The Bat

I want to tell you a story from a long time ago.

Not a long time ago, as in antiquity, but rather a long time ago, as in a couple of years back in my relatively short existence. It took place in an old stone house, with walls thicker than an elephant’s waist, a thatched roof, and a 200-year-old oak tree at the bottom of its garden.

Once upon a time, when I lived in this house, there was a bat. It was a small bat, no bigger than a freshly hatched baby robin. It lived in the lounge. It liked to fly about in the evenings, swooping high above our heads as we played Uno or ate dinner. That was the way it was. Then, one morning, I woke up earlier than everyone else in the house and padded into the kitchen to make tea. Someone had left the dirty dish water in the sink overnight, had forgotten to take out the plug, and had, unintentionally, created the perfect environment for a Bat Accident to unfold.

There, in the sink, clinging for its life with its little claws, was our house bat. It bared its tiny teeth at me. It shivered. It was a sodden mess of a bat. I scooped it out of the dull, grey water with a dry dishcloth and dried it. I held it to my warm chest. I gazed down into its small, impish face. It had pointy ears, a pig snout, and sharp, needle-like teeth that it opened its mouth to show me. “You’re terrifying,” I whispered to the helpless creature. It settled into its dishcloth against my chest, apparently satisfied with my response to its display.

We stayed like this, the bat and me. I phoned the Bat Hotline (yes, such a thing exists). They told me to wait it out. I tried feeding the bat some mashed-up flies that I had pulled off our sticky fly tape hanging at the back door of the house. It refused them. I understood, because gross. The bat seemed to be sleeping, it was daytime, after all.

After a couple of hours, I decided the bat should be warmed up and recovered from its hypothermia enough to go into an open box for a while. I needed my arms back. They were beginning to ache. In the box it went. It looked up and bared its teeth. This time it definitely looked like a grin. “I'm fine now, I think,” the terrifying mouth seemed to be saying.

A couple more hours went by. I would check on the bat occasionally and then, suddenly, it was gone. It has flown off out of its box. “Goodbye, little bat,” I whispered into the empty air.

That was not the last I saw of the bat though. After that, the bat, who had previously only flown above our heads in the lounge, took up residence in my bedroom and would fly and swoop very close to my face in the evenings as I lay in bed, reading.

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