Last night was kind of crazy. First of all, Honduras
was playing the Netherlands Antilles in a soccer game as part of the
qualifying for the 2006 World Cup. This was a big deal here, even
though the game was being played about 3 hours from here (Honduras won 4-0).
Our next door neighbors, a large extended family, live in a sprawling house
and play their music and TV loudly even on a normal night. Last night,
it was unbelievably loud. Poor Sadie has windows that look right out
onto their house, and she could not sleep at all. Hannah on the other
hand went right to sleep. Will and I were watching a movie on TV, and
Sadie kept wandering in complaining that she could not sleep. After
she had gone back to her room for the third or fourth time, I heard a funny
noise and went to investigate. It was coming from Hannah's room.
From the light in the hall, I could see a dark creature hopping across her
floor. I called Will. He is the designated one to deal with any
kind of animal disturbances. We got a flashlight, and shone it on the
creature. It was a bat, about 6 inches long. Will took command -
I ran down to the kitchen to get him a plastic
container with a lid on it. It was difficult getting the bat into the
container. It managed to get its little claws around a low shelf in
Hannah's closet and it didn't want to let go. When it did let go, it
managed to hop across the floor amazingly quickly. I don't know why it
didn't fly, although it appeared later that it might be injured.
Finally, the bat ventured onto open floor and Will basically threw the
plastic container on top of it, and then slid the lid underneath. We
took it outside to let it go (see photo) but it still didn't fly. It
hopped away. Sadie was concerned about its welfare and wanted to catch
it again so she could take care of it. We have no idea how it got into
the house, though we would certainly like to know so we can prevent this
from happening again.Sadie helped throughout the rescue operation, even
taking the pictures. Hannah, whose room we were in the whole time,
slept through the whole thing.
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