belfry

May 31, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary 

to the animal-death sensitive reader: you may want to skip a reading of this one; the following contains graphic photos and words.

“did you just throw something over here?” i say, squinting sleepily in the light of the tv.

“what?” says ernie, waking up, concerned.

“oh, great!” i say as i make a leap for the lamp.

the bat is swooping around the living room. i’m close to the door so i run for the basement as ernie is yelling, “get the racket!”

on my way back up the stairs the thing dives down and over my hair. i screech. ernie says, “i think there may be more than one!” upstairs i hide under a blanket. “are you kidding me?! you don’t want to be under there,” ernie says. i peek out in time to see him jump into the air and swing around with the racket. he is quite accomplished with jedi worthy reflexes and heightened bat radar senses.

for tonight, there are no more bats upstairs, there is only one, swirling its way around the ceilings of the dark basement. we don’t know this, though, and every summer sound seems bat related. perhaps there are some that flutter in and out of secret holes in the walls of the attic, the bushes that line the side of the drive. at dusk we stand on the steps and see them circling over us, winging from tree to tree. what we know to be true is magnified tonight and we fancy ourselves surrounded by the flapping things that hang magically from the moulding round the tops of the walls, the edge of the mantle, the iron of the railings.

“i can’t relax until we get rid of it,” i say. “we need to go down there and hunt it. it’s probably in the boiler room where the light bulb has burned out.”

“you’re probably right,” ernie says. i shudder and twitch. “STOP DOING THAT!” ernie insists.

“I CAN’T, it’s involuntary,” i say, doing it again. “it flew through my hair, good grief!”

we close off the doors to the kitchen and head for the basement door. ernie flings it open and jumps back, racket raised. we freeze, we wait. he fumbles for the lightswitch with the racket. “use your hand — you’re making too much noise!” i hiss from the safety of the kitchen. “are you kidding me?” he asks for the fifth, sixth time.

we wait. ernie peers around the corner. “THERE IT IS!” he says and steps back. we collect ourselves. it’s hanging from a paper bag that is slightly wider than its shelf.

at this point we are savage and can only think to kill it. the opening of doors and madcap chase of the thing into the darkness and mosquito and tree of the yard is no longer an option. ernie slaps it down with the racket and it thunks onto the top step, before the landing.

we look at it. i wish we had ernie’s camera, but getting his involves stepping over the thing. we use mine. i get a plastic bag. ernie tries to shovel the thing into the bag when it twitches. and then he chokes it with the edge of the racket. it doesn’t make any noises. its teeth are bared and we are foolish and giddy and depraved as we watch it die. i twitch again. ernie bags it and throws the bag into the garage.

later i realize that ernie’s irrational fear of bats has propelled him to bring the racket to bed. in the morning, henry and jude are told the story. they reenact using a green sock as a bat.

we go to the zoo on monday. i forget to take off my sunglasses and wonder why it’s so dark in the bat-cave. the flying fox is terrifying. we imagine that his brother was swooping through our house, hanging on our paper bag, bagged and unbreathing in the trash can in our garage.

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