THE SPOTLIGHT: The Memoir
I Hate Bats

by Bill Hudson

Encounter #2

My second experience of a bat invasion occurred during the first year of our marriage. At that time, my wife and I lived in a spacious apartment in an old house, mansion really, located at the edge of Wayland Square where Elmgrove Avenue intersects with Angell Street. Our apartment occupied one entire half of the first floor of the mansion. It consisted primarily of three large rooms with high, 14-foot ceilings. The front room facing the street served as combination living room and study (I finished writing my doctoral dissertation there).

The middle room, the most spectacular, included a huge fireplace with an ornate wooden mantel. We had placed a love seat in front of the fireplace well situated for romantic cocktail hours in front of a raging fire. Behind the love seat was ample room to accommodate our dining room table, a then fashionable butcher block affair that continues to live in our kitchen today. The back wall of the room opened on a small kitchen that extended toward the back of the house and, on the other side of the wall, was a hallway leading to our large bedroom with adjoining bath.

One Sunday evening while we were propped up on our bed watching Masterpiece Theatre, my wife and I heard a large thump coming from the front of the apartment.  I quickly headed down the hall to see what had happened. As I stuck my head into the middle room, I saw a bat flying in circles. Perhaps sensing my presence, it suddenly headed my way. I turned tail and fled down the hall, stubbing my big toe on the open door of the bedroom as I stumbled in.

The bat was right behind me and soon was flying in circles overhead in the bedroom. At that moment, my courageous wife leaped from the bed, gave the bat a furious look, and fled into the bathroom slamming the door behind her. “Do something Bill”, she cried as she turned the door lock.

“Do something”

– the universal solvent. A wise solution to any problem that might arise! Imagine the world’s problems that might be solved if only world leaders understood the formula!  Russia invades Ukraine. Solution: “Something.” A pandemic rages round the world.  Solution: “Something.” Inflation ravages the economy. Solution: “Something.” Such thoughts swirled in my brain as I cringed in a corner, massaged my throbbing toe which turned out to be broken, and watched the bat circle overhead. “Something” “Something” “Do something” the flap of its wings seemed to say.

My first thought was to open the bedroom window. Perhaps if the bat perceived the outside air it would fly out to freedom. It did occur to me that opening the window might allow the bat’s brethren to fly into the bedroom to join it, but I decided opening the window was worth the risk. Crawling along the floor so as not to attract the bat’s attention, I reached the window and opened it as wide as I could. Once back in my corner, I observed that the bat had taken no interest in the open window. It continued to circle at the top of the room not even making a feint toward the window and freedom. I realized then that, since the bat had been outside before it entered our apartment, perhaps being inside somewhere was its agenda. I now had little hope in my window scheme.

At this point, perhaps exhausted from its endless circling of the room, the bat stopped and attached itself to a spot high on the wall above the head of our bed. It folded its wings while hanging upside down and seemed to be settling in for the night and presumably the following day, being a nocturnal creature. This could not be allowed.

I resolved to approach my little problem differently. I needed to consider the facts of the situation and how they might suggest a new “something.” The first fact that came to mind:  the bat was an unlawful intruder into our apartment. He had entered, one might even say - had broken in, without our invitation or knowledge. This was burglary; the bat was a burglar. Who did one call to apprehend a burglar? The police, of course.

Having come to this realization, I slunk into the hall where our telephone rested on a small table, found the police department number on the list of emergency numbers (this was before the 911 system), and dialed. When the dispatcher answered I outlined the situation. Barely disguising his amusement, the dispatcher said, “Son,” (no doubt detecting from the tone of my voice or perhaps from the situation itself that he was dealing with a young person), “this seems to be a problem for animal control, I’ll connect you.” When animal control picked up, I again explained my predicament and they promised to send someone right away.

As promised, in a little while a Providence Police Animal Control van pulled up in front of the house. I led the young animal control officer to the back bedroom. He looked up at the bat, glanced at me, and said, “I’ll be back in a minute”. He ambled through the apartment and out the front door to his van. Pretty soon, he came ambling back with a small lidded bucket in one hand and, in the other, what appeared to me an enormous gun with a large dart attached to the barrel. Upon seeing the gun, I began to fear that calling the police had been a mistake. Was I about to be witness to a case of excessive police violence? The vision of a dart - skewered bat stuck onto the wall, his blood and excrement dripping down the wall onto our bed ran through my brain. I imagined his ugly snout mounted against our wall like the head of a stuffed antelope on the wall of a hunting cabin.

Once the animal control officer reached the bedroom, I was relieved to see him deftly remove the metal point on the dart leaving only a blunt instrument. Setting down the bucket, he aimed the neutered dart gun toward the bat and fired. What a marksman!  The blunt dart hit the bat dead center and it dropped stunned onto the bed. The officer slipped the bat into the bucket and locked the lid. Giving me a triumphant look, he headed out of the bedroom. As he departed, he said over his shoulder, “I will send it down to the lab when I get back to the shop. If it turns out to be rabid, we’ll be in touch in a day or two.” We never heard a thing. No news is good news.

That was my last close encounter with a bat, but it had cemented forever within me my intense hatred for the species. Now, even when I see a photograph of a bat with its large ears and disgusting face, the bile of animosity rises in my stomach. And, at night when awakened by a sound in the dark, maybe by the wind rattling a window, or the bang of a steam pipe, or one of the myriad other creaks and groans that an old house makes, I wonder: Could that be another bat returned to bedevil my existence?  Oh - the miserable creatures!