Bravery vs. Screaming like a little girl

This is what a mouse may look like to some people. 

But to me it's more like this. 

(Plotting and scheming to take over the world)

Some people say I have an irrational fear of mice.  But it's not irrational at all there is a completely rational reason that I am scared to death of mice. And by scared to death I mean I will jump up on the closest, highest piece of furniture in the room whenever I even THINK I hear one in the house, and staying there for at least an hour or until the cat comes and catches and kills it.

When I was about eleven, where we lived we had a mouse problem. No matter what we did they were always in the house.  Mouse traps, poison, the little sonic thingy, no cats though because my mom said she was allergic to them.  I hated mice, I was always afraid that they would get in my bed while I was sleeping and walk all over me or something.  Now that may have been a little bit of my overactive imagination at work but that's what I thought. 

One night I was woken by the sound of a mousetrap in the kitchen going off.  My first thought...great one less mouse to worry about.  My second...nope not dead (I could hear my dog chasing something around the kitchen and just knew the thing wasn't dead). I listened for a few minutes when all of a sudden something (it had to be a mouse) landed on my bed right next to my pillow.  I jumped up screaming onto the footboard then up onto the post of my four poster bed. Screaming my fool head off, my mother and father both come into the room asking what was wrong.  Told them there was a mouse in my bed.  Father insisted it was just one of my many stuffed animals I had on the bed. Mother said I was probably just dreaming. I told them it wasn't either and that I was wide awake and told them about Cruz (the ugliest dog you will ever meet. Half poodle, half chihuahua. But I loved him) was chasing a mouse around the kitchen.  They went and check and sure enough there was a mouse stuck in a trap but not dead.  My father moved my bed to the middle of the floor in my bedroom and that is where it stayed, so no more mice could fall onto my bed from the open beamed ceiling. 

In the words of Ron White "I told you that story so I could tell you this one."

Sound asleep I hear something making a noise in my closet. My first thought...a mouse and the little rat bastard MUST die.  I will go buy a new trap tomorrow (I just throw them away because I can't touch them to empty them if a mouse is caught in one). The noise go louder...second thought...that's a damned big mouse.

I tap my husband on the shoulder. And by tap I mean he probably has bruised on his should the size of my fingertip and CSI might be able to pull my fingerprints our of the bruises. He wakes up. I inform him that there is a mouse in the closet and he needed to do something about it.  He tells me to go to sleep, leave it alone, and it will go away. 

GO TO SLEEP? IT WILL GO AWAY?? ARE YOU INSANE??

We have been together almost seventeen years and he thinks this is going to work.  This from a man that came home from work one day to find me sitting ON the kitchen table writing on my laptop. When he asked what I was doing I told him there was a mouse and the chairs just weren't high enough to keep it away from me.  When I told him that it has been at least an hour since I last saw or heard from the mouse he laughed and left me sitting there. He didn't go on a mad search for said mouse to kill it. He left. Bad, bad man. 

Knowing I'm not going to sleep I decide to investigate this mouse and try to make him go away (from a distance of kneeling on my bed from across the room). I turn my flashlight app on on my phone and shine it toward the closet. Because this will scare the big bad mouse and make it go away. Oh no, the noise got louder and louder until suddenly I saw something much worse than a mouse. 

What's worse than a mouse you may ask? 

How about a mouse with wings.

Aka....a BAT!!!!

This is not the exact bat obviously because there is no way in hell that I would get close enough to one to take a picture but I'm sure this is what the one in me bedroom last night looked like. Except I'm pretty sure his teeth were bigger.

I scream bloody murder and put the blanket over my head. Rolling myself in the blankets to make sure the is no way that the evil thing can get in.  By this time husband is completely awake telling me "Stay under the covers because you don't want to see what it is."

DUH!! I saw the spawn of Satan when it flew out of the closet. There isn't anything I could confuse it with. 

He finds something (I have no idea what because I'm hiding and screaming for him to just kill it) to swat at it with.  It is obviously flying over the bed because every time he swats at it he over swings and hits the bed.  Of course to me that is really the bat falling on top of me so I scream every time he does it.  

Finally I hear a swat and a ka-thunk as something hits the floor on my side of the bed.  I ask if it's dead. The answer comes in the form of him beating on the floor with whatever weapon he has in his hand.  The he leaves the room. Just freaking left me there under the covers while there may  or may not be a dead bat right next to my bed.  He comes back a few minutes later with something to put it in. 

The bat is now inside an old water pitcher, inside a plastic bag, in the refrigerator in the back of my garage because public health wants to test it for rabies as we were sleeping when I first heard it so there is no way of knowing if it had landed on the bed or anywhere else before I heard it.  

To say the least I have been awake since midnight when this happened and am exhausted.  The only good part was that all my screaming did not wake up my seven year old daughter.  I'm glad of this because you have to be brave for your children and there was no way in hell I could have been brave for anyone last night.  I still haven't told her about the bat and probably won't because she'll never sleep again if she knows there was one in the house.  As it is she has to have her desk pushed up against her closet door every night before she'll go to sleep.  

Moral of the story.  

My fears are not irrational!! If I hadn't had my very real fear of mice I wouldn't have bothered looking to see what it was doing and the bat would have been flying around the room all night without anyone knowing until the blood sucking evil mouse with wings landed on our bed. 

Oh and check your screens to make sure there are no holes in them.