UNINVITED VISITOR

We had some excitement at our house last night..........a little excitement I can definitely do without.  Matt and I both had to work last night.  I was at work for about an hour and a half when I learned that my kids had tried to get ahold of me.  I called home and was told by Porter that there was a bat in the house.  The kids had all been in the family room when it flew in from somewhere and started just flying in circles.  The kids were understandably a little freaked because our neighbor has had trouble with bats a couple of times.  One of those times she was out on her porch and got attacked and bitten by a rabid bat and had to go through the whole ordeal with rabies shots.  So, knowing this, the kids just headed down to the basement, shut the door, and tried calling me.  When they didn't get ahold of me right away they called my parents who are amazing and told the kids they'd be right there.

So I'm at work trying to decide if having a bat in my house is an okay reason to leave work early and trying to keep in phone contact with my mom and my kids in between helping customers.  My parents got to the house and my dad and Porter searched the house but weren't able to find the bat.  They decided to just take all the kids over to their house til I got off of work. 

When I got off work, I went to pick the kids up.  Paige did NOT want to go home and was crying and pleading to stay at Grandmas.  I made her come with me though and she cried and complained the whole way home.  When we got home I told the kids to stay in the car and I would check out the house.  Porter of course was tough and came with me.  We checked the house out and could not find anything.  We checked the bedrooms out and turned all the lights on and then I had Paige and Ben come in and start getting ready for bed.  Paige wouldn't go anywhere by herself.  She did go into her room to get changed but she kept saying she didn't want to sleep by herself, so I let her sleep in the boys room. 

I went back downstairs to hang out until Matt got home.  When he finally got home I told him what had happened and he got a flashlight and went on the hunt.  Less than 10 minutes later he had found the bat.  And I really hate to even say where he found it.......

Yup, that is Paige's room and I can't even tell you how horrible I felt that I told her she would be fine sleeping in her room and I had checked it out and we would shut the door to make sure nothing got in while she slept.  Of all the rooms in the house it had to go to her room. Thank goodness she is a little bit of a drama queen and ended up staying in the boys room.  She is still upstairs asleep and she is going to be so mad at me when I tell her where Matt found the bat.

Matt called animal control and they said they could send someone in the morning to get it, but after some discussion I decided I didn't want to wait until then.  Even if we shut the door I didn't want to risk it disappearing and having to search for it all over again.  Matt wasn't super excited to have to capture the thing, but he is an awesome husband and did it for me.  He captured it in that little butter container and let it go outside.  It just ended up plopping down in the snow.  I watched it for awhile and it was moving but not flying away.  We felt bad thinking that it was injured and maybe going to die, but still glad it wasn't in the house anymore.  I did look this morning when I took out the trash and it is gone so hopefully it has flown far away.  And hopefully we never get to meet any of its friends.