Recycling time - My dad, Batman

I'm recycling one of my older posts because, well, I'm just too friggin tired to write up a new one LOL. Besides, Snicks just posted about bats a few days ago so I thought I would post one of my own.

One night when I was about 10 my dad woke up my mom at around 2 am and says Mom look at the size of that moth! My mother wakes up, and looks at what my dad thought was a moth fluttering on the curtain and says "That's no moth - that' s a bat". At this point, my dad bolts from the bedroom - closing the door behind him. Leaving my mom in the room with the bat. (and she has NEVER let him forget that either lol). So there is my mom in bed with the covers pulled over her head, suffocating, just waiting to feel little clawed feet walking up her body. She can hear running feet and slamming doors and my dad talking to himself downstairs. After about 15 minutes , the bedroom door slams open and the light goes on. Mom stayed under the blankets until my dad said he couldn't find the damn thing, and Mom comes out of the covers and got one look at my dad and collapsed laughing.

There was my dad in his bat fighting outfit. He was standing there in his underwear with workboots, a golf jacket (zipped all the way up), gardening gloves, a balaclava (full face of course - can't be too careful) and a broom. Mom wishes to this day that she had a camera that night.
Next day, Dad was climbing all over the house trying to find out where that bat had got in and trying to find out where it went. No dice - can't find the bat and Dad decides the bat came down the chimney for the furnace (this was the good old days of oil burning furnaces) so he put very very fine gauge wire over the chimney. Off to bed we go, with the furnace on. In the morning, we all looked like we were part of a minstrel show from the 1920's. The wire was so fine that all the soot from the chimney backed up into the house, and it was quite a mess. So days (and days and days) are spent washing walls, carpets, clothes etc etc etc still no bat. Then Dracula starts making guest appearances again so my mother says either the bat goes or she is sleeping the car with me and my brother - Dad can fend for himself.

Dad borrows a fishing net from the guy next door and is prepared for the next bat emergency. My grandpa took us all out to dinner and when we came home Mom locks herself in the downstairs bathroom and puts my brother and I in the den while my grandparents and Dad are hunting Dracula. Nada they can't find a thing. Then my bad luck bitch slapped me - I needed the bathroom - BAD and my mom will not come out of the downstairs bathroom. Being 10, when I gotta go, I gotta go so I go merrily tripping up the stairs and flick on the bathroom light and there I was face to fang with Dracula. I don't think I've ever moved so fast in my entire life - certainly not screaming at the top of my lungs. I made it down the stairs and back into the den in about 1.5 seconds - slamming the door behind me. Seems Drac couldn't corner quite as sharply as I could and the next few minutes I can only testify to by sound, but there was alot of running and shouting - the holes in the fish net were so big that the bat just crawled back out when they trapped him with it. Eventually my granddad took off his jacket and threw it over Drac. Drac was then taken outside and set free. Episode over? You would think so but Drac was fond of our house. My mom then put her foot down and they called an exterminator.

Mr. Exterminator shows up and identifies the bat hideout in less than 10 minutes. Now I dont' know if your mother had them but god knows my mother did and my grandma still has, but we had a fabric shower curtain that stays outside of the tub just for decoration and it seems that up inside there was the chosen bat cave. Mr. Exterminator then sprays the bathroom full of DDT and closes the door telling us that this WILL kill Dracula. An hour passes with Mr. Exterminator havin a beer with Dad and talkin man talk. Time comes to collect Drac and when he opened the door, Dracula flies out - high as a kite, flyin wobbly but definately not dead. Now we have a hopped up bat flying low around the house with the dog trotting behind it snapping at it. Mr. Exterminator borrows a pair of garden gloves and a hammer, catches Drac and then brings him outside to a waiting audience of ALL the neighbourhood kids. He showed us all the bats wingspan with the bats knawing away at those gloves and then with perfect disregard to our kiddy psyches bashed Draculas brains out with the hammer. Poor little fruit bat. Exterminator guy told my parents that Drac was probably rabid and he could have it tested but my parents figured they just wanted the bat gone and they had already paid this guy to contaminate their bathroom (DDT wasn't exactly legal I think it had just been banned shortly before this), drink beer with my dad and tramatize a bunch of kids so they weren't paying him to test a dead bat for rabies. Took my mom two days of vacuuming while wearing a face mask to get that 1/2 inch of DDT out of the bathroom. We never did find out how that bat got in.

So ends the tale of my dad - Batman. Hope you enjoyed