With wasps everywhere, we had no choice but to run inside and shut the doors. It’s odd but pool time can really be affected by 300 wasps.
With the doors closed, the 102 degree room was now even more comfortable.
We drank warm beer and stared at the walls.
Eventually, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, we went to bed.
That’s when we heard the scratching.
Above our head was what looked like a rain gutter. It ran just below the ceiling around the entire perimeter of the room. Inside it were Christmas lights, which you couldn’t turn off.
And there was something else inside it.
It was alive.
By the scratching sound, I assumed it was a mouse.
No, I thought again, it sounded heavier than a mouse.
A rat, I concluded.
I was not correct.
I know that because I stood on the bed and peered inside.
And there, just below my nose was a little creature with a wide open mouth showing me two rabies-dripping fangs.
Ah yes, a bat.
Being the brave person I am, I ran.
I found the owner of the house.
He was in the kitchen looking at internet porn. That was a nice touch.
“Excuse me,” I said, not wanting to interrupt his enjoyment.
“What is it?” he said, not wanting to have his enjoyment interrupted.
“We have a fucking bat in our room.”
Fortunately, he was equipped for such an eventuality. He grabbed a broom.
We walked to our room.
“Where is it?” he said.
“In your little rain gutter thingie,” I said, subtly using this opportunity to knock his Martha-Stewart-on-crack design sensibility.
He stood on our bed and looked down into the rain gutter. As an added touch of class, he left his shoes on.
You know your life is bad when a stranger standing in his shoes on your pillow in the middle of the night is the least of your problems.
I was just glad that the erection he no doubt had while staring at internet porn was gone.
Because if there’s one thing worse than a stranger standing in his shoes on your pillow in the middle of the night looking for a bat, it’s a stranger standing in his shoes on your pillow in the middle of the night looking for a bat while he’s got an erection.
He raised his broom to scoot the bat out of the gutter. The bat made sounds. Bad sounds.
I’m not sure what the broom plan entailed, because in my Nostradamus-like mind, I thought it would just anger the bat and make him fly around the room looking for someone to bite.
It was at that moment that Mr. Smart Guy managed to hit the bat with the broom, which angered the bat and made him fly around the room looking for someone to bite.
I screamed like a small girl and ran into the communal hallway bathroom. Staci stayed in the room and let the bat fly around her head, like she was suddenly Steve Irwin. Knowing what happened to Steve Irwin, I stayed in the bathroom.
Eventually, I peered my head inside the room. Just in time to see The Man With a Plan open the door to let out the creature from Alien. That didn’t go well.
I say it didn’t go well because when he opened the door, the bat didn’t fly out.
No indeed.
A second bat flew in.
That was bad, because before the second bat, I’d say we had a 50/50 chance of dying of rabies. Now we had a 100% chance. On the rabies-roulette-wheel-of-life, we had now bet the black, the red, and even those two little green spaces.
I ran back into the bathroom.
Crouched in the fetal position behind the bathroom door, I heard Staci say, “Oh, he’s tiny. Look at him.” Staci, suddenly Grizzly Adams mixed with Jacque Cousteau, was tossing out zoological opinions left and right. “That must be the bat’s child,” she opined. “They must have been separated.”
I was a little concerned for her. Though not super concerned, because I wasn’t leaving the bathroom.
I rationalized it. “Rabies is bad. But she did pick the place.”
Eventually, mother and child bat flew out the door.
“They’re gone, Stephan,” said Staci.
I went back inside the room. It was here that I waited to hear the magic words from the genius fat guy standing on my bed, “I’m so sorry. Your room is free.”
He opened his mouth.
“Better keep your doors closed,” said Einstein.
Staci went back to bed. I sat in a chair waiting for locust. It was the only biblical curse we had not yet seen.
In the morning, there was a knock on the door. Locust don’t knock, so I opened it.
It was Einstein’s wife. She had a bottle of wine.
“I heard about your adventure last night and wanted to give you this.”
I wanted to hurl the bottle through the window and jump out after it like the Chief at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“It’s fine,” said Staci, “It was just a bat,” exonerating Ms. I Almost Gave You Rabies for an $8 bottle of wine.
Now I wanted to hurl the bottle and Staci out the window.
As it was, I kept her. A decision I sometimes question.
I did get some revenge by reviewing the place on one of those internet travel sites. Under “cons,” I listed the heat, the wasps, the bat and the owner who liked his internet porn.
The “pros” section I kept brief. Three short words which I thought were both fair and accurate.
“Did not die.”
