Holy GUANO, Batman!

Last night's adventure at least ended well. I was awoken by "(flap flap flap)". It took me a little while to actually get out of bed and take the large flying thing seriously, and once I did I realized pretty quickly it was a bat. The solution didn't come to me as quickly. I stood frozen in the doorway thinking two thoughts:
"How in the world did that thing get in here?" and
"What do I do? I can't catch a bat!"

Despite what you might think, bats are not very coordinated when in tight spaces. They have no qualms about running right into you and continuing on their merry little way. This was just a bit too disturbing to my exhausted mind which was incapable of thinking anything but the above two thoughts.

It took a few minutes but an eternity for me to realize the obvious solution was to open the sliding glass door and wait for it to go outside. Once outside I would slide the door shut again, thus trapping it in the little screened in porch outside my room. It was a sub-optimal solution, but at least would enable me to put off a more long term solution until I was capable of it. I opened the sliding glass door and bolted to my door leading to the hallway, hoping it wouldn't fly past me and into the main part of the house. I think I fell asleep standing up or something, because all of a sudden it was silent in there and I had no idea where it went.

I stepped into the room cautiously, and cringing every step of the way ventured in far enough to see if it had taken advantage of the open closet door. I prayed this wasn't the case, because it leads to a much larger and more difficult to seal area (the attic). As I walked I was becoming sure it had weaseled its way into the closet/attic. I had even turned full around to look in the closet when it came fwapping upside my head from outside. It had actually gone out the sliding glass door as I had intially intended, but because I fell asleep at the wheel and now it was back in the room with me, whapping and flapping and all. So now because I blew it I had to stand bravely at the door waiting (praying) for it to go out again. By some miracle it did, and I slid the door shut as quickly as I could.

Whew.

The photo above was taken this evening when I went out to the deck to see if he had departed, or if he was going to take up residence on my deck. It looks like he's taking up residence.