Bats in my belfry... PART 2

OK, where was I? Oh yeah....

So while this hellspawn is zooming around my living room and I am screaming and holding up the window screen in the doorway to keep it from escaping from that room, Donny says confidently, "It's a big brown bat." Well, I am thinking, 'Great, it's not just a brown bat. It's a BIG one! Oh, goody!' (Later, when the ordeal was over, I did some research and discovered that the actual name of the species is "Big Brown Bat." LOL)

Donny finally managed to knock it down with the broom, but not before he had trapped it up against the wall and I got to hear its high-pitched squeaks of terror. Yikes!! So once the bat was on the floor, Donny put an upside-down (empty!) plastic wastebasket over it. Then he said he needed something flat to slide under it so he could take it outside. The closest thing to hand was an old record album that I didn't care about (apologies to Stanley Turrentine), so I quickly grabbed that and Donny was able to get it under the wastebasket without our toothsome friend escaping. Whew!

He carried the whole works outside and attempted to release the bat back into the wilds of Iowa County. However, by now the bat was so petrified, it wouldn't leave the wastebasket! Donny actually had to tap it against the street to get the bat to fly away.

I was sooooo relieved and grateful to Donny, who is a wonderful neighbor and has helped me out on many occasions over the past 7+ years. The spooky part is I had not gone outside at all that day, not even to get my mail. So how did that stupid bat get in my apartment?! Donny told me (and it gives me the chills every time I think of it) that just like a mouse, a bat can squeeze through an opening the size of its head. (Shudders)

There is no attic opening in my apt. and no heating ducts, so the only thing I (or anyone else) can figure is that the bat came up from the basement, which means it must have crawled under the door. Ewww! I immediately put a thick blanket weighted down with a heavy doorstop and a 2x4 across the threshold of the basement door. That sucker stayed there until December, too, by which time all good bats are hibernating!

ON TO PART 3, intrepid readers...