My students love this story. Once a year, I'll stop in the middle of a particularly boring lesson and say, "Did I ever tell you guys my bat story?"
The entry:
Dad caught a bat! He got an old bird cage to put it in and we set it in Dad's room. When we came in to look at it after dinner, it was gone! Loose in the house. We still don't know where it is!
So here's the story: Dad found droppings on our front porch, and that's how he knew about the bat. He captured it and put it in an old birdcage, like my entry said. That was a strange thing to do, but- *at this point in the storytelling, I like to put my hand by my mouth and mutter, "Dad's always been a little batty," and depending on the age of my students they either laugh or groan.* Anyway, the thing is, bats can squish themselves super flat apparently, so although it seemed like a physical impossibility at the time, the dang thing did indeed squeeze through the bars and escape. It was worrying to have a bat loose in the house, but by nightfall we just gave up the search and went to bed. WELL. Turns out the bat never left Dad's room, because he could hear it flapping around his head when he put the lights out! Can you imagine! He claims that he could even feel the breeze of its wings flapping when it got close enough! But whenever he jumped out of bed to turn on the lights, the bat disappeared. Of course it never came out during the day, and my dad's room was so messy *at this point, I like to pretend to pull a pair of imaginary glasses down my nose and give the granny stare to my students,* he could NOT find that bat. Night after night it came out to flap around his room, and then become invisible when the light flicked on. Finally, Dad came up with a solution. He wrapped duct tape around the bristles of a broom, sticky side out, and brought it into bed with him. When he turned out the lights that night, the bat started flying around his head as usual. My dad swung the broom, missed, then swung again. WHUMP! No more bat.
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