Do you mind a personal question?  What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?  If you’re like me, you head to the bathroom for the morning pee.  My advice?  Look before you sit.  For the love of sweet baby Jesus, LOOK BEFORE YOU SIT!

I live in the boonies so I’ve wrangled my share of critters.  Nature is wonderful; majestic and noble and everything but, as I’ve often said, it’s not all Bambi and butterflies.  Sometimes Nature is winged denizens of hell that want to drink your blood. 

The other morning when I stumbled into the bathroom, my bleary eyes noticed a large, dark mass in the toilet bowl.  Not to be gross, but my first thought was, “Eww! I don’t remember doing THAT last night! And for cripes sake, why didn’t you flush, you slob?!?”  Then my vision cleared and my heart sank.  It was not Unsinkable Molly Brown.  It was a bat.  A real, live, I-live-alone-so-it’s-not-a-family-comedian-pulling-my-leg-with-a-rubber-toy bat.

I tiptoed out of the room at a sprint, which isn’t an easy combination.  I wanted to be elsewhere rather quickly, but didn’t want to disturb the foul creature.   It then occurred to me that it could easily get out of the toilet so I crept back and slowly, gently lowered the lid.   It barely moved, which was encouraging.  I piled various bathroom  reading materials and the trash basket on top of the lid in case this 3 ounce flying rat had supernatural powers and could lift a toilet lid 10 times its weight, then I scampered back out of the Room of Doom. After quietly sending a text about the situation to my siblings, heavy on screams and much profanity (interesting side note: voice-to-text must have automatic “Your mother would wash your mouth out with soap for that” filters, as it asterisked out the nasty words), my helpful sister Judy said bats are very good at getting in and out of tight spaces and it might be able to squeeze through the crack between the toilet seat and the bowl.   I shut both bathroom doors and went downstairs.  I needed to get some coffee, come up with a plan, and try to get my heart rate somewhere down in the “not about to stroke-out range” recommended by 9 out of 10 cardiologists.

With shaking hands I did a little research on my phone and learned some very interesting facts.  Did you know bats are found all over the world?  Typical habitats did not seem to include plumbing fixtures. Some are insectivores, some are frugivores (fruit eaters), and others are nectarivores. Then there are blood eating vampire bats.  Yes, that’s really a thing, not just a horror movie invention.  Wikipedia did not mention any poopivores.  I had to assume the worst – that my toilet-guest was a vampire bat.  Given the body part he was obviously aiming for, I dubbed him Count Assula.

This was all very fascinating, but, the bottom line was this: I had to get rid of him if my bottom ever wanted to use that bathroom again.  At this point I didn’t think it would, but my feelings on the subject might change someday.

This was incident 5,784,332 in the “Damn, I Miss My Husband” category.  I could call my kindly, big strong neighbor but it wasn’t even 7 am. I could sit moaning and wringing my hands, but that wouldn’t solve anything.  “Dammit,” says I, “You are a grown woman, resilient and independent.”  I straightened my spine. “You don’t need to call anyone for help.  You can do this yourself!”  Besides, the neighbor was out of town.  Like it or not this job, like every other job since Bill died, was on me (insert healthy dose of “poor me” self pity here.)  So I pulled up my big girl panties and got to work. 

I also pulled up my regular pants and threw on a t-shirt.  I felt street clothes projected a more confident image than my old Betty Boop jammies, and I wanted to be ready in case I was forced to run screaming out of the front door.

I got a small fishing net from the basement, a pair of strong canvas garden gloves with long cuffs, a plastic bag and a pair of long-handled tongs.  I quietly climbed the stairs and cracked open the door, checking for sounds or movement.  Nothing.  Heart pounding I crossed to the Porcelain Bat Bus and slowly lifted the lid.  He didn’t seem to have moved.   I gently lowered the fishing net over him, but the metal edges wouldn’t conform to the bowl.  He drew his wing in, but very slowly.  The net wasn’t going to work and he seemed really sluggish so I inverted the plastic bag, put it over him and grabbed him in my gloved and bagged hand.

Eeeeeeeeewwwwwkkkkkkkk!

He merely wiggled feebly as I ran down to the first floor, out the front door, down the deck stairs, down the steep driveway, across the road and flung him in the field across from my house.  At this point all my calm and cool deserted me and I screamed.  I ran back up to the house, shrieking and laughing.    As I got back to the deck and bent over, still laughing and gasping for breath, the previously mentioned big strong neighbor drove by and honked hello.  It seems he had gotten home the previous night.  Well, damn. Thanks a lot, Bruce.

I still don’t know how it got in.  When I think that he somehow crawled up through our septic system, I break out in a cold sweat.  I’ve nailed down the toilet lid and do my business when in town – going to the Y, shopping, any place with clean, enclosed plumbing systems.  It’s ok for now, but I’m getting tired of the chamber pot under the bed. I don’t know olden days people managed, although it was probably not so bad if you had servants to deal with the mess.  So I’m building a state-of-the-art outhouse near my home.  I’ve got the shell up and I’m trying to come up with a screening system for the toilet that will allow bad stuff to go down, but no bad stuff to come up, if you get my drift.  I’ve already painted a sign for the little building which I’ll put up when I christen it:  The Shat Cave.

I’ve told this story to a number of people and I’m amazed how many sympathize with fiendish Count Assula, not with his innocent, traumatized victim.  “Bats are great!” they say.  “They eat insects and pollinate fruit trees.  You should have kept him as a pet!”  Yeah… no.  Hard no.  How would I feed him?  The last time I tried giving blood at the Red Cross I almost passed out, so I’m not about to siphon off a daily pint of A+.  Besides, the only suitable container I have is an old guinea pig cage, and the toilet wouldn’t fit into that.