After signing a lease to live in a house for my sophomore year, I knew it would come with some challenges and complications. From having to furnish the whole place to dealing with a pesky landlord, having a smooth transition from the freshman dorms to a real house can be a struggle on its own. Now, I know most college kids have random troubles with their first home, but I did not expect to be dealing with something as inconvenient as a bat!
On September 3, I went to bed early after a long weekend expecting to get a great night’s rest in order to prepare for the upcoming week. As one can infer, this did not happen. Around 3:30 a.m., I woke up to a storm outside my window. As soon as I opened my eyes, I looked up to see a small figure swoop down from my door and up toward my window. My mind immediately went to the thought that it was a bat as my friend just told me that she had one in her house. Being the scaredy-cat I am, I whipped my comforter over me and rustled around trying to find my phone to inform my roommates. After about 30 seconds of looking, I couldn’t find it, but I knew I needed to get out of my room as soon as possible.
I made a plan: I would throw my covers to the left of me and sprint out the door to my roommate Makenna’s room. Without thinking, I did just that and ran as fast as my half-asleep body could. I barged into Makenna’s room in a panicked state and explained what I had just seen. Being that it was the middle of the night, she was beyond confused and told me it’d be best if I went back to sleep. I was the most scared I had ever been, so there was no way I’d go back to sleep, let alone go into my room. In the midst of my freak-out, she walked to get water in the kitchen. I hid under her covers, still shaking and scared of being alone at that point. As she was walking back to her room, I heard her jump and run towards her closed door. She had seen the bat fly into the kitchen, so now she knew I wasn’t freaking out for nothing. After talking about what we should do, we decided to wake up our roommate, Kaitlyn, to let her know what was going on. We gathered in Makenna’s room and called our parents because we had no idea how to get this bat out of the house. While all our parents are wonderful people, they told us to figure it out for ourselves and that we’ll be fine. Those calls did not give us any reassurance because we were still scared out of our minds and had no solution to the bat problem!
Our plan of action was to try to locate the bat and lead it out the front door or window. We turned all the lights on except for the kitchen one since we believed it was in there. Spoiler alert—it was nowhere to be found that night. We ended up going back to sleep around 4:30, and I ended up having to sleep with Kaitlyn because I didn’t know if the bat was in my room. We all woke up at 8 o’clock for our 9:30 class, and I kid you not, we all slept with our lights on.
Fast forward to that next afternoon, our landlord sent one of her friends to come look for the bat. (Who knew that exterminators don’t deal with bats!) This man had absolutely no fear, and he literally ripped apart our whole house looking for this annoying creature. He never ended up finding it, so Kaitlyn and I had the brilliant idea of boarding up our vents just in case it had flown in there. After going to Menards to get our supplies, which included about 20 boards and five draft stoppers, we covered all the vents and put the stoppers against our doors. This may not sound like an amazing solution, but it made us all feel better about being in our house.
In the end, it’s only a bat and there are many other situations that are much worse that many people have to deal with. My roommates and I are trying hard not to worry too much, but it’s definitely still in the back of our minds. Having to deal with a bat in our first month of living in a house was not in the plan, so I can’t imagine what will happen the rest of the year—needless to say, it should be interesting!