So this year as I've been living at home I've had quite the interactions with small mammals.  I can't remember if I posted it here, but many of you know that early fall semester I killed a mouse using only my gloved hands.  Then I posted about a squirrel burial that I performed (may he rest in peace).  A couple of weeks ago I killed another mouse in my house after he stuck to some cleverly placed glue traps and I hit him with a brick.  Yesterday I nearly ran over a cat.  I can't say I would have felt all that bad if I would have hit it either.  Partly because of an already negative predisposition to small cats (big cats freaking rock), and partly because he was dumb.  He was creeping out into the road looking like he was gonna pounce.  He looked over at my oncoming car several times.  Then just before I reached him he bolted in front of my car.  I breaked slightly just out of instinct and a repulsion for needless bloodshed, but honestly if that cat had been hit I wouldn't have felt too bad at all.

  But anyway, I didn't start writing this post to tell you all that.  Story I wanted to tell you happened later last night.  I was about to fall asleep when I saw this shadow whizzing across my line of site.  My first instinct was that it was a large insect, which didn't worry me too much (bugs can't eat you.).  This hazy notion was probably brought on by the fact that the night before I had seen a friendly little firefly on my wall.  I was so warmed by its friendlyness I didn't even squish it.  But anyway, needless to say I quickly realized that the whizzing shadow wasn't an insect. It was a bat.  I don't think I ever really realized how much bats creep me out until last night, and as I think about it I think that I have good reason.  Bats are like mice with wings.  Mice are mildly cute at best and just gross at worse (depending on whether they are housed as pets or just housed by a house.)  But bats, being creatures of the night are far more mysterious and they can fly.  Its sort of like sharks are scary but just think about how scary it would be if sharks could fly.  *shivers* So anyway, I cowered under the covers for a few minutes terrified that the thing might land on me or suck my blood until I became even more terrified of the possibility that the bat might for some reason choose to nest with me in my bed and did what any self-respecting 22 year-old man living at home would do. I called for my mommy.  I quickly realized that the door was closed to my room and my mom was fast asleep and that my calls for help might only anger the bat and make it attack.  So I got up and went to wake my parents and alert them of the eminent danger.  They told me to just shut my door and sleep somewhere else so I camped out in the upstairs hallway for the rest of the night.  I slept a surprising amount considering it was the floor and all.  I was tripped over when I my little brother came home late (I thought he was already home...) but other than that it wasn't too bad.

 In the morning when I got up was probably the worst part because I didn't have any clothes to put on after I showered that weren't in my room.  I figured the bat was asleep but I had no idea where he was.  Every time I picked up a piece of clothing there was this overwhelming dread that a giant bat would fly out of nowhere attack and catch me mostly naked and unprepared to deal with him.  Despite my fear I was able to put enoough clothes on and put my contacts in... That was the other thing I couldn't really see anything either.  Things are always scarier when you can't see clearly.  Then I went downstairs to look for my dad who had left a note telling me to take care of the bat.  What a jerk.  See if he gets anything for father's day...  So anyway.  My plan was to call animal control, because they're good at handling bats and things.  But in general they like you to know where the bat is before you call them.  Ick.  This meant I had to turn over every piece of clothing and picture on the wall and search in every dark corner of my room, closet, and bathroom until I found the bat.  With bats being small as they are they can hide just about anywhere, which is what I think makes them scarier than flying sharks.  If flying sharks existed we'd just all carry around shot guns and shoot 'em whenever we saw one, they wouldn't have too many places to hide.  But bats... they can hide anywhere.  This isn't the sort of situation to unprepared for.  So I dawned some laboratory goggles and some leather gloves.  Then I found a badminton racket and felt armed and ready to go searching for a bat.  Man, I tell you.  I turned over every plausible inc of that room  I searched through almost all the clothes in my closet and every dark corner anywhere in my room.  I was just thinking,  "Good grief this is rediculous."  and starting to wonder if the bat had somehow made it back outside when I noticed a small dark lump at the bottom of --get this-- my window fan.  Upon more careful inspection I was able to confirm that it was indeed a small brown bat.  I was so dumbfounded that I walked around my house a couple times just to make sure there was no one around that I could show and verify that yes indeed the bat was inside the box of my window fan.  It was so amazing to me because some times the little plastic slats of window fans fall out as they get older and we have quite a few with large holes in them, but this fan is pretty good condiion with only a small crack at the top that the bat would have literally had to pry open even to fit its tiny body inside.  The more interesting part to me was that the fan had been running the etire night, which may have been what attracted the bat to it.  I heard a story one time about a guy who had a pet bat and took the grates off of a fan and the bat seemed to take great pleasure in flying through the running fan.  I was always confused about why and how someone would keep a pet bat.  Anyway.  This bat seemed to have not taken so much joy in his encounter with the fan and just sort of lay at the bottom.  He (or I guess it could be a she) was still alive but pretty out of it at best.  I felt a lot of pitty for him/her.  When I had prepared myself to go searching for the bat, I was about ready to kill it if I could catch it, but it being caged and subdued by the fan sort of changed my outlook on the situation.  It wasn't a huge bloods sucking thing, just a little pig-nosed brown bat (I don't know if that's an actual species but that's what it looked like).  I took the fan outside and opend up on of the grates and dumped the bat out to see if it would fly away.  I picked it up and it didn't squirm or anything just looked around sort of worried-like and didn't move too much.  So I went and tossed it on a pile of leaves to let fly away if it could or get eaten by cats if it couldn't.  We have several neighborhood cats that come into our yard just to poop and kill things.  I throw things at them when I see them.  So anyway.  I that was my adventure for today.

love.
will

The following is an email I just sent to my girlfriend.  I'm in such a good mood though I thought I'd share with all y'all (did it ever strike anyone else strange that we use the phrase "all y'all" = "all you all"?)

So its a glorious mood outside... not quite rainy and foggy enough to be cool.  So I got to violette a little late this morning and I saw some of my classmates walking out early.  I walked into the classroom and Dr. Miller hands me my test with my pre-final grade on it with an option to take it instead of the final... it was a B.  I was like... nearly in tears I was so happy.  And so my final academic deed for college is done,  and all it consisted of was signing a sheet of paper to take a B instead of inevitably working like a dog on a final and getting merely a C.  Woohoo!  I think I'm gonna go for a walk... maybe stop by java co and get some coffee.  yeah.

love.

-will