

Oh, there was also a ton of great advice on Facebook. Here’s a summary by Dana of what to do next time.

Dana and I had a chance to see The Black Jew Dialogues when they came through Wisconsin, and we both enjoyed the show, and highly recommend it.

If you’re involved with booking things for schools (universities or high-schools) get these guys. They’re a bit irreverent, but they do use humor to drive home a message. That’s the great thing about this show, you could book them as a comedy act, or as part of your school’s diversity program.

We spent some time after the show with Larry and Ron, discussing a number of topics, from racism, tolerance, African-American authors, and comedy writing. It was pretty close to a perfect evening (if you don’t count the 2+ hours we spent driving to Fond Du Lac and back.)