EPILOGUE – The Battle of Ennis

Around 1:45 in the morning, I was diligently working on my blog and uploading photos; Mike had been fast sleep for more than an hour. Out of the corner of my eyes, which I could hardly even hold open I was so exhausted, I saw a quick shadow – almost as if I was sitting in the sun and a bird or something flew briefly past. It was about a moment later when it occurred to me that the only source of light was our ceiling lamp, so whatever just caused that shadow had to be in the room. At first I thought, “oh gross, a moth or something must have flew into the open window.” But, when I looked up from the computer screen I was not prepared for what I was about to find… a bat, maybe 8 inches across, was frantically flying around the ceiling of the room and circling the lamp. I remember first thinking about the complete absurdity of the fact that a bat has somehow managed to not only fly in through an open window that was about 3 feet by 1 foot, but that now I had absolutely no idea what the hell to do. So, I calmly called over to Mike “Mike, wake up… hey Mike…I have some news” this at least got him to response “what?” to which I just simply said “yeah, there is a bat in our room.”

His response of priceless, he just simply pulled the covers quickly over his head. Meanwhile, I watched from the corner of the tiny room as the bat rapidly flew around, smacking endlessly into the walls. “Mike, I need help with this. I think he may be attracted to the heat of the light.” Suddenly the TV turns on, and I hear Mike from under the covers of his bed “Did that help?” “No, that didn’t help” Our next strategy was to try to coax the damn thing into the bathroom and lock him in for the night, with the window open, in hopes that he would be gone by morning. But, that strategy failed as well. Even with my added strategy of attempting to smack the bat with my pillow, we failed to get him into the other room. Mike, however, did get a great shot of me in action.

More than 30 minutes into the battle with the tiny winged beast, at this point hysterically laughing because there was nothing else to say, our final resort was to alert the owner of the B&B and ask for help. Into the room he went, with a towel and a shrug. After roughly 10 minutes of “whoosh” and “smack” he emerged from the room, and the bat had been defeated.

I really have no other words that can sum up the absurdity of this experience, but I can honestly say that I have a feeling I will be laughing about this event for the rest of my life.