For the last two weeks we have been on vacation.  You would think that I would have had a little more time to posts during those two weeks, but apparently not.  We started out our two week vacation with a trip up to Michigan’s northern peninsula. 

A side note to this “batty”story . . . On the way up, I noticed that in the middle of the road on highway 2, the highway that runs along the southern edge of the U.P., there was a rumble strip.  I had never seen a rumble strip in the middle of the road, only on the sides.  I commented to Linda that I thought it a bit odd.  Really, if it were that good of an idea, wouldn’t everyone be doing?  She concluded, and I just might concur, that the reality is that the U-pers are just a bit more advanced mentally than the rest of the country.  Therefore, we now conclude whenever we see anything we find ingenious, we give credit to the great people that live in the U.P. 

 . . . We had a wonderful and restful time for a few days at a small cabin that is hid away a quarter of a mile off of highway 2.  A beautiful setting, complete with a beautiful screen in porch, a fun loft for the kids to hang off and the beautiful melody of a small babbling brook. While the weather seemed to encourage the mosquito’s, the screened in porch was a haven for us all.  We were able to rest, sleep, play, swim . . .  and catch a bat.

One evening dad and I were just sitting up talking after some action movie, probably it was dumb, but it was action . . . and hey! we’re guys.  In the middle of our rigorous debate, a small bat (I meant to say, a wopping papa bat that was the size of a large hawk) swooped out of the rafters and about made me soil my pants.  We kicked into action, partially out of a commitment we have towards our wives and children, and as well a desire to sleep without this particular enormous bat flying above our heads all night.  We scoured the whole cabin looking for a tennis rack or something of equal bat fighting power.  We were at a loss, as we “batted” our hands at the stealthy creature.  We lost him for a moment as he seemed to burrow in a knot in the wooden walls, but came out again as dad threw his shoe up at him.  I climbed the spiral staircase to the loft and much to the chagrine of my lovely wife, having slept restfully up to that point, began swinging at the bat with the largest and most powerful weapon I could find . . . a pillow on one of the beds.  I must have swung at that bat two dozen times.  I then came to the conclusion that if I swung down at it instead of across at it, I might have better luck. 

The bat made one last ditch effort to escape his inevitable demise and I clobbered him as hard as I could with that soft downy pillow.  The clash sent him sprawling onto the floor, daised.  I covered him with the pillow until my fellow bat catcher climbed the stairs with a cool aid pitcher to place the bat in.  We scooped him up into the pitcher and victoriously walked him outside to release him into the wilderness of the U.P.

We may be beastly, but we are humane.

As for my wife’s sleep the rest of that evening, the pillow that was used to beat the bat, and the cool aid pitcher used to house the winged criminal . . . they were all cared for with equal gentleness (obviously not the gentleness of the capture but instead the release).

    

Click on any picture above for a magnified version.