Let me preface this by saying that I have an irrational terror of bats, spiders, & centipedes. For those that say "bats are shy, they'll never go after you unless rabid", etc., remember that I said IRRATIONAL. I'm no girly-girl, but bats make me shriek.

I just had to deal with a bat flying around in my house. They freak me out. Seriously - they REALLY freak me out. Weird - it was at 10:15 am. I've never had one flying around mid-day before.

DH isn't here right now, so I had to do it myself. It flew past me, and then went downstairs (our house is pretty open, so it had a pretty free path from the loft to the 1st floor to the basement, so sometimes they swoop past and just keep going - hard to track them down. It kept landing on screens (the windows are closed), but with it on the screen I can't remove the screen to let it out the window, so we played that game for a while - me removing a screen and opening a window nearest to it, and it then swooping on elsewhere. I finally saw it fly into the bathroom and land on that screen. I do have to admit that I was tempted to close the bathroom door I save him for DH. Took some guts for me to close myself into the room with it, knowing it was on the only window in there, and I had to get that screen off & open the window. Which is worse - getting near it, or getting it flying around? He ended up landing on the floor, so I got the window open, not wanting to turn my back on it (I'm nearly paralyzed at this point). I had another screen in my hand, using it as a shield. By the way - the thing about them not being able to fly up from the floor is an absolute myth - this guy had nooooo problem.

Anyway, he did go out pretty quickly, unlike the one I had in there a couple of years ago. We've had a couple that just WOULD NOT go out the window. Picture my Dad, my DH and me, all armed with screens, in a bedroom with 3 large windows wide open (on 2 walls), and trying to guide this thing outside. Me shrieking every time it came at me. It must have taken 20 minutes. It would fly straight at a window, and then veer off every time.

Okay, I needed to share. Nobody here right now but the dog & cat, and the cat is in bed with the covers pulled over his head, as he is every day.

We just built 2 bat houses a week ago, hoping to give them someplace they would prefer over the house. We still need to hang one of them.

Anybody else had any fun experiences like this?