Scenes From Burlington, VT #302

So I come home from work with my sixer of beer and I am ready to just relax. My roommate is watching some TV in her room and I have just sat down with my beer, when I realize that I have to go to the bathroom.

So I do what I have to do and open up the bathroom door and look to the right towards the open door of my room. The first thing I see is my roommate's cat, which I am not a big fan of. The cat's in my room, which I am even less a fan of. So I am about to lay down some justice on Herr Kitty, when I look up and there is a fricken bat flying around my room.

A quick note on bats: I know that they are one of God's creatures. And they serve their purpose in eating bugs and stuff. But that doesn't mean that I have to like them. One bite from one of those bastards is enough to traumatize me for the rest of my evening.

So, as I was saying, I am now in the doorway of my bathroom with the bat flying around in circles and the cat trying to catch it. Our cat is mental and just about the only exercise it gets is from chasing bugs(a rather large bug in this case).

So I yell across the hall to my roommate:

"Get out of bed and close your door."

To which she responds

"Why?!"

So I say again in a calm voice:

"Get out of bed and close your door."

Again she responds with:

"Why??"

A third time I say:

"GET OFF OF THE BED AND CLOSE YOUR DOOR."

And her response is:

"why??"

"There is a bat in my room."

And she shrieks (yes, it was a girly shriek) and slams her door shut.

So I am in the bathroom trying to figure out how the bat came in. My initial reaction is that the bat came through a gap in my screen. I have old windows and the screen that I have for the window doesn't even come close to being the right size. So that was a decent guess.

Now my mind switches to solution mode. I figure that if I can close my door, I can contain the bat and maybe it will fly out the window again. But what can I close the door with? Luckily I remember that I have a coat hanger under the sink to unclog my drains, so I break it out and like McGuyver, I start just bending it so that I can stop an impending nuclear reaction.

So, coat hanger in tow, I step out to pull the door close, when the bat comes flying out of hell and right at me. And like a little girl, I shriek and jump back in the bathroom. So now the bat is flying around the living room in circles and the cat is trying to catch it. I try to time the path of the bat so that I can leave the bathroom and get back to my room. No such luck. I make a move for the love pad and it comes right for me...back in the bathroom again.

So, like a hard night out drinking, I am figuring on spending the whole night next to a toilet. The bat at this point is flying back and forth from my bedroom and the living room. So I look around and then I realize something horrible. My beer is still in my bedroom. FUCK! This calls for desperate measures.

So I have my roommate call out neighbor friend and have him come over and open up the door to our unit and then the front door. I am yelling direction to my roommate through a cracked bathroom door to my roommate who is trying to relay direction to our neighbor.

So then our plan springs into action. I hear the neighbor open up the door to our unit. And then there is silence. He ties the door open. Then I hear soft steps up the flight of stairs to our apartment and see the door open through the crack of the bathroom door and then I hear footsteps beating ass down the stairs and out the door. About 30 seconds later, the bat flies out the door.

I wait a second unill it come back it? It's a risk, but I have to get the apartment door closed. I make a break for it and get out door closed in the nick of time to see the bat veering away from the closing portal. As I check the rest of the apartment, I see our back screen door wide open. Thus answers the question as to how the bat got in there. Turns out my roommate's friend left it open for most of the day.

Lesson #1: My roommate's friend and I are going to have a little talk on barn doors.

Lesson#2: Yeah, you definitely don't want me fighting the War on Terrorism