“Tell me the bat story,” my toddler says. The bat story is a favorite around our house. I get this request weekly.
Our little brown bat visitor
She’s even more fond of the bat story than my “when I was a little girl” stories, which she also likes to tell, even though she isn’t yet three and is therefore still a little girl. Her “when I was a little girl” stories may be from yesterday.
Without further ado, this is the bat story, toddler version.
Once upon a time, last year, we moved into our new house. The very first night we spent in our room we were all sleeping soundly in bed when around 2 AM Dad awoke to a strange noise. It was a clicking sound coming from the window. The blinds and valances came with the house, so he thought it might be the cord to the blinds swinging against the window in the breeze from the fan. He picked up his phone and shone the flashlight at the window. At first he saw nothing but then (pause for effect) a bat head slid out from between the blinds like something from a nightmare! (Make bat face and mime climbing out of blinds with hands)
You were asleep and Mom was half asleep and neither of us knew what was going on when Dad said, “Get the baby!” The phone flashlight was bouncing all over the room as I groggily reached down to pick you up. “No! Cover her up!” he yelled. Startled, I put you back under the sheet and began to wind the sheet around and around you. Meanwhile the light was bouncing on the floor and in my sleep-fogged mind I thought “There’s a snake on the floor!” and the light bounced on the bed and I thought “A rat climbed into the bed!” and as I finished winding a king-sized sheet around you I couldn’t stand it anymore and I yelled to Dad in tortured tones “What is it?!” He said, “It’s a bat.” And we all three left the room, closing the door behind us.
We sat on the couch trying to wake up enough to know what was going on and what to do about it. You lay quietly awake in the sheet, wrapped up in your little papoose, calm as you could be. It was decided that Dad would hold you while Mom wrestled the mattress off the bed and down the hallway to your room. I went in and looked around the window. The bat chittered at me from its perch behind the valence.
And that was how we ended up sleeping on a mattress on the floor in your room for the first week living in our new house.
Also, if you want bats on your property, but necessarily in your house, try a bat box.
