3:28am and my phone rings. *I am asleep. Unconscious.*

3:30am my phone rings a second time and this time my mind clicks. The painful glow of my cell phone's LED screen burns the words "Mom and Dad" across the caller id. "hello", groggily.

My parents should be asleep in the bedroom that is directly above my bedroom in our split entry house. I should be asleep, but my dad is on the phone.

"Matthew, are you awake?"

"no, yes. why?

"We need you to get up and get dressed with a long sleeved shirt, turn on some lights in the basement and get a couple tennis racquets out of the front closet. There's a bat in our room."

Long sleeve shirt, tennis racquets. Odd ... A bat? Flashbacks of ill-prepared, full-panic commando raids on invading varmints back at the east wing flood my brain.

"ok" Still groggy. That'll change.

I roll out of bed and put on a hoodie and some shorts, nothing fancy, no concern. I open my bedroom door that opens to the hallway leading to the family room. I can hear my dad shuffling about upstairs. ... A BAT!?! It hits me. No more groggy. Like gunshots from an automatic my heart is firing. I grab a tennis racquet, a bat hunter's weapon of choice and proceed down the dark hallway. Crouched in a half walk, half crawl I can imagine myself a marine commando in the wiles of vietnam. I can taste the musk of gun-powder, I can smell the oily scent of face paint.

Flipping on the hallway light I push the hallway door open. Flutter flutter flutter. Vile wings beat in scattered pattern across my family room. My heart is really racing now, out of control. I am concerned for my dad who has just recently had heart surgery. With eyes as peeled as they can be on a creature so spastic, I cautiously make my way to the stairs, racquet raised, steely with the resolve of a frightened 4 year old. Now at the top of the stairs I hit the lights to the room, which flicker on.

Nothing.

"Matthew" My dad's voice breaks the air. He never calls me Matthew unless he's concerned or upset. "Can you get me a racquet." A command, not a request.

We descend the stairs again to the basement and spread out as much as two people can. We have no idea where the flying rodent has gone. So as to ward of an onslaught of alarm we are sure to make plenty noise so as to startle the bat so he doesnt kill us.

Moments pass.

no bat.

He could be anywhere. I could almost feel the bat breathing down my neck. We have no idea where he could be. Hitting furniture in hopes of rousing him from his resting place, time slows.

"There he is." Not my voice, my dad's. I turn in the direction that he is looking.

"No, not in the bookshelf!"

"No, no ... behind."

Ahhhhh..... Crap!

There is a one inch gap between the bookshelf and the wall ... and mr. bat has made his place of rest there.

"Get a net!"

"It won't fit without waking him." says dad.

The next hour is spent in contemplation ... please, remember my logic is still asleep in bed.

"The hand-held vacuum?" suggests dad.

"Not enough suction." ...

"How about using blankets to scare him into?"

"Won't work Matt." ... The humane society is called in and eventually called off.

"We could just board it up and let him suffocate." I suggest

...

As I sit there staring my dad starts taking books off one of the shelves. "Is this about where he's at?" He asks. Taking books off the shelf at the approximate height of where the bat is sleeping behind the thin board that backs the shelf.

"Yeah. About, yeah. What are you thinking?"

"You're sure this is about where he's at? Right behind this board?"

"Yes." I respond. Why?"

....

THUD!!!!

..................

"How long does it take to suffocate a bat?" inquires my dad.

..................

About five minutes later my dad eases his hands off the front side of the bookshelf. The bookshelf re-settles to its full standing position.

"Is he dead?"

"Get the vacuum."


Its now just after 5am.