Batty Boston

There are many things in life that I think I handle quite well and with a certain amount of grace, though I may complain about it at the time. Some of these things include working 12 hour days and 80 hour weeks though I would much prefer not to and am trying to wean myself off from doing this (as if it is really my decision). Falling down/up stairs... obviously this is not very graceful but it's something you must get used to if you're as clumsy as me. Sticking to running at least 3 miles a day 5-6 times a week. Cleaning. Moving to new places where you don't know anybody. Standing in line at the grocery store. Being on my feet for well over 80% of my day. Sticking to a budget. Being covered in rumen fluid and god only knows what else from certain animals such as sheep and cattle...

However, there is one thing I absolutely CANNOT handle and this is furry, crawling, flying, insects/animals or just about anything else inside my house that should be outside my house. And let me tell you, I've had my fair share of creepy crawly things in my day: scorpions, centipedes, geckos, numerous varieties of spiders, and even a mouse once which just about made me throw up.

So, when I was going to put my water glass away in the dishwasher late the other night I didn't expect a bird to fly less than 2 inches away from my face in my living room. This caused an entire series of events... me running to my room freaking out, waking up all of my roommates, hiding behind doors and running frantically away from the flying animal.

The next and only obvious choice is to call our parents. I mean what else do we do when you're freaking out and contemplating shooing the winged creature into the stairwell and having somebody else deal with it. So I get my parents on the phone and I blurt out to my dad that there is a bird in the house and I don't know how to get it out and we are currently locked in our rooms for fear of being attacked by birds. All I can think about is the movie Birds and my outlook on the situation gets drastically worse. Then my Dad pauses and asks, "Is it a bird? Or a bat?"

No freakin way... it's probably a bat. It's 11 at night why would a bird be in here. I don't have glasses on and I ran away too quickly to see if it was actually a bird.

And that is when all of Medical Microbiology comes flashing back to me and I think of the cases in which kids got scratched/bit by a bat got rabies and died. That's it folks. I'm going to have to climb my way out of my 3 story apartment because get real if you think I am going back out there to suffer rabies. That stuff is crazy.

So yes, it was indeed a bat. And it took 3 girls and one boy (my roommate's boyfriend) well over 40 minutes to get this crazy flying creature out of our house. In the process we manage to completely contaminate a trashcan, throw several pillows and tissue boxes around the room, and in the end accidentally kill the bat.

And don't judge me about this. I love animals as much as the next person... probably more than the next person. Once, I ran over a rabbit and I had to pull over on the side of the rode because I was crying so hard because I felt so bad for the poor little bunny. But I also love not having rabies. I've decided this is probably a really really good thing. So much that I don't feel bad for this little bat. It shouldn't have come in to our house in the first place...

Suffice to say, Boston has been making me a little batty.