A few weeks ago, Husband and I saw Batman. I liked the movie a lot but had two quibbles. First, the bat special effects seemed really cheesy. Individual bats flailed around spastically, about as realistic as the Muppets that accompany the Count as he counts down the number of the day. Second, I couldn’t believe that young Bruce Wayne would have been so frightened of the bats. Bats don’t bite; surely you could endure a little flapping about your head without getting all wigged about it.

On Monday night, I was checking e-mail on the machine in the kitchen when I saw something that looked like a cheesy special effects Muppet bat flailing spastically into the kitchen, then back out.

I shrieked and barricaded myself in the den, demanding that Husband remove the bat. Then, since the camera was handy in a kitchen drawer, I grabbed it for documentary purposes. Here is a brief video of Husband trying to subdue the bat and the bat making its escape and flying directly into the camera. I have edited out my screaming:

Very Blair Witch Project, eh? “We found this footage in the kitchen, and she’s never been heard from again.”

You say you missed it? Well, I couldn’t hold the camera steady because I was yelling and running. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the bat, but he seemed so skittish and uncoordinated that I thought he might run right into me, and I didn’t want to feel furry bat wings in my teeth.

I was rather disappointed in my failure to capture the bat on camera and decided to see if my iMovie editing software could tease out the image. I mean, on CSI they would have been able to identify the bat genus and sex, as well as the murderer’s license plate number reflected in Batzilla’s beady little eyes.

And here it is:

race

Animal activists will be happy to know that Husband managed to capture the bat alive and released him into the relative wilderness of our back yard, where, I’m sure, he promptly rejoined his little bat friends and they had a good laugh over the ugly inherited pseudo-Victorian wallpaper in our living room. Aitch and Dog slept through the whole thing. Holy bat-racket, Batman!