A tale of bats in three parts (part 1)

Three years ago, my son came into my bedroom in the middle of the night and woke me up.

"Mommy, there's a big cricket in my bed."

I rolled over, pulled out my earplugs and said, "what?"

"There's a big cricket in my bed."

I was surprised he knew or remembered what a cricket was; at just three, he was smart but still learning the names for all the things.

"Well, squish it, or ignore it," I said. "I'll come look for it tomorrow."

"No, Mommy. It's big. "

"Cedar, it's just a bug. Go back to sleep. I'll deal with it tomrrow."

"I don't want to sleep in my room. I want to sleep in your room."

I don't know if you've ever argued with a three-year-old in the middle of the night after being abruptly woken up from an Ambien sleep, but it's not fun.

"Fine. Sleep in my bed, I'll go sleep in yours."

I slouched off to my son's room, put my earplugs back in, crawled into the bottom bunk of his bed, and fell asleep.

The next morning, the voices of my son and husband woke me up.

"Here, Daddy. Under the blanket."

I pulled out the earplugs but didn't have my glasses in the room, so I squinted at the boys, not sure exactly what was happening.

They were in Cedar's room, where I was sleeping, lifting up blankets pooled on the floor and talking about the cricket. Sean, my husband, was looking around, somewhat lazily, humoring our son but not really caring all that much about the cricket.

All of a sudden, he gasped, and then stomped, hard, twice, on the floor.

"Shit, Cedar. That's not a cricket, it's a bat!"

"A bat?"

He loves Halloween and all things spooky, so Cedar knew what a bat was, at least in a general way. I also know what a bat is, in a more tangible way, and I knew we had bats in the attic. But how did a bat get into the house, into my child's room, into his bed?

"A BAT?"

I sat up, slid out of the bed just as my husband walked out of the room with a pile of blankets and our child. I followed and got my glasses from my nightstand.

"Sean, is there really a bat in the blankets?"

My husband called back up the stairs behind him, confirming the stomped bat. He would walk across the yard, dump it in the neighbor's field, and come back into the house to wash his hands a few minutes later. We laughed about the cuteness of Cedar calling the bat a "cricket," and the similarities in how both bug and bat make chirpy, squeaky, annoying noises; how their bodies fold and bend and give the heebie-jeebies.

And then I went to work. Beyond being creeped out that a bat had been sleeping with my child and then that I had slept with the bat, I didn't worry too much: bats might carry rabies, but modern medicine would take care of us with a rabies vaccine, if needed. But Sean, somewhat more cautious than I am, called our local vet, and then called me.

"We need to get rabies vaccines, now," he said. "Because you and Cedar slept with the bat, and I stomped it and there was blood, we all need 'em. The vet said we came into contact with it and should be proactive."

I didn't want to expose my three-year-old to more shots than he needs in life, and I didn't have time to leave work to get a shot. So I argued that we should wait and see if any of us felt sick, then get the shots.

"Doesn't work that way," said Sean. "If we start developing symptoms, it's too late."

I couldn't believe this, but since I didn't want to take any chances with my health or my child's health, I called our doctor. Yes, she confirmed, we all needed to come in now. And if we could verify that we were at risk for developing rabies, insurance would probably cover most of it. I was glad to hear that, but less excited about the visit.

At the doctor's office we learned that Cedar and I would need two shots each that day, and Sean would need three, all based on our body mass. We would need to come back in for more shots every week for a month.

As you can imagine, this was a difficult month for us and our kiddo. Cedar got many stickers from the nurses, and after each visit got to pick out a piece of junk food from the vending machine. Normally that would make his day, but the shots sord of detracted from the fun of junk food and vending machines.

We determined that the bat had probably come down from the attic and somehow wedged itself under the door to the attic stairs, then crawled the three feet into Cedar's room. Our house is from the early 1900s, and until we put a new roof on it, we had just been living with bats in the attic, much like we had been living with rats in the basement until we lifted the house, removed the fieldstone basement and poured concrete. But that's an expensive process, and a new roof just wasn't in our immediate future.

So we went about our lives, a little wiser about rabies.

It wasn't until Bat Number 2 that we did something to try and prevent this from happening again. Check back for that story.