A BAT FLEW into my neighbor’s house over the weekend and she told me all about it on the sidewalk on Sunday, how they had to trap it and then feared it had rabies, which prompted a family trip to the ER and multiple shots in their arms.
Apparently, bat bites are tiny and often painless, leaving little or no visible mark. So you may never know if one bit you during the night!
Where had the bat come from so suddenly and with such surprise? Had they left a window open? A vent, a door? How did it get in, and why had it taken them so long to notice it before it plunged toward their heads at the dining room table?
I took in this news with a level of feigned nonchalance that was not convincing to me or anyone listening—had they noticed.
I kept thinking about the bat disturbance during brunch with my boyfriend’s dad in Buffalo Grove. It didn’t help matters that while we ate platters of delicious fried fish, my boyfriend’s dad was watching natural-disaster videos on YouTube with the volume turned so high I could barely hear myself think about my fear of bats flying into kitchens.
My boyfriend’s dad had unusually low blood pressure that day, so we encouraged him to lie flat on his new electrical recliner couch and elevate his feet. It’s easy to agitate someone with such low blood pressure, so we didn’t make him turn down the volume on the flooding videos, but wow, it was starting to disturb me at the cellular level.
On the way home, we pulled into a tucked-away butterfly sanctuary so my boyfriend could smoke in peace without his dad knowing, but the sun was a little too bright, the air a little too moist, to sit out there in the elements without feeling restless and ready to hide in the air-conditioned house.
My boyfriend pointed out a black “flock” camera as we were turning left, and I got the sense I was being watched before he even said anything.
A flock of what? The founders say they designed these networked cameras to “act like a flock of birds”—individual units that link together to form a synchronized, shared-intelligence safety network for neighborhoods and police.
Feels like a flock of rabid cameras.
The rest of the afternoon, my boyfriend and I engaged in “drawing meditations” by following the instructors of well-meaning arts and crafts content creators who probably used AI to draft their scripts!
Still, I loved the feeling of zoning out in what some like to call a “Zentangle,” a structured doodle of repetitive patterns and styles. Repeating lines, circles, squiggles, or waves really does feel like a form of hypnosis.
But then my boyfriend had to go—he still didn’t have power back at his home after derecho winds tore through his town and took out ancient trees, leaving gaping holes in the ground where the neighborhood kids gathered around them, as if looking at some portal to the past—and he was anxious to get back.
Later that night, I started feeling the same Sunday blues I always do before Monday—even though I know time is an illusion and days are not real.
But then I heard rattling downstairs, like something was tumbling down from a tall shelf, and I wondered if a bat had flown into the basement.
I shouted into the void, “Hello?” As if that would help!
My body filled with irrational fear of a bat invasion.
I stepped into bat blood once at a house in Merida, which somehow made sense there, where it’s all open-air and verandahs.
From the peaceful perch of a pink verandah in Dar es Salaam, I could enjoy the swirl of night bats in the black skies peppered with stars.
Bats are amazing, I tried to tell myself last night. Remember that cool article you read about echolocation, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” They represent an enduring problem in consciousness studies—possessing “facts beyond the reach of human concepts,” or imagination.
No reason to fear a bat, I told myself as I nodded off to a smooth-talking hypnosis video.
But before I shut my eyes and slipped off to sleep, I ran downstairs to shut the tiny blue door to the mail slot.
I imagined a bat easily flying into the house at night through the letter portal and into my nightmare.
Apparently, bat bites are tiny and often painless, leaving little or no visible mark. So you may never know if one bit you during the night!
Where had the bat come from so suddenly and with such surprise? Had they left a window open? A vent, a door? How did it get in, and why had it taken them so long to notice it before it plunged toward their heads at the dining room table?
I took in this news with a level of feigned nonchalance that was not convincing to me or anyone listening—had they noticed.
I kept thinking about the bat disturbance during brunch with my boyfriend’s dad in Buffalo Grove. It didn’t help matters that while we ate platters of delicious fried fish, my boyfriend’s dad was watching natural-disaster videos on YouTube with the volume turned so high I could barely hear myself think about my fear of bats flying into kitchens.
My boyfriend’s dad had unusually low blood pressure that day, so we encouraged him to lie flat on his new electrical recliner couch and elevate his feet. It’s easy to agitate someone with such low blood pressure, so we didn’t make him turn down the volume on the flooding videos, but wow, it was starting to disturb me at the cellular level.
On the way home, we pulled into a tucked-away butterfly sanctuary so my boyfriend could smoke in peace without his dad knowing, but the sun was a little too bright, the air a little too moist, to sit out there in the elements without feeling restless and ready to hide in the air-conditioned house.
My boyfriend pointed out a black “flock” camera as we were turning left, and I got the sense I was being watched before he even said anything.
A flock of what? The founders say they designed these networked cameras to “act like a flock of birds”—individual units that link together to form a synchronized, shared-intelligence safety network for neighborhoods and police.
Feels like a flock of rabid cameras.
The rest of the afternoon, my boyfriend and I engaged in “drawing meditations” by following the instructors of well-meaning arts and crafts content creators who probably used AI to draft their scripts!
Still, I loved the feeling of zoning out in what some like to call a “Zentangle,” a structured doodle of repetitive patterns and styles. Repeating lines, circles, squiggles, or waves really does feel like a form of hypnosis.
But then my boyfriend had to go—he still didn’t have power back at his home after derecho winds tore through his town and took out ancient trees, leaving gaping holes in the ground where the neighborhood kids gathered around them, as if looking at some portal to the past—and he was anxious to get back.
Later that night, I started feeling the same Sunday blues I always do before Monday—even though I know time is an illusion and days are not real.
But then I heard rattling downstairs, like something was tumbling down from a tall shelf, and I wondered if a bat had flown into the basement.
I shouted into the void, “Hello?” As if that would help!
My body filled with irrational fear of a bat invasion.
I stepped into bat blood once at a house in Merida, which somehow made sense there, where it’s all open-air and verandahs.
From the peaceful perch of a pink verandah in Dar es Salaam, I could enjoy the swirl of night bats in the black skies peppered with stars.
Bats are amazing, I tried to tell myself last night. Remember that cool article you read about echolocation, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” They represent an enduring problem in consciousness studies—possessing “facts beyond the reach of human concepts,” or imagination.
No reason to fear a bat, I told myself as I nodded off to a smooth-talking hypnosis video.
But before I shut my eyes and slipped off to sleep, I ran downstairs to shut the tiny blue door to the mail slot.
I imagined a bat easily flying into the house at night through the letter portal and into my nightmare.
