Bats

One night bats visited us in Washington, D. C., in the house we were renting while away from our home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

They came at 5 A.M., or at least were noticed by my son at that time, in his room. He’s fourteen. He knocked on our bedroom door and opened it.

“Dad,” he said, “excuse me, but there’s a toad flying around in my room. Maybe two. I know it’s a toad, because there’s no water.”

“You’re having a nightmare,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “That’s just what I thought, too. But the third time I woke up, I saw it on the wall right over me. And I’m not scared. That’s why I think I’m not having a nightmare.”

“Toads don’t fly,” I said. “Go back to sleep. Frogs don’t either.”

“Dad, please come take a look.”

I pulled myself up and, staggering and shuffling, went to his room and flicked the light on. It blinded me, and I could see nothing.

“See,” he said, “over my window.”

I squinted. What certainly looked like a toad to me, with my eyes half open, was squatting on the wall over his window.

“Maybe we’re both dreaming. Let’s both go back to sleep.”

“I heard a rustling behind the picture, too.”

I turned that, dislodging a bat, which fluttered slowly around the room. We backed out hastily, my son almost closing the door on me.

“Bats,” we said simultaneously.

At this point my daughter woke up. “What’s the matter?” she said.

“Why are you guys making so much noise? It’s not fair.” She’s eleven.

“There are bats in Paul’s room.”

“I know,” she said, “four of them. And I still don’t think it was fair that you let him take them when all I could bring was three dolls.” She was clearly talking about Paul’s baseball bats, which he had stowed neatly under the front seat of the car and in the sides of the trunk, along with two catcher’s mitts, one for each hand (he’s left-handed and I’m right-handed, and one was for me to catch his pitching, and the other for, well, him to catch mine), a left-handed first baseman’s mitt, and two fielder’s gloves, one leftand one right-handed. He also brought a sack of balls. He likes baseball and hates to be caught without equipment. But I didn’t understand at the moment what she was talking about; those dolls puzzled me, and I didn’t know there were four bats in Paul’s room. I had seen only two; how could she know of more?

“You’re dreaming, darling,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

“New Mexico bats. Iris,” Paul said on her wavelength. “Carlsbad Caverns bats. The kind that fly.” At which she jumped out of bed, wide-awake. My wife was also up by now.

Paul spent the rest of the night in the living room, the door to his bedroom closed. “Good night, bat boy,” I said to him. “Good night, Vampira,” I said to my wife. “Good night, Miss Dracula,” I said to my daughter.

“You’re not very funny, Daddy,” she said.

In the morning I asked my wife to call the naturalist at the Rock Creek Nature Center, a Department of Interior local enterprise not far from our house. “If I call,” I explained, “he’ll simply tell me how to get rid of them. If you call, maybe they’ll send someone out. Maybe they need specimens or something.”

She called and learned a great deal about bats. Bats carry rabies, for example, which we knew, but the ones we had probably didn’t because if they did they probably wouldn’t be hanging from the ceiling. They’d be on the floor. The naturalist told us not to worry in any case, for the bats surely would fly out at dusk. He didn’t know that the windows were screened; we had no idea how they got in. He wouldn’t come out to get them as specimens, since, he said, they were common in the area. He suggested we try the zoo, which suggested we try the United States Public Health Service, which suggested we try district rodent control, which suggested we try S.P.C.A., which suggested we try the Animal Rescue League, which suggested the Fish and Wildlife Service, Small Mammal Division, which suggested the Department of Agriculture, which suggested we call any of the local universities. Since I am a university man myself, we didn’t. Noblesse oblige. We felt pleased to discover how many different organizations might have come out to help small animals in trouble if they hadn’t happened to have their fieldmen in court that morning.

We gathered from all the advice that whoever went after the bats ought to keep his head covered and wear thick gloves. I volunteered. I donned a narrow Ivy League rain cap, a present from my brother-inlaw, who likes to laugh at me in it; it’s narrow and small and perches on top. To cover my arms, I put on a raincoat, and for my hands, lefthanded and right-handed catcher’s mitts. Since we were renting the house, I didn’t have any other gloves, and I don’t have such thick ones anyway. I worried about the bats getting at my eyes, and as my own contribution to the equipment, I put on sunglasses. Then, with a wastebasket and a folded newspaper, I entered the room.

The first bat was no problem. It fell into the basket; I covered the top quickly with the paper; and gripping the basket at the sides, I dashed down the stairs, out the side door, and into the backyard, where I hurled the basket as far from me as I could. I noticed our neighbor, a Mrs. Jenson, watching from her screened porch, and I nodded as I ran by. We hadn’t met formally. The bat, awakened, fluttered out, made several swoops, and flew into the high branches of a tree. I retrieved the basket, hurried back into the house, and repeated the process with the other bat I saw.

Then I returned to check the room. I moved the picture, and a third bat dropped down and flew back and forth and up and down.

I swung at it each time it came by and finally knocked it to the floor, where it lay trilling and clicking its tiny teeth. I scooped it into the basket and dashed for the yard. Mrs. Jenson was leaning over the fence now.

“Bats,”I explained.

“Yes,”she said, and backed away. “I mean, what? Who are you? Oh, yes. Bats? My word. We’ve never had them.”

There were no bats anywhere else in the room. I continued looking for about fifteen minutes, fully garbed, pushing furniture and turning pictures. When I assured everyone that all was clear, removing the mitts to dramatize the point, Iris and Paul broke into the room, looking for guano. They remembered from the lecture at Carlsbad Caverns that it was valuable. They found a good deal.