I have been trying to not write about our house while it is on the market1, but I need to record this for posterity.

We have an old house, and last night, for the second time this year, a bat has made its way in while the house is locked up at night. Play-by-play:

Jessie (hereafter referred to as “My Wife“, in a Borat voice) goes to the kitchen for a glass of water around 2:30am, and sees a bat (hereafter referred to as Benoit) hanging on a window shade. I prepare for bat battle, and Benoit flies up and down our staircase for a bit. Benoit returns to the bathroom where we believe he entered, where he is promptly shut in, and My Wife and I return to our bedroom to regroup. Animal control is called, but “they don’t deal with that kind of thing2.” They end up getting a police man dispatched to our house (Officer Tinslow, who was really cool about it all). Benoit is now nowhere to be found (obvs), and we assume it has gone back into the wall or wherever. Flash forward to morning diaper change for Jack, when Benoit is found hanging on the drapes right next to the changing table in the nursery. He is not-very-quickly dispatched out that window, and is terrible at gaining altitude when flying in circles.

Some stray observations:

  • Bats are ten million percent easier to deal with in daylight. They do pretty much the same things, but you can see it. They seem smaller.
  • As I said, this is the second time this happened. The first time, My Wife was pregnant, and this time is right before trying to sell/rent out our house.
  • I kept thinking about the Louis CK bit from his last special about calling animal control, where they say they have a guy for that but they go to extraordinary lengths not to call him “the bat man.”

#goddamnitbrian


  1. If you are interested, it has new windows and one less bat.
  2. This is the second time I have heard this from them. The last time was in college, and I was in a dilapidated rental house that had a racoon the size of a labrador retriever living in the ceiling. They had a guy for that too, and when he caught him in a trap and we asked what he was going to do with it, he said he “was not at liberty to discuss it.” Conspiracy theories included moving the racoon to another of our terrible landlord’s properties, or the bad Chinese restaurant down the street (which was shut down later that year).