Mr. Battypants

Some days I have no idea what to blog about.

Then other days a subject is just hanging from the molding waiting to be discovered.

Today Lily and I were on the Cape visiting my dad and stepmom. Nana is a dollhouse artist and was showing us her latest creation, a spooky halloween house complete with spooky black tree with bats hanging from its gnarled branches. We were still looking at it when she left the room to make lunch. Lily and I were sitting on the bench snuggling when I noticed a bat decoration hanging from the molding at the ceiling.

"Look Lily! A spooky bat!" We giggled and pointed and pretended to be scared.

When Nana walked back into the room we continued, "Oh Nana, that bat is so scary!"

Then Nana's face got funny. It went from "Oh, aren't you two funny?" to "What the hell is that?" to "Dear God, there's a bat in the house!"

There was some shrieking.

We ran to tell my dad who was painting the trim on the house.

"There's a bat in the house!" We yelled, not even bothering to mask our hysteria.

"Bat! In! The! House!" we yelled.

Pepere was unperturbed. "I need to finish painting."

It quickly became apparent that Nana and I were on our own.

Where did Lily go?

Lily ran outside as fast as her little feet would carry her.

Nana and I devised a plan. She fetched a net.



She was not enjoying the bat. She wanted to put him in the Lord and Taylor bag, but we decided that a garbage bag that could be sealed might be better.

We studied our adversary.



He was asleep.



Also, he was pretty cute.

I know. But he's so furry! And he has cute ears!

I carefully put the net over his body and slowly pulled the net down.

He started to squeak and flap his wings and reader, I screamed like a girl. I'm not proud.

Our next maneuver required complete agility and perfect timing. We had to get the bat into the bag without letting him fly all over the house.

Using all of my grace I swooped Mr. Battypants into the garbage bag and taped up the end.

Some of my readers may be confused. Why the hell is she saving the bat? Just get it out of the house!

I'll tell you why. Because we needed to capture him and send him off to get his brain tested for rabies. If you can't capture the bat, or say you just shoo him outside, you end up like my dear friend Karen who spent the summer getting rabies shots with her family.

Once Mr. Battypants was captured, Nana got on the phone with the Department of Health who told her that they would send someone right away to fetch him.

That left me free to take pictures. And try to coax Lily back into the house.

Look at him.


I think the toes are adorable though the claw kind of freaks me out.

Then the nice Department of Health lady came by to take away Mr. Battypants. She left us this helpful information. Information about bat brains.



We hope to find out if he's rabid or not by tomorrow. And people, I really would prefer not to get rabies shots, so please send whatever non-rabies vibes you can or just send chocolate. Either one will do.

PS. You know what it bizarre? This is by second post about someone in our family possibly needing rabies shots. What are the odds?

Not rabid...

So I was all set to tell you about the project I was working on this afternoon. I am sorting through the October and November issues of home magazines from the last six years and removing all of the pictures that I really like. Once I have them all separated I will create a scrapbook of autumn inspiration. I love to use the great ideas that I see in magazines but never have time to look through them all. This way they will be nice and consolidated.

But that's not what I am going to tell you about.

I am going to tell you about the lost dog that I found wandering on a road near my house. I saw that the dog had a collar so I pulled over thinking that I could take a look at his tags and bring him back to his home.

I called to the dog and he came running to me, tail-a-waggin. I stroked him and told him to sit which he did. I looked for tags- no tags. Crap.

Then I opened my car door and in hopped the dog. "Yay! We're going for a ride!" his tail wag seemed to say. I pulled the car over further, told Lily and her friend Katie to stay in the car while I went to one of the houses to see if anyone knew the dog.

The first house I went to was a home where I knew they had a dog. Dog owners often get to know each other and I thought that maybe they knew this dog. My lost dog barked when he saw the man who lived in the house, but settled down quickly. I borrowed a leash from the family who said that they had never seen the dog and knew that it belonged to no one on the street.

Back into the car we went down a different street. I stopped the car and told the girls that we would check a few houses on this street to see if anyone knew him.

I don't know if I have ever mentioned that my kids are hard core dog lovers. When I stopped the car Lily hurried to the front of the car to snuggle the dog.

The dog then snarled and bit her on her arm.

Lily started crying and I got the dog out of the car and told him to sit.

He sat.

Then I called the police. Once I told them that my daughter had been bitten by a dog with no tags they were on their way. Once Officer Eddie arrived, the dog started barking like crazy.

He did not like Officer Eddie. Officer Eddie called for back-up.

I told the dog to sit. He sat.

Once the dog settled down I told Officer Eddie our story. He looked at Lily's arm and thought it would be okay. Then the second officer arrived. The dog liked this cop. After taking our information, they took the dog and we were on our way.

Once we got to Katie's house to drop her off I took a closer look at Lily's arm and saw a tiny puncture wound. My heart sank. I called the pediatricians office who recommended waiting on starting a series of rabies shots, hoping that the owner would be found and that the dog would have been vaccinated.

We picked up Rebecca from her playdate with Katie's older sister and headed off to the police station to talk some more to the officers.

They were really really helpful. You know how sometimes when you are really stressed out and upset because your baby might have rabies and your husband is 3000 miles away and then a cop is really nice to you, you kind of want to weep? It was like that.

They called in the the officer who has the police dog since he is the most experienced with dog bites. He gave the kids police shield stickers, showed them his dog bite scar and really put us all at ease. They promised to let us know as soon as they learned anything, but were extremely hopeful that this dog was healthy since he was well cared for, trained and wearing a collar.

So we went home. Lily wanted Chinese food for dinner and since she might have rabies I let her get it.

We ate and I fretted. In the tub I talked to Lily about the possibility of needing shots since rabies is 100% fatal. She agreed, though reluctantly that getting a shot is better than dying.

It was then that we had a visitor. At 8:30pm the animal control officer came over to let us know that the owner had been found and that the dog was up to date on all it's shots.

I almost kissed him. Relief is such an amazing feeling. My muscles went limp and once again I wanted to weep because the news was good and this nice public servant did not want me to have to wait all night to hear that my baby would be okay.

It's been kind of a long afternoon you know? The funniest thing was that once Lily knew that she wouldn't need any shots she wanted to tell everyone her story. David was in a meeting so she called TJIC. Then David called and she told him. She wasn't going to need shots and she wasn't going to die. Some days that's the best news we can hope for.