Robin’s Chirps - Have you ever seen surprise on a bat’s face?

Robin’s Chirps

Have you ever seen surprise on a bat’s face?

By Robin Handy, Editor

Yes. Yes, I have seen what I can only define as surprise on a bat’s face.

This encounter was immediately followed by a howling scream – that was me.

You might me thinking… How did I ever get myself into position to see surprise on a bat’s face? Well, let me tell you.

It was August of 2018 and I naively moved into an acreage home (Iowa’s version of a farm-site) I lovingly named the She-Shed.

This home had been sitting empty for a few long months, so my first order of business was to reclaim the house from the natural residents in the area (spiders, crickets, mice, and bats). Still to this day, I’m shocked that I only saw a single snake and raccoon the entire two years that I lived there.

But I get ahead of myself. The She-Shed had a fenced in yard but was positioned on the front edge of the acreage with a feed barn and pasture ground all around it. My landlord rented the pasture ground to a neighboring farmer with a few sheep and later miniature beef cows.

The entire property was roughly five acres of land, and my space was just over an acre. The house itself was a retired three-bedroom, two-story farmhouse that my landlord had used to vent his renovation hobby.

My Boston Terrier, Billy and I had only lived in the home for a few weeks prior to the first encounter.

We were just settling in for the night in the guest bedroom on the first floor (the master bedroom set had not arrived), and I heard a “swishing” sound. Now, I was still adjusting to the new noises of the house, surrounding farm/pasture and animals, so panic didn’t set in immediately.

I got up and turned on a nightlight. I was just dozing off and there it was again. “Swishing” and now a shadow (thanks to the night light). Well… yes, I was wide awake.

As I laid there trying to decide if living in the country was worth it or not and cursing my 18-pound pampered pooch, Billy, for not leaping to my defense, the idea came to me.

“I know you are in here and that this is your home, but we are living here now too,” I “bravely” spoke to the dark house. “So, if you keep to your space and we keep to our space, we can all live here in peace. Right?”

Somehow, I fell asleep confident that I was getting through to the natural residents of my new home and that peace would rein across the grounds.

The next morning the sun was shining, and all was well.

Singing along to my playlist, I just finished my shower and pushed back the curtain only to see shock and surprise on a bat’s face at eye-level – not 6-inches from my face!

And that, my friends, is how I was in a position to see surprise on a bat’s face