One Thing or Another: Batty for the Country Life

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

You might think moving from the city to the country means going from neighbors on the other side of your apartment walls and a general sense of overcrowding, to stillness, isolation and a night sky dotted with more stars than a human can count. Don’t be deceived. The absence of people in the countryside does not mean you’re finally alone now, enjoying the seclusion an owl might experience in a treetop.

You soon discover the company one keeps in a rural setting far outnumbers the pedestrians on Third Avenue or the straphangers on the subway. Bugs, birds, creatures, spiders, raccoons, mice, all join forces with animals whose cries at night you can’t identify and that make you wonder what sort of violence is going on outside your windows. Is that a mating call, or the screams of some mammal fighting for its life? Are those crickets filling the night with cricket-song, or something more sinister wishing you’d open the door for it?

And then there are the bats that find their way indoors. Flying rodents fluttering frantically above your head in a manic search for escape. They won’t hurt you, but they will conjure memories of every Dracula movie you’ve ever seen. Our reaction to them is primal and involuntary, much like most people’s reaction to a large snake slithering over their foot. The sooner the snake moves on and the bat flies off into the night, the sooner we can go to bed with the covers up to our necks, dozing with one eye on the ceiling.

We left our apartment in New York City for the last time three months ago, renting it out just in case life in the country proves scarier than life in Manhattan. That’s not likely, and we both love living “in the woods” (no, really, we live in the woods), but there are days when the power goes out during a storm, and nights when I think of crazed hill people leaving their meth labs to kill the two men living on Lockatong Road, when the simplicity of the urban jungle seems appealing.

I never noticed a bat during the years when we came to this house on weekends. It wasn’t until we moved here full time that these winged anxieties showed up in our living spaces while we’re in them.

I don’t know if the bats are the little brown ones or the big brown ones. They look the same circling overhead in the living room while I dodge one of them, trying to prop the back door open and hoping it flies outside before a cat does. Sure enough, the poor lost thing quickly flew out into the darkness. The next morning there was another one in the basement – not a favored hangout for bats. I opened the cellar doors and, once again, the bat flew outside, this time into broad daylight. It did not evaporate when the sunlight hit it. There was no blood-curdling shriek as it died a vampire’s death. Just a little bat desperate to find its way home.

That night our oldest cat Jessica started howling in the kitchen. So loudly that I thought she was in distress. I jumped out of bed, opened the bedroom door (we’d been keeping it closed to keep bats out of the room), and there was Jessie with a dead bat in her mouth. She was impressed with herself and wanted me to be, too. This elderly cat, skinny as a pencil and seemingly indestructible, had captured and apparently killed a bat. How did she do this? We’ll never know, but I suspect the bat somehow ended up on the floor where a geriatric cat could seize it.

This time I called Animal Control. I was quickly informed that New Jersey state law requires them to collect the bat for testing and quarantine the cat. “What do you mean by ‘quarantine?’” I asked, wary of having to isolate an old animal or lock her in a room. It turns out they just meant keeping her housebound, easy enough since neither of our cats has ever been outside. A very nice woman showed up an hour later, filled out some forms and left with a dead bat in a plastic bag.

The bat was negative for rabies, as expected. And in a few weeks, when September brings the first coolness of fall, I won’t be convinced every moving shadow in the room is a bat. August is their month, when their babies try finding their way out of wherever they’re roosting and sometimes get detoured into a living room. The house was “bat proofed” two years ago, and we may never know where these stray bats are getting in, or why. But I’m ready for October, with an end to the summer heat and the ability to sleep confidently, almost certain I won’t be woken up by the flapping of wings above my head.

Mark McNease is the author of eight novels, two short story collections and miscellaneous fiction. He co-edited and published the anthology Outer Voices Inner Lives (Lambda Literary Award finalist), and was the co-creator of the Emmy and Telly winning children’s program Into the Outdoors. He currently co-hosts The Twist Podcast with his longtime friend and collaborator Rick Rose.