Animal house

If you live in an older home, you know your domicile has relaxed, settled into its foundation. Time builds cracks and tiny holes in your fortress - perfect little doors for different kinds of animals.

I'm not a practicing Buddhist, but I feel strongly about the first precept of Buddhism, which is to not kill or harm with intent. I temper that with practices that are genuine to my lived experience. I can't live my life in my current surroundings with the conviction that I will not step on an ant while walking or hit a moth with my car. But I won't (usually) kill a living thing if it isn't understood I'll eat it or it is trying to eat me.This is all good in theory, but things are getting wild at my house. It's as if word got out that we're completely down.

 

We have inhabitants on all levels, from the big, unidentified thing in the attic, to the subterranean cat underneath the floorboards. Situated in between, we have three people, two dogs, a young rat, some ants and a bat. But the bat moved out last night.

At about 10 p.m. I was taking a bowl of cereal I didn't finish to the kitchen. (Our animal house has actually forced us to be cleaner and we don't leave anything out for more than a minute.)

 

Halfway through the dining room the bat flew by my head.

 

We know the little bat has been with us since it was first seen circling in the living room on Thursday.

 

I wasn't home Thursday and my roommate hid herself when she saw the bat, and the bat apparently hid itself, because when I got home they were both hiding from each other. Found roommate outside, never found bat. Where it has been this whole time, I don't know.

 

Bats are cute to me, but a dark dining room is not the place for a bat when you're at home alone and it is late.So I spilled the milk and ran screaming into my room. But I couldn't sit in my room while this bat noiselessly flew about the house. Crouching, I crossed the dining room and turned the light on.

After several unsuccessful attempts to net the bat with my bed sheet, I called my neighbor Ashley. I explained the situation and she showed up immediately.

We stayed on the phone while she walked over, as I opened the door, and while we both stood in the kitchen. We were excited. We hung up and looked up at the bat. It was hanging from the kitchen ceiling fan. As we discussed ways to catch it and gushed over how cute it was when its ears moved around, it took flight.

 

 - Ahhhh!

We're screaming and running in circles with the bat, and it is flying lower than before.

This goes on for a while as we stand behind the sheet and try to shoo it to the open door. It isn't having that, so it favors the opposite direction, makes contact with Ashley's hand and I hear two different squeals from them both. I think the bat had to recover, so it landed on the canvas coffee sack that hangs in the butler's pantry.

Ashley and I gush again because it's such a cute little fuzzy lump when it lands! Such a roller coaster of terrifying cuteness. I got a big sauce pan from the cupboard and put it over the bat.

We take the coffee sack down and walk the bat outside to the end of the driveway, uncover it, and gives us one more scream when it takes flight in a last circle around us.

If I had the time, I'd tell you about how much sleep I didn't get last night trying to catch the little rat as it ran back and forth from under my door to my Chihuahua's food bowl.

 

* Buddhist temples are built slowly to allow insects and animals the opportunity to be ushered out as monks comb through soil and building materials.

In 2007, a Malaysian temple was overrun with fire ants, and monks who had vowed to non-violence shared the space with the ants until an outside party, without the monks' consent, used insecticide on the colony.

Courtney Spradlin
Source: thecabin.net