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Unfortunately I woke tonight at about 1 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. So I decided to read some stuff on the web. At about 2:40 AM I went downstairs to get some coffee. When I came back up into the upstairs hallway something fluttered past me in the dark. It then fluttered back past me again. I ducked -- I quickly realized there was a bird loose in the house. I turned on the hallway light and to my shock there was a large bat fluttering back and forth across the hallway. I jumped to the floor as it flew past me, my heart pounding with fear, I wanted to run away. The cat was chasing it, occasionally leaping up and trying to grab it out of the air. This was not a normal bat, it was a big scary one. And I was afraid of it. But I had to capture it and let it loose outside, I had to figure out a way to do this. I took a wastebasket from the bathroom and tried to make the bat fly into it as it passed. But this was not a good tactic because I was too afraid to get near the bat. What I really needed was a net. I figured the next best thing to a net that I had was a bed sheet, so I went to the closet and grabbed a bed sheet and prepared to employ it as a net to toss over the bat as it fluttered past. The bat had now become stationary, it hung upside down from the frame of my sister's door. I looked at it for a while, and gosh was it big (I'd seen bats when I went caving in southern Virginia, they were tiny little cutey bats, but this bat in the hallway was more like a bird). Since the bat wasn't flying anymore, I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and tossed it at the door frame where the bat was hanging. It knocked the bat to the floor. Then, with lightning speed, my cat ran in and took a swipe at the bat. The bat lay motionless on the floor in front of the cat. "Oh no!" I exclaimed, the cat was going to kill it. I grabbed the cat and tossed it back away from the bat then threw the bed sheet over the bat. Then I put the wastebasket upside-down over the sheet where the bat was. The bat was now trapped. The next task was to get the bat outside; I needed to get the bat out from under the bed sheet and into the wastebasket. Slowly I pulled the bed sheet back and prepared to slam the wastebasket over the bat and trap it, all the while trying to prevent the cat from rushing in and grabbing the bat and killing it. It was a harrowing process (because I was scared the bat was going to fly out and bite my neck or something sinister like that) but I finally managed to get the bat trapped into the upside-down wastebasket. Then I went downstairs (carrying the cat with me so it didn't knock over the wastebasket while I was gone) and grabbed one of my young nephew's big picture books. I took the big book and slid it underneath the wastebasket so I could carry the bat outside and let it loose. I was a little bit worried the bat had been injured by the cat and wouldn't be able to fly, but when I finally got it outside I lifted the wastebasket and the bat flew off and quickly disappeared into the dark night.
I don't know why I was so scared of the bat. (My adrenaline is still flowing as I write this). The poor bat was probably much more scared than I. And when I think of it rationally, I know the bat was harmless. Maybe I've watched too many vampire movies.
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