It started Friday night, after dinner, I cleaned the kitchen, Peter read books to the boys when I heard him say in a terse, flat lined voice, “Bat. Bat in the house. There’s a bat in here!” His voice grew in intensity and intonation and I knew it was no book he was reading and yet I had a hard time comprehending that there was an actual bat in our house.
“Take the kids out of here.”
I pulled them into the kitchen. F. dodged under the kitchen table. Peter yells for the broom. I oblige. As I pass him the broom I see this graceful, wobbly frightened flight of a little brown bat swoop from one corner of our living room to the next and then up the stairs, and see my husband, broom in hand dash up after him. He managed to catch him alive in what the boys call LegoLand, our guest room that has been transformed into a Lego town of their own creation.
Sealed in a ziplock gallon bag we were at a loss as to what to do next with this bat. I love bats in their natural habitat, but I feared this bat in my own natural habitat. If we let him go outside our house chances are he would reenter. While the risk of rabies is low in a bat, it exists. And, they say they can bite you in your sleep without you knowing you’ve been bit-their teeth are so small, and their bite marks nonexistent. This was the freaky part for me. And, while I googled what to do with a bat, the what if he bit one of my boys already thought ran through my head. So I called a girlfriend of mine that works in the Sudan Mines of northern Minnesota. With her help, we decided to bring our bat to the University of Minnesota diagnostic lab for testing. Without this test, our doctor wanted us to go to the ER within four hours of exposure for rabies vaccination—which I hear is a painful series of four shots. No thanks.
My fear led me to lose sleep that night. What if there was another bat in our house? How could I sleep with my boys unprotected from more bats in the other room? What if another came in our home? What if we already had contracted rabies and didn’t know it? My mind raced, I slept little, and my boys slept together in the bottom bunk that night. I knew I needed to release this fear. So I researched what bats symbolize and have decided to take the presence of the bat as a messenger so that his last flight is not in vain, and my fear does not persist but instructs I found this blog the most helpful explanation of what this bat could mean:
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| Yes those are Batman sheets my boys sleep on, and the irony is not lost on me. |
“Bats represent: Social relationships, communication, motherhoodSo as I prepare for baby 4 to arrive, I take comfort in the bat symbolizing motherhood, rebirth, shedding the old so that the new may emerge, needing it’s night vision in order to see more clearly what awaits me. I thank our bat for his bravery, his visit, and his compassionate understanding of my innate, and short sighted fear—even if I still hope another doesn’t enter.
It is a symbol of communication. Native Americans observed bats to be highly social creatures with strong family ties. They are nurturing, exhibiting verbal communication, touching, and sensitivity to members of their group. Bats are sensitive to their surroundings and are seen as intuitive, with the ability to see through illusion and discern truth. Devotion of the Bat totem will never fade, encouraging the journey to achieve the highest possible potential from an individual. (Information paraphrased from this page on Animal Totems)
Since bats are the only winged creatures to suckle their young, they are also a symbol of motherhood (and by association… fertility and sexuality… which is also supported by the dwelling in caverns in the “womb” of mother earth.)
Eastern cultures view the bat as a symbol of wealth, longevity, peace, good health and a good death. In China, the symbol for bat is “fu” — which is also the symbol for “good luck.”
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