comBATting the foe...

The Vanquisher.

In pursuit of...

... the vanquished.

Yesterday morning, I walked out of my room in our house and noticed that all the doors were open, lights were on, and there was nobody to be seen. Thinking this was some sort of strange leaving ritual for Jenna (who headed to Florida yesterday to see her family), I shrugged and headed to make breakfast for the kids, when...

Zoom! A black object whizzing by at approximately the speed of sound (well... perhaps a little less) dive-bombed my head, and (ducking while spinning sideways in an all-too-amazing Matrix-like move) I bravely scrambled across the floor toward my room again. However, I realized that the Unidentified Flying Object had headed into the back room, and as I looked around the corner, I could see a shadow zooming around the lights at a high rate of speed.

I thought it was a bird. Not so much.

Apparently a bat had gotten into the house at some point, and had confronted both Amy and Jenna before I had my turn. Amy crawled on hands and knees out the door, and Jenna did some neat sidestepping (also very Matrix-like... we have skills).

So... in the afternoon Amy and I managed to trap the bat between our laundry room, and a small hallway that opens into Jenna's room, our pantry, and the baby room. This was after very calm, collected evasions of the dive-bombing the bat seemed to determined to make towards our heads (Jon G., nothing shall be said here about the... ahem... screams you heard on the phone. We simply wanted to make the excursion a little more theatrical and dramatic for you... lol).

Well... then I managed to forget about it until it was time to go to bed. Bere, a sister who is visiting us from Morelia, was trying to go to bed, and wasn't able to make it past the laundry room into Jenna's room because of the evil machinations of the black foe... so, I cornered it in the laundry room while she slipped past, and then called the escuelita to see if I could get some backup.

Let me insert here that apparently David is a bat-fighting superhero... he's vanquished three bats in his short time here at CVE, and warned Amy and I that we should use very heavy towels to trap them, since they can bite/chew through fabric quite easily.

Hmmmm.

However, since David had already headed to bed... Jo-el became the new bat-fighting expert. :)

Heading into the laundry room, the bat was whizzing around the small space, and I managed to snap a few photos (notice picture #2 above, which was taken from an almost horizontal position as the bat dive-bombed me... photo journalist, indeed) before Jo-el threw the towel at the bat, knocked it down, and quickly trapped it.

At our triumphant cries, Bere came out and informed us that she would now sleep a whole lot better...

All in a night's work... right, Jo-el??? ;)