Strangers in the night

Tonight I met a bat.  It was not a meeting I welcomed, and indeed, it was not even a meeting of which I was aware at first, and trust me, the first moment I realized that the odd squeaking rustling was coming out of something hanging from a branch over my head was the same moment I shrieked in horrified enlightenment and fled, the stray cat I had come out to feed looking after me quizzically.

Such was my sense of responsibility, however, that I lured the cat out with many blandishments and fed her right next to the back door, eager to get back inside.  With a hurried admonition to the cat that it should be careful, and a final toss of my hair to make sure there was nothing . . . untoward . . . in it, I dashed in my back door and barricaded it shut. 

I barely had the nerve to run my hands through my hair, but decided that I had better find out sooner rather than later if I had an unwelcome guest tangled on my head.  I have read about this primitive fear women have about bats and hair, but never before  understood it.

Now, intellectually I like bats.  They are helpful little creatures, and most of them innocent of evil intent.  But there is an inborn dread of them I cannot expunge, and now I am concerned that I am so spooked, I will be afraid to go into the back yard near that shrub again. 

That shrub actually made me very happy yesterday.  It is a fragrant honeysuckle which blooms in the spring, but for some reason has some open flowers on it!  I was so excited to discover this yesterday, so grateful.  My rhododendron seems on the verge of bloom, too, as a matter of fact, and my roses are still going.  Wow.  For that I am so grateful.  For the bat, less so.  I don't want it to come to harm, but I think it should move on and out.  Well, it's late, so on and out, over and out, 'til next time.