Bats freak me out. They really do.I know they are good for mosquito eatin'. I know they are just flying mammals. I see them frequently, and yet they still give me the heebie-jeebies. They live in our shutters on the outside of our house. We even have a bat box on the side of the house for them. They fly freely around my inlaws' vacation home and near my dad's cabin. They still freak me out.
I think my fear started when they swooped at my head as a child while out night fishing with my dad. There was also one in our cabin, and my dad caught it with a fishing net as I hid under the covers. Also there's the rabies thing. If you get bit by a bat and it has rabies, you get rabies. And if you don't get treatment, you die. I have a (rational? irrational?) fear that my kids will get bitten by a rabid bat and not realize it and not get the treatment they need. Am I batty?
Last week a bat was trapped in our fireplace. I put the kids to bed and came downstairs to hear a flutter from the fireplace. We've had squirrels in there before, but put a cap on our fireplace to keep critters out. Apparently not all critters.
I went downstairs and told my husband (he said I had an angry expression), "There is a bat in our fireplace!" I went upstairs and closed all the bedroom and bathroom doors in case the bat escaped. I googled how to catch and release a bat and paced and shouted the same unusable directions twenty times ("Spray it with Lysol!"). My hubby informed me that the bat was probably the vampire Eric Northman from True Blood. That prompted me to put on lipstick and fix my hair, but on further observation, I noticed the bat did not have six pack abs, so it couldn't be Eric after all. Thankfully my Knight in Shining Adidas Shorts rid our fireplace of the bat. The place got a little crazy with a fluttering bat being captured. I admit I cried a little over the whole traumatic ordeal (my husband said I was hysterical. I don't remember it quite that way).
Now I am in northern Wisconsin at my dad's cabin where bats are aplenty. I had to take my dog out at 5 am for a little potty break one morning. Yep. Swooping bats. At my head! I whimpered and ducked and ran in with my dog. No matter how many times I have encountered bats, they still freak me out. Bats. Why does it have to be bats?
What freaks you out? What freaks out your main character?
