This may come as something of a surprise to regular readers of 7 Reasons, but we’re not experts on everything that we write about. Often, our pieces contain much speculation and conjecture. Today’s piece, however, is different. Today’s piece is written from experience. If you should find yourself in a dining room with a bat, this is exactly how it will go down.
1. Surprise! As you sit in your dining room on a quiet Saturday night catching up on missed television programmes using the iPlayer, you’ll feel relaxed and at ease. You’ll take a sip of your drink and languidly stretch out your legs. You’ll stifle a yawn and stretch out your arms. Eventually, you’ll lean back in your seat and glance up toward the ceiling light, to ascertain what is casting the strange shadow that you have seen from the corner of your eye for the past few seconds. Then you’ll scream involuntarily and bolt from the room and slam the door shut behind you. A large bat flying around your dining room will come as something of a surprise to you.
2. Disbelief. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Your wife will enquire in a startled manner, somewhat surprised by your shrieking.
“There’s a bat in the dining room.”
“What?”
“There’s a bat in the dining room.”
“What?”
“Bat!” (You’ll flap your arms about miming flight at this point). “Dining room!” (You’ll also point at the dining room.)
“What’s it doing in there?”
“Flying around the ceiling lamp and watching a documentary about Stalin.”
Rather disbelievingly, your wife will go to the dining room, open the door slightly and peer through the gap. On closing it very quickly, she will then announce that “there’s a bat in the dining room”.
3. Spin. Anxious that you should always see the positive side of any situation, you’ll start brainstorming. A bat in the dining room could be a good thing, you’ll think. A bat in the dining room would mean that there would never be any insects in there. A bat in the dining room would ensure that you could write in there with absolutely no chance of interruption: You could look at the internet with no chance of interruption! A bat in the dining room would…be a bloody great bat in the dining room. It turns out that the elephant in the room is that there’s a bat in the room. There’s no upside so good that it can surmount the fact that your dining room contains a bat.
4. Whimsy. Having established that having a bat in the dining room is a bad thing, you’ll turn your mind to what the hell to do with it. “We could call the RSPCA”, your wife will suggest.
“We’re not being cruel to it. We’re being inconvenienced by it.”
“Perhaps there’s a local bat group.”
“Yes, maybe they could send some sort of bat man.”
“A dog warden?”
“Or, we could call Commissioner Gordon and he could raise the bat-signal. Perhaps we could…”
5. Motivation. “…Oh my god!”
“What?!”
“My gin and tonic’s in there!”
6. De-batting. “Darling”, you’ll say, “We’re just going to have to man-up and deal with the bat ourselves…In you go.” This motivational speech will fail to make her deal with the bat on your behalf, so you’ll have to work as a team. You will close every door in the house (so the bat can’t start terrorising you in other rooms) and your wife will peer back into the dining room. She will find that the bat is still flying around in there, fluttering in haphazard circles around the ceiling light like a terrifying and gigantic moth. A behemoth*. You’ll formulate a plan. You will run in, raise the blind, open the window and run out again: Your wife will be in charge of opening and closing the door. You’ll take a deep breath and steel yourself for the task. Eventually, though too soon for you, your wife will open the door and you will burst into the room and stride toward the blind. Startled by the sudden presence in the room, the bat will realise that flying around is not a safe thing to do and he will decide to land. At the very instant that you arrive at the blind, the bat will land on it, inches from your face. “Aaaarrrgghhh”, you’ll scream as you run out of the room. Your wife will close the door.
You’ll realise that another plan is called for. If you raise the blind with the bat on it, you’ll just squash the bat. You’ll have a flat bat. And bats, if you flatten them, appear bigger. So, if you can’t raise the blind and open the window, you’ll have to trap the bat and remove it. Having rummaged in the kitchen cupboard for a suitable container for a considerable time, your wife will emerge with her Tupperware bat-trap. This time, she will be in charge of trapping the bat, and you will be in charge of the door (yay!) and the lid (boo!). You’ll open the door and your wife will stride in and head toward the blind with the container held out in front of her. Arriving at the blind she’ll cover the bat with the container. Now that the bat is safely contained, you’ll enter the room clutching the lid. You’ll slide the lid slowly and carefully between the blind and the Tupperware box and affix it. Phew.
7. Post-bat. As you breathe your sigh of relief the bat will let out a heart-rending squeak. Your wife will head into the back garden to release the bat and you’ll be in charge of the back door (yay again!). The moment that the lid is removed, the bat will flutter out and your wife will scream and run toward the door, which will cause you to laugh. Briefly. Eventually, having congratulated your wife on her brave conduct in the face of a big, scary bat and having closed every window in the house (twice), you’ll return to the comfort and security of Josef Stalin and your gin and tonic. Then you’ll discover that the bat has left you a “present” on your white Verner Panton stackable chair.
So there you go. That’s roughly what will happen if you have a bat in your dining room. I don’t recommend it.
*You’ll be inordinately proud of that wordplay.
