FOUND........Dead!

I am such a girl. I love being a girl. I love looking nice, wearing makeup and curling my hair. So, tonight, as I was thinking about what to wear for our Rehearsal, I decided on a light blue, short-sleeved sweater and khaki capris, with the appropriate light blue accessories. Cute, in my opinion.

I had already done my makeup and my hair....all that was left was to finish getting dressed. I put on my capris and went into my closet to get the sweater.

My husband knows me well.....so well, that when he designed our home, he made the Master closet huge. Gigantic, by some standards. I have 12+ feet of rod and I use every bit of it for my hanging clothes. Under some of the clothes are big, plastic bins that hold those clothes that my children wore as babies that I'm not willing to part with as well as some sweaters that I wear when the weather warrants. On top of the plastic bins are some lightweight sweaters that I wear throughout the year. They are folded neatly. I reached in to grab the light blue sweater I had planned to wear tonight. I put it on and walked out into my bedroom.

Something wasn't right. There was this funny odor coming from my sweater. "That's odd," I thought. Why does my sweater smell like...........................death. My eyes opened wide.

I ran into my closet, throwing the sweater into the hamper and pulled my hanging clothes apart. There it was. Batman Returns!!! Only this time, he couldn't run and hide. He had met his Maker. He was dead. So dead, that that area of my closet smelled like, well......death. I decided that wigging out would be appropriate at that particular moment, so I did. My children, who adore their mother immensely, ran into the room. Keep in mind, I hadn't finished getting dressed yet......

I told them what had happened and boy did the curiosity come out. They wanted to see the bat. We grabbed the flash light and shined it on his final resting place. Yep, sure enough it was a bat and it was dead. Thankfully. But this presented yet another problem. Who, of the five of us, was going to go get it. Me........Out of the question. Julia.......No way. Daniel.....Forget it. Trey....Nope. Joshua? Hmmmm, now there was a possibility. After going and getting an old shoe box, I called him into the closet and gave him his mission....should he choose to accept it. No, this was not Mission: Impossible....This was Mission: Go, Josh, Go and I just knew he could do it. (He's 8, by the way)

He happened to have on his baseball gloves, so that was good....HE then asked ME to go get him the tongs from the kitchen. I figured....he's either done this before or he's just really smart. So, I got him the tongs. Trey took the lid to the shoebox, Josh grabbed the bottom of the box and the tongs and began to make his move, when all of a sudden..........

He chickened out and said he couldn't do it. Hmmmm, now what? Once again, I knew I couldn't do it, but for a moment did consider trying. Suddenly, it dawned on me. Alex. Our lawnmowing friend who tried to capture our guest the day he arrived. He did say to call him if we found the bat. I figured it wouldn't be a good idea to not allow him the blessing of finishing the job, so I called him.

He was home. And he was more than happy to come over for the Recovery effort. The kids waited outside for him to arrive and sure enough, less than five minutes later, he drove up. (I straightened up my closet a bit before he arrived)

The kids showed him where batman was and gave him the box. And the first words out of his mouth were, "Oh wow...Oh geez. Yeah, he's big." Within minutes our dearly departed friend was safely taped up inside the shoe box and placed into the garage.

I have decided to contact the Health Department as I did touch the creature and he was in my room for 6 days...dead for who knows how many of those 6 days. I know that not all bats have rabies....I also know that I'm not taking any chances should this bat be one of the not-so-lucky ones.

Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow.....and this is a blessing.