Things That Go Eeeep in the Night.

Eeep…. eeeep… that’s what she heard while having dinner last night. My daughter claimed earlier while I was helping myself to some more chicken curry that she kept hearing a noise. “There, did you hear it?” she asked while looking concerned and worried toward the couch. Her spoon was slow to shovel as she kept an ear pointed toward the living area. Eeep… eeeep. I heard it that time but thought it came from the curtain. “It’s just a lizard or small gecko now eat your vegetables”. But my explanation did not whet her appetite. Eeep…. eeeep. Her head quickly whipped around to the living area again, her eyebrows squinched. “It’s probably just the light” said my wife.

After dinner I went upstairs while my daughter stayed at the table to do her homework. “Mom, I saw it. It’s a big bug!”. Then later affirming the daughter’s observation, “oh yeah, I saw it too”. Well now I was curious.

Walking down the stairs I asked if they saw where the sound was coming from. “I think it’s a dragonfly right under the edge of the small couch” my wife said pointinig. I was about to stick my hand under there and grab it when a sudden thought occurred to me, dragonflies don’t go eeeep, eeeep. I got down on my knees and raised the flap of the couch and stared into the small beady eyes of a bat, black and leathery. Eeeep… eeeep it told me.

I whispered to my wife that it was a bat. My daughter thought I said rat and jumped up on the chair squealing. Then I told my wife that I would drag the couch outside so it could fly away. “What? What did you say? Rats don’t fly”, shouted my daughter.

After getting the couch out the front door and flipping it slowly on its back, the baby bat stretched its winged stick legs and started crawling along the edge of the couch shouting eeeep… eeeeep. I put the bat in a small plastic container and poured it out on top of our mailbox. I stood and watched as it eeeeped and crawled around then drug itself to the edge of the box and jumped… gliding down gracefully on to my pants. As I danced the jig and sang the tune of ‘uh, uh, uh’ a black shadow shot out of the evening sky and whizzed by my head. I jumped back and saw the little bat crawling on our driveway. The zipping shadow was an older bat diving and circling the baby. I can’t say for sure whether it was the baby’s mother because I know nothing about the family life of bats, but the older bat guided the young one into the neighbor’s yard.

Back inside, I sat on the couch and began reading my book. My wife was at the table skimming the headlines, my daughter was taking her shower and the bats were outside doing bat things where they belong. Scritch… scriiiitch… “did you hear that?”, asked my wife. “Yeah, it was probably the light”.