I sat down at the computer to check etsy while urging the picky one to eat his darn dinner.. then noticed he was staring into the kitchen with a mesmerized look (incredibly yes, he's extremely expressive with his droopy wrinkled face and his bulldog-esque under-bite so I got up to look and screamed for Kiz because...there was a BAT flying back and forth in my kitchen! Luckily we have 14ft ceilings and an 'open concept' Victorian-sized kitchen so it wasn't hurting itself or dive bombing us *eek*. And normally I would be a tough femme witch, but alas, bats are not something I encounter often. lol Kiz came to see what was happening with broom in hand. I jumped as it flew by again, knocking over Mug-Z's food (that I had carefully picked up so Rocco the doxie didn't do his usual opportunistic snarfing when we don't police him). Meanwhile Kiz tries to open the back door and usher it out, and the darn thing disappeared as fast as it appeared! We cautiously and probably quite humorously checked every nook it could hide in, and nothing. I don't think this is the last we will see of our bat friend, but for now all the cupboards drawers and widows are closed in the butlers pantry and the curtain is closed so its contained if it does come back. I looked outside with a flashlight and we cannot figure out how it got in and out so easily/quickly unless they can smash themselves into teeny cracks and burrow through walls or between window pains. Oy. Quite an exciting Friday night here at Magickally Made LOL
Since there is a reason and lesson for everything we encounter on this plane - the obvious being perhaps check to make sure there are no holes in the house! - I had to look into the medicine/totem for bats (http://www.mrkay.org/projects/totems/bat.htm) which seems pretty timely all around. I like this one http://suite101.com/article/bat-a-powerful-pagan-symbol-a50822 other than the ignorant use of "oriental" in reference to humans = it should be Asian; as rugs are oriental and people are Asian, but alas, the rest of the info is good. "Scottish people believed that when a flying bat rises and descends, it does so by a witch’s house" or apparently IN a witches house!
~Aradia
p.s. Mug-Z did lose his dinner to the hippobutt known as Rocco, so for all the excitement (and I probably shouldn't admit this) he got a cheese sandwich. lol
Edit: The Bat came back the very next day *singing*....
I went into the kitchen at dusk and saw that Samhain our black cat was sitting on top of an extra refrigerator we had for our sons new house, and of course wanted her down... but before getting to her I noticed that she was calmly and intently staring at the bat that was now hanging upside-down from the plumbing access hole in the ceiling about 2 ft above her face staring right back at her. No aggression, just communing. I got her down because of the diseases bats can carry etc but I was honestly amazed by this magickal and oh-so-witchy goth interaction lol
We consulted the bat conservation website to see how to get it out without harm. Based on their advice (apparently they CAN see, their sonar is just better) we shut off the room, opened windows and door, turned on the outside lights so it might hopefully see the exits and dimmed the kitchen lights. We then constructed a net out of a hula-hoop and a sheet and tried to either usher it toward the window or catch it as they suggested. WELL.. the damn thing would only fly above window height (as stated above we have 14ft ceilings *shakes fist*) and honestly it was freaked out, I was freaked out... it wasn't working. So we decided we had to shut things up for the night before more things came in, and let it rest before it felt like it needed to attack us or had a heart attack.
The crazy part of this story is that it disappeared! There was no way out that we could see, and we never smelled anything dead in the ceiling or walls (and we notice if even a tiny mouse ends up in the wall) - there was never any guano left under where it was perching for the few days it was with us which was definitely odd. So. I must lean toward the superstitious/magickal perspective that it was actually a ghost or a collection of ghosts manifesting in the form of the bat as many cultures have believed; and that its time here was done. I am really not sure what we were supposed to learn, perhaps it was here to talk to the cat since they were having the conversation that I mentioned above. It was crazy regardless and I have no answer.
Edit: The Bat came back the very next day *singing*....
I went into the kitchen at dusk and saw that Samhain our black cat was sitting on top of an extra refrigerator we had for our sons new house, and of course wanted her down... but before getting to her I noticed that she was calmly and intently staring at the bat that was now hanging upside-down from the plumbing access hole in the ceiling about 2 ft above her face staring right back at her. No aggression, just communing. I got her down because of the diseases bats can carry etc but I was honestly amazed by this magickal and oh-so-witchy goth interaction lol
We consulted the bat conservation website to see how to get it out without harm. Based on their advice (apparently they CAN see, their sonar is just better) we shut off the room, opened windows and door, turned on the outside lights so it might hopefully see the exits and dimmed the kitchen lights. We then constructed a net out of a hula-hoop and a sheet and tried to either usher it toward the window or catch it as they suggested. WELL.. the damn thing would only fly above window height (as stated above we have 14ft ceilings *shakes fist*) and honestly it was freaked out, I was freaked out... it wasn't working. So we decided we had to shut things up for the night before more things came in, and let it rest before it felt like it needed to attack us or had a heart attack.
The crazy part of this story is that it disappeared! There was no way out that we could see, and we never smelled anything dead in the ceiling or walls (and we notice if even a tiny mouse ends up in the wall) - there was never any guano left under where it was perching for the few days it was with us which was definitely odd. So. I must lean toward the superstitious/magickal perspective that it was actually a ghost or a collection of ghosts manifesting in the form of the bat as many cultures have believed; and that its time here was done. I am really not sure what we were supposed to learn, perhaps it was here to talk to the cat since they were having the conversation that I mentioned above. It was crazy regardless and I have no answer.
