Spotlight/The Memoir

I Hate Bats
by Bill Hudson

I hate bats. I do not claim that my aversion rises to the level of a genuine phobia. A vision of these dismal creatures does not produce in me cold sweats, cringing revulsion, or fainting spells, like one associates with genuine phobias. Bats are ugly and repulsive with their grotesque ears, wrinkled faces, bulging eyes, and sharp little fangs. I would never have been likely to cuddle the hairy little brutes or stroke their leathery wings, yet even in all their ugliness, I would have been happy to live in co-existence with the miserable creatures. My hatred arises from distressing encounters with representatives of the species on two occasions. Now, I do admit that my hatred for an entire species based on the action of only two of their number might be considered excessive, even prejudicial. I hope my account of these encounters in this little essay will convince a sympathetic reader that the trauma these miserable bats induced justifies my on-going hatred. Moreover, my experiences convinced me that the deplorable actions of these individual bats derived from behavioral patterns instinctive to the breed not the random impulse of particular bats. If ever I come upon a bat again, I would expect a repeat of my experience. I hate bats.

There was a time when peace prevailed between me and bats. When I was an undergraduate student in Southern Indiana, I went spelunking on a couple occasions in some of the many caves that adorn the region. When one enters a cave, one should expect to encounter bats and so we did. I recall moving through narrow passages only inches from the hundreds of bats hanging from ceiling and walls around us.

This experience did not bother me in the least nor did it bother the bats who slept peacefully as we scooted by. At the time, I also could expound on the valuable ecological contribution of bats who nightly cleansed the air of millions of mosquitoes and other insects. Bats do play a valuable role in the balance of nature. This benign attitude toward the bat species would still be with me today had it not been for my two encounters, the first of which is related here.

Encounter #1

My first encounter with an abusive bat occurred at the end of my senior year at Indiana University. At the time, I lived in the basement of an old house about a block from campus. How I came to live in this basement is a long story that need not concern us here. I describe my abode as a basement rather than a basement apartment because the word apartment suggests something more refined than the jerry-rigged living quarters in that basement.

The basement had its own entryway down some stone steps at the north side of the house. The door to the basement, secured with a padlock, opened into an area containing the house’s furnace, water heater, and electrical boxes. This utilities room took up about one third of the total basement area, a plywood partition separating it from the rest of the basement. A number of holes had been cut in the top of this partition for the steam pipes and water lines that served the house’s upper levels. A detail about these holes should have forewarned me about the events to be described in this narrative. A previous resident had stuffed old dirty rags around the pipes to seal off any gaps between the pipes and the sides of the holes. Someone had been concerned to forestall invasion into the basement living area.

A door in the center of the plywood partition, secured with another padlock, provided entry into my living quarters. On entering, to the left, was a bathroom area with a toilet surrounded on three sides with more plywood, a large sink with a small, mirrored cabinet above, and the “shower”. This latter consisted of a hose with an attached shower head draped over a hook in the ceiling. Directly below shower head was a drain in the basement floor. The end of the hose divided into two components each connected to what must have been at one time hot and cold-water faucets for a clothes washer.

Stairs going up to a door to the first floor, locked on the first-floor side, partially divided the bathroom area from the rest of the living quarters. Immediately to right was a large table that served as my desk. A bed ran across the basement’s south wall opposite the desk with a small stand holding my stereo record player just below a small basement window on the west wall at the end of the desk and bed. Just to the left, a small couch, facing the stereo, stretched from the head of the bed to about four feet from the base of the stairs. Behind the couch was my kitchen: a small table with two chairs and a short wood plank/ cinder block bookcase with a double burner hot plate and a toaster oven on the top shelf. The bookcase ran along the east wall below another basement window.

These two windows, one over my stereo and the other over the kitchen shelf were the only two in the basement. The lower two shelves of the kitchen bookcase provided storage for a few dishes, pans and skillets, and some cutlery. The entire area was lit with a couple of floor lamps, a desk lamp, and a ceiling florescent light turned on by a chain that hung down just by the side of my bed.

From this description of my basement abode, the reader would be justified in wondering whatever possessed me to live nearly an entire year in such primitive quarters. Even absent the bat-related encounter to be described here, this was not a healthy or safe place to live. The place clearly was a fire trap. Had a fire erupted in the furnace area, a likely place for fires to start, I would have had no exit.

The door to the upstairs was locked, neither of the small windows offered a chance to leave – I do not think they could be opened. The basement was not fit for human habitation. But to my post-adolescent addled brain it was a pad and, besides, the rent was extremely low!

Despite the primitive conditions, I lived quite comfortably, in my mind at least, in the basement from September 1969 until May 1970. I sat on the couch, read articles in the New York Review of Books and pretended to understand them, listened to Simon and Garfunkel on my stereo, and occasionally entertained lady friends with gourmet meals produced on my two-burner hot plate.