Sounds to wake up to

This morning, I awoke to the sounds of gentle rain falling, the gurgling of the drain spout, and birds singing. Not so yesterday. Yesterday, the sound was the flapping of a bat's wings. My husband had gotten out of bed and shut off the attic fan that had run all night. When the fan blades had stopped, and quiet settled in, my husband could hear a rustling noise out in the hallway. He tracked the source of the sound to our spare room, behind the door was a bat. He quickly shut the door to our son's room so the bat couldn't enter it, and then came to shut our door which he had left opened. That's when I heard it. The rustling, fluttering noise was now in our room. I opened my eyes to see a bat flying around the room over me. "Wait," I cried, "you've trapped it in here with me!" The bat had followed him down the hall into our room.

My knight in shining pajamas returned with a small trash can to do battle with the dreaded, flying mammal. He managed to trap the bat up against the wall. Between the two of us, me opening the window, him carefully sliding a magazine between the trash can and the wall, we carefully maneuvered the trapped bat to the window to be released. We knew there were bats up in our belfry, but never imagined they would enter the floors below.

What is it about bats that we so dislike? Is it that they only come out at night? Is it our association with the vampire legend? Without them we would be over run by insects. In some ecosystems they play a key role as a pollinator of plants. Anyway you look at it, I prefer the gentle sounds of rain first thing in the morning to the flapping of wings overhead. Complaining about the weather can be another day's entry.