That bird is a bat
One night in the fall of 1993, I came home late after drinking with friends. Home was a shared house that I had only just moved into that day or maybe the day before, and I’m pretty sure I was the only one there that night – most of my roommates hadn’t even moved in yet.
I was puttering around in my room and close to crashing when I noticed a shadowy motion just off to the side, at about eye level. Good God, I thought, is there a bird in here? Oh, man – that’s a bat.
I leapt out of my room and shut the door. Reckoning that I’d trapped the little beast in there, I decided tohide under some coats have a bowl of cereal while, um, figuring out what to do about the bat. (I’ve been a late-night cereal-eater all my life.)
So I was standing in the kitchen, munching Shreddies, when I heard a disturbance in the air out in the living room. I leaned my head in. There it was again, that fluttering shadow, and Jesus, now it was coming right at me.
Propelled by nothing more than a base instinct to put something between me and the bat (OK, we can probably simplify all that as “mindless fear”), I abandoned my Shreddies and made it back into my room, pushed the door shut, leaned against it, panting. Reality seemed to be sliding around on me. Hadn’t I shut the door before? How the hell did it get out there? Were there two of them?
While I paced for a few seconds, I could hear the thing flapping around out there in the living room with what sounded like increasing vehemence, and the whooshing started to mix in with strange knocking sounds. Was it bumping up against the door? Then there was silence, and then a flurry of low bumping and rustling, and then I watched the bat crawl under the door and rise up and come at me.
The next hour or so resembled a French farce, but with a foul-faced flying rodent instead of an ingénue in a nightgown. Doors were slammed; rooms were fled from and returned to; corners were peered around apprehensively. It all ended with me barricaded inside my room, still-packed boxes shoved flush against the bottom of the door, a towel stuffed into the seam at the top. Every light in my room blazed. I fell asleep on my futon, fully clothed, still a little drunk, clutching a plunger in an outstretched arm.
Mahjongg (great name) are new to me; they’re on good old K Records and they’re apparently from Missouri. This song is pretty atypical of Kontpab (bad name), the album it sits on, most of which has a chunky electro vibe that vibrates back & forth between hypnotic polyrhythms and grooveless clatter.
But “Those Birds Are Bats” (great title) is more like No Age or Times New Viking in its MO: galloping, tuneful exuberance shrouded in a haze of hiss. (The shrouding presumably serves the strategic purpose of giving the track a more evocative, mysterious patina than just some regular old pop song. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – hey, it works.)
You can buy the album here and it appears that for now, at least, you can stream the whole thing here.
I was puttering around in my room and close to crashing when I noticed a shadowy motion just off to the side, at about eye level. Good God, I thought, is there a bird in here? Oh, man – that’s a bat.
I leapt out of my room and shut the door. Reckoning that I’d trapped the little beast in there, I decided to
So I was standing in the kitchen, munching Shreddies, when I heard a disturbance in the air out in the living room. I leaned my head in. There it was again, that fluttering shadow, and Jesus, now it was coming right at me.
Propelled by nothing more than a base instinct to put something between me and the bat (OK, we can probably simplify all that as “mindless fear”), I abandoned my Shreddies and made it back into my room, pushed the door shut, leaned against it, panting. Reality seemed to be sliding around on me. Hadn’t I shut the door before? How the hell did it get out there? Were there two of them?
While I paced for a few seconds, I could hear the thing flapping around out there in the living room with what sounded like increasing vehemence, and the whooshing started to mix in with strange knocking sounds. Was it bumping up against the door? Then there was silence, and then a flurry of low bumping and rustling, and then I watched the bat crawl under the door and rise up and come at me.
The next hour or so resembled a French farce, but with a foul-faced flying rodent instead of an ingénue in a nightgown. Doors were slammed; rooms were fled from and returned to; corners were peered around apprehensively. It all ended with me barricaded inside my room, still-packed boxes shoved flush against the bottom of the door, a towel stuffed into the seam at the top. Every light in my room blazed. I fell asleep on my futon, fully clothed, still a little drunk, clutching a plunger in an outstretched arm.
- Mahjongg, “Those Birds Are Bats”
Mahjongg (great name) are new to me; they’re on good old K Records and they’re apparently from Missouri. This song is pretty atypical of Kontpab (bad name), the album it sits on, most of which has a chunky electro vibe that vibrates back & forth between hypnotic polyrhythms and grooveless clatter.
But “Those Birds Are Bats” (great title) is more like No Age or Times New Viking in its MO: galloping, tuneful exuberance shrouded in a haze of hiss. (The shrouding presumably serves the strategic purpose of giving the track a more evocative, mysterious patina than just some regular old pop song. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – hey, it works.)
You can buy the album here and it appears that for now, at least, you can stream the whole thing here.
posted by DW | 13.2.08
7 Comments:
Weren't you supposed to interpret the bat as some kind of omen, and devote yourself to a one-man war on crime?
This is a fantastic story. You really must collect and publish. I nominate this story, and the 'ill-gotten gains' Halloween story.
that's what happened to us too
I also had a bat encounter in that house (before you moved in I think). It was the summer and I had a big box fan in the window to keep cool. One night I was awoken by the fan making a horrible grinding sound, I looked at the fan and it was still spinning, but then I noticed the outline of a bat on the screen behind the fan.
After much gathering up of courage I managed to remove the fan and close the window. Now I had the problem of what to do.
I figured that getting the bat out through the screen was the best way to go, but I wasn't about to open the window to open the screen.
So I put on some clothes, went outside and cut an "L" in the screen and pulled it back enough for the guy to get out. Luckily I lived on the ground floor.
I can't remember if he found the hole right away, if I waited for him to find it, or if I just went to bed. Anyway he was gone by the morning. I think I might have even tried to sew up the screen the next day.
I guess that bats just liked the house. Any bat stories from you Sandeep?
My related sound would either by The Bats - The Looming Past or Bats for Lashes - What's a Girl To Do
PS I should really go by the house and see if that same screen is still there.
In fact, I believe it was the same bat. Your encounter was only a few days after mine from what I remember.
Then there was the time Craig was attacked by the rabid skunk. Good times, good times.
Your bat story is the best I've ever heard, but at least it's in the distant past. Our bat story is all too recent. Last year we returned home from summer vacation to find one drowned bat in the toilet--the parasites it must've played host to still alive and swimming, and a dried leaf that on closer inspection turned out to be a shriveled-up bat wing. We never did find the rest of the bat... Gotta stop--I'm freaking myself out.
Mr. Zodiac sounds so confident. Some time after this incident I seem to remember him yelling "a bat!, a bat!" while flinging the comforter off the bed, hiding under it on the floor, while I ran around opening up windows trying to get the bloody thing out of the house.
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