Bruce Wayne, I feel your pain

oh my goodness so TWO NIGHTS AGO was one of the scariest nights of my life… and anyone else telling this story would meet only skepticism from me, because such an event, to the disinterested listener, does not appear to warrant such a ranking as “scariest thing ever,” but now that I’m among the experienced, I can whole-heartedly say that I feel like I escaped near-death and even just thinking about it right now is sinking me into a cold sweat. It would have been a good night for me to have roommates to help face the dreaded incident, but luckily I had Tycho instead, who completely saved the day and deserves a medal of honour…

What happened?

3AM BAT ATTACK!!!

I was telling Derek tonight about how much new empathy I have for the little Bruce Wayne who falls into the bat cave and is never the same. Maybe this means that I, too, will become a superhero? Only time will tell… but meanwhile I can say that the REAL superhero in this apartment is T-Dot, who, at the first sign of danger, morphed from THIS




to THIS



in order to save both of us!!!

THE EVENT: So around 3am I kind of drift awake because of a vague tapping noise somewhere in the room, at first I think it’s rain at the window, then I think maybe the bedroom door opened and Tycho got in, but in the dark I can make out that the door is, in fact, closed, so Tycho is presumably still sleeping in his little bed just outside in the hall… the tapping noise continues, gets more erratic, I can hear it over by the closet, then by the window, then things start getting knocked over, and by this point I don’t know what to think except that these might well be my last moments on earth and it’s all I can do to reach for the light as calmly as I can, but the second I turn it on this GIANT KILLER BAT swoops straight at my face!!! I just kind of shot from my bed to the bathroom, I don’t think my feet even touched the ground, and slammed the door. It took me about two seconds to remember Tycho, and all I could think was that he’ll get rabies for sure, or bitten in the eyeball or something, and I’m trying to remember if there’s an all-night vet in my area, and wondering how to get there if needed… I wish like hell that I had somehow brought my cell with me into the bathroom, although I don’t know who I would’ve called (can you get campus police over for something like that?)… I learned that it’s an awful thing to find oneself barricaded in a tiny room with no helpline to the outside world. Especially when there’s a battle going on on the other side of the door and something is making a blood-thirsty screeching noise like nothing else you’ve ever heard! I finally get up the courage to open the door a crack and see what T’s doing… and lo! he has the bat pinned to the ground!!!! the thing has this sort of incredibly high-pitched sonar scream, I’m sure the whole building is awake by now, and I can totally see how much T is enjoying himself… pinning it, then letting it flap away, then jumping for it and pinning it again, all to the terrifying soundtrack of these unreal screams…. I know I have to do something because I was still afraid that the bat, if scared enough, could do damage to T, so I finally got the courage to slip from the bathroom to the front door of the apartment, and I know that I should have maybe gone to the balcony door, but it was much further away, and around corners… I opened the door to the hallway and Tycho had a clear path and he obviously understood my game plan because he pinned-freed-pinned again all the way out the hall… once they cleared the threshold I grabbed T and hauled him back in and slammed the door. I don’t know what happened to the bat… it wasn’t there in the morning when I left for work, though I was prepared for the worst and looked out the mail slot before even opening the door, although now that I think about it that was a stupid idea because if the bat was really out for revenge (as I imagined) then he would have had a straight gangway to my eyeballs. ANYWAY after Tycho and I got it out of here we both just kind of paced for a while, and T was soooooooo proud of himself… he was all kingly and smug, looking at me with that cat-smile he does and those slow-blinking eyes, those I’m-the-man eyes. I picked him up and kissed him (probably not the smartest thing, considering his recent relations) and squeezed him and kissed him again. I have no idea what would have happened without him. He completely saved both of us… I’m serious… I ran and hid and he took charge, got control of the bat, and ushered it outside so that we’d be safe. Isn’t that incredible??? I lay down on the bed and tried to get my heart rate back to normal, and Tycho lay down right in the bedroom doorway, as though on guard, and we spent the rest of the night with all the lights on, jumping at every little noise and shadow. He’s my hero! I feel like we’re even closer to each other now that we’ve survived something that scary together. And I feel good that Tycho got a little excitement in his life… after all those months of watching birds through the balcony window, he finally got some action!!! And he was soooo good at it! Today I’ve learned more about bats than I ever wanted to know, including the advice that if your doctor ever asks you if you’ve been in a closed room with a bat, you should say no because otherwise within thirty seconds he’ll have you quarantined and going through rounds of painful rabies treatments. I called Tycho’s vet from work today and told him what happened, and he said that all T’s shots are up to date so he’s not at risk of anything. Thank goodness! The crazy part is that I remember having a brief debate with myself about whether I should really get him all the shots, considering they cost a million bucks AND he’s an indoor cat… but this just goes to show that they are important! So that’s my lesson for you today, folks. It’s twofold: (1) get a cat because he will save you when no one else is around, and (2) get him vaccinated!!!

So anyway… last night I had one of those beautiful, lingering dinners with Blackmore at a Chinese place where they just keep bringing you steaming dishes for as long as you care to sit there, and he gave me a very detailed demonstration of what to do in a “bat emergency,” including all body motions, sounds, and facial expressions. then after he dropped me off at my apartment I went around (with Tycho under my arm, just in case) and prodded all curtains/posters/dark corners with a broom handle but didn’t find any rodents, winged or otherwise.

In other news, yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the engineering shelves falling on Jordan’s head at the bookstore, so to commemorate the event (and J’s sacrifice to the store) some of the managers & I gathered together in said engineering section for a moment of silence and remembrance. NB Jordan on the floor – symbolic or what!