Rebecca saw it first, clinging on the wall.
“Eeeuuuuwwww. Is it a bat?” She pointed to an object that looked like a wad of chewing gum covered with fur.
I squinted, and stepped forward for a better view. We both stood outside the Butte County government building, staring. Just then, a uniform-wearing-person walked by, and we pointed to the “thing on the wall.” Turns out, this was an actual-government-employee.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Beats me,” came the definitive answer. So, the actual-government-employee took a picture of the creature, and emailed it to animal control.
Gawker No 4 stopped while we were waiting on a ruling from the judges.
“Kind of small to be a bat,” the passer-by said.
As we waited, Butte County’s best, experts in the field of UNFOs – unidentified non-flying object – pored over the image, checked their databases, and probably looked it up on Wikipedia. Almost instantly, they called back.
“Yup. It’s a bat,” the actual-government-employee said.
“So what now?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she shrugged. “They said to just leave it alone.”
Now, this just seemed wrong to me. After all, the age-old instinct of guys everywhere is to stomp on disgusting things. I, myself, had participated in an attempted bat stomping incident years ago while saving the lives of a trailer full of small children, and my wife.
It all began so innocently. It was a typical, 112 degree summer morning in Redding. One of those days when everyone has two questions on their minds. First, why do I live here and second, where can I find a camping space on the coast?
Since we couldn’t answer either question, we set out on a quest, packing up our four kids, plus one-more-for-ballast, in the mini-van. We hitched up the tent-trailer and went west—destination Patrick’s Point. This is a place known for its rugged beauty, fog-shrouded trees, and oodles and gobs of “natural wild stuff,” like elk, humongous bugs, and banana slugs.
Our kids were determined to find a banana slug. My wife Karin and I thought it would be a harmless distraction while we fixed lunch. Amanda, our oldest, quickly nabbed a slug and then passed it around. This provided a science-based learning opportunity for everyone. The kids learned that the reason the slugs are yellow is, apparently, that they are mostly snot. Excuse me, the scientific term is mucus. Karin and I learned that this stuff goes well beyond anything you’ve ever found in the nastiest of handkerchiefs. We spend the better part of an hour and an entire bottle of Dawn trying to clean the kids’ hands so that they could touch food and not have is slide through their fingers.
The rest of the afternoon was full of standard-issue costal stuff, mainly going down to the beach, carefully selecting souvenirs and filling five buckets, one per kid, of pretty sea shells and special stones that weighed only slightly more than a VW Beetle. Then, because the kiddos were tired, the adults got to lug all these treasures up, waaaay up the cliff, to the car. Through the magic of heat and evaporation, we found just a short while later, that the contents had dried out and turned into ordinary rocks and stinky stuff that required ventilating the van. We ended the day with a small fire, the traditional toasted marshmallows and camp songs. Contented, we finally tucked ourselves in for the evening.
The first screams came at 2 a.m. My wife, a nurse, was hiding under her pillow, yelling, “A bat! A bat! A bat!” I stood bolt upright, banged my head on a pipe, and then flopped down on top of her. I crawled to the door to chase the bat outside.
“NO! NO! NO!”
“What?” I shouted back. By then, all the kids were yelling, too.
“Get it! Get it! Get it!” she commanded.
“WHY IN THE SAM HILL?”
My wife and I have different memories of the event at this point. She said that she calmly explained the “risks of exposure.” Namely, that there’s the distinct possibility of getting rabies when you wake up having “shared sleeping space” with a bat, and it needs to be tested. Otherwise, everyone must get “prophylactic treatment.” This is not what it sounds like.
But what I clearly remember was the line, “IT’S $2,000 FOR EACH OF US TO GET TREATED FOR RABIES IF YOU DON’T CATCH IT!”
I may have been half asleep, but I could still multiply… 7 x … “OH MY GOD…” Now I began screaming, thrashing, and stomping around in the dark looking for something, anything inside the trailer, to use. I found a fishing net, with mesh big enough for tennis balls to pass through. But it was all I had, and I whipped it about until I caught the bat.
It crawled out.
So, I thrashed around again, and again. Ten minutes of catch and release, until the exhausted little creature could not get free and we trapped it in a Maxwell coffee can.
The next day, bleary-eyed, we packed up and headed to the Humboldt County Health Department. On our way out of the park, my pathologically-honest wife told the ranger we were removing a bit of wildlife-the bat.
“You can’t do that,” the ranger said, explaining that she was president of the “Friends of the Bat Society” and it was her expressed intent to protect all bats, including little ‘Maxwell’.
“It could have rabies,” my wife said.
“Most bats don’t carry disease.”
“It’s got to be tested, or we’ll have to get treatment.”
“They kill the bat to do that, you know.” The ranger scowled.
“Sorry, but we have to know.”
“You can’t leave,” the ranger said, crossing her arms and taking a step towards the front of the van.
“Watch us,” my wife said.
I hit the gas.
Now it turns out the bat wasn’t rabid, but the sad fact is they have to yank out the brain to know for sure. And when it comes down to the big moment of truth, the bat or my family, on most days I’ll go with my family.
I flashed back on this as I stood outside the Butte County building, feeling instinctive, deep-in-the-gut anti-bat urges. But I knew, intellectually, of course, that little-bitty Maxwell the 2nd shouldn’t be stomped. So I let him be. After all, I didn’t have a net, an actual government-employee-in-uniform was telling me to just leave it alone, and my wife wasn’t there hiding under a pillow to cheer me on.
Robb has enjoyed writing and performing since he was a child, and many of his earliest performances earned him a special recognition-reserved seating in the principal’s office at Highland Elementary. Since then, in addition to his weekly column on A News Cafe – “Or So it Seems™” – Robb has written news and features for The Bakersfield Californian, appeared on stage as an opening stand-up act in Reno, and his writing has been published in the Funny Times. His short stories have won honorable mention national competition. His screenplay, “One Little Indian,” Was a top-ten finalist in the Writer’s Digest competition. Robb presently lives, writes and teaches in Shasta County.
