There are several things you expect, tolerate and/or delight in when it comes to living in a downtown loft.
A large bat swooping nervously throughout your space is not one of them.
I was wearing a nightgown, feet tucked under me on the couch in what I thought was the wind-down of a long day when Charlie (the master of understament) pointed toward the alcove and said "there's a bird in the apartment."
The wide-winged rodent chose that moment to soar into the living room and prove Charlie spectacularly wrong. It dove and climbed like a fighter-pilot engaged. One cat and I went for cover, Lily and Charlie sat stunned and bemnused, but Little Bit, the polydactyl skinny black cat sprung into action. If we had a flying rat cast as the Red Baron, Bit was clearly ready to put species issues aside and play Snoopy.
It hardly seemed like the time to remind him he was declawed.
Charlie ran downstairs to tell the doorman about our uninvited aerialist, while I watched the battle from under an afghan. I put Lilly in the crate where she looked at me gratefully as if to say " Bird dog, yes. Bat dog, no."
Bit was literally running sideways off the walls as he tracked and stalked his increasingly agitated quarry. The thought of rabies crossed through my mind, but realistically how could a scrawny cat without claws catch an aerodynamically spectacular bat in flight?
Bit demonstrated by leaping a clear four feet into the air and catching a wing on descent, bringing the bat to the floor. As it scrambled to get back in the air, I decided it was time for Bit and the other domesticated beasts to join me in the laundry room.
By now Charlie had returned with Jim-the-doorman, a personablle retiree used to dealing with pests like teenage girls who wanted to know which apartment the Bills quarterback lived in - Jim was not ready for the Red Baron.
He called maintenance on his cell, ducking and hollering as the bat continued its eratic circles.
No one he called knew what to do, as Bit paced the laundry room and threw himself against the door as if to say "let me at him. I have thumbs. I can do this."
When Jim finally went back downstairs for further executive consultation, Charlie took matters in his own hands. With Lily and the cats with me in the laundry room ,he opened our apartment door to the hallway and shooed the swooping beast into the common area.
Charlie then went back downstairs to let Jim know the bat was no longer our problem. It was his problem.
But, being a guy, when we heard the elevator chime signalling Jim's return to the floor Charlie went out in the hall to help. By now Bit was in full pout.
After five minutes of shouts and erratic bangs against the wall , Charlie came back to announce they had locked it in 308 - a vacant apartment down the hall where the door had been left open for maintenance.
The bat now had about 2,200 sqaure feet and one of the better views in the city all to itself. We were more than an hour into this adventure and I was quite ready for it to be over... but guys just aren't like that.
Jim returned with a specially dispensed maintenance worker - they had buckets, rakes and brooms and they were going in.
The yelling and erratic wall pounding continued into the evening until a flushed, but happy, Jim the doorman knocked on our door.
"We got it," he said breathlessly, pointing to a covered bucket. The hall was littered with the tools of the pursuit.
Bit stayed at the other end of the apartment with a look of pure disdain -- the amateurs were clearly unworthy of his opponent.
Charlie, Jim and the Maintenance Guy were worn out from their ragged pursuit, but Bit sat serenely on the window ledge scanning the night sky.
Until we meet again.



Copyright 2006 Judi Griggs