Bats in the Belfry, Paintings to Goodwill

Still packing through the memories. . . but making really good progress!

My poor husband. I left to visit my parents in the North Georgia mountains and he had to stay at home to get ready for the realtor’s photographer. He scraped and painted hallway ceilings and window trim, while I ate delicious food on the screen porch with a view of the sunset through the lush green leaves of encircling trees. I’m thinking my parents might need to plan an ‘emergency’ every two or three weeks for me. (Kidding! I am back and about to pack with a vengeance. After I finish this Substack. I am a master procrastinator, never doubt it.)

I don’t always sleep well in the mountains in the summertime. My body has become acclimated to air conditioning, for cooling AND for white noise. My parents are hale and hearty, they like their open windows, crickets, and owl hoots at night, and the occasional neighboring rooster in the morning. They are 2100 feet above sea level, so extremely hot weather is a rarity. Intellectually, I recognize the charms of a true mountain house, but the whiny adolescent inside of me just wants my creature comforts when my visit overlaps with the rare humidity and heat.

On the up side, I took a lot of good books, since I knew I’d probably be awake a couple of hours in the middle of the night. The last evening, I was reading the latest Elin Hildebrand at 4 a.m. - don’t judge, those beach reads are great when you plan to go back to sleep - and I heard a squeak. And a feathery brush. Then a shadow flew along the ceiling. A BAT!

(These are not my fingers. Photo to show that the bat was small and really sort of cute. In a Grimm’s Fairy Tale kind of way.)

I can only imagine how I would have screamed my head off if I’d been asleep and the little furry thing had landed on my face. Ooh, just thinking about it makes me a little nauseous.

First off - my parents do NOT have bats in their house, as a rule. Unfortunately, they have a daughter who is very hot natured and left the screen door on the second floor balcony open a bit. I mean, the space was TINY! I was too lazy to figure out how to get the door back on the track, so I just pulled it closed as best I could - which meant it was flush at the bottom with a little tiny triangle open at the top.

(My husband says my motto is “Good enough!” While I dispute this. . . umm, it is sometimes true. ‘Drat! I pulled the screen out of the track. Well, it’s ALMOST closed. Good enough. I’m tired.’ I mean, what were the chances a bat would find that little opening? Slim to none, right?)

I was in the library, one room over from the bedroom with the balcony, so I watched the little creature zoom around and run into walls until he shakily flew back into the bedroom. I ran to the balcony and opened the screen door all the way. Then I ran back into the hall and held the bedroom door with just an inch open so I could see, and closed it frantically anytime the fuzzy wings soared back in my direction. I gingerly opened it again, and could not see the bat. I waited another minute or two, then closed the glass door tightly - who cares about the heat now?!? - and went back to the library.

I’m pretty sure I bravely disposed of the creature, allowing it to return to the natural elements to eat bugs and hang upside down during the day ( I watch a lot of vampire movies) Pretty sure! If not, I’m positive my niece will handle it. She arrives for a visit on Wednesday. Good luck to her!

So this bat got me thinking about the first time I saw one. I was five years old, and with my little sister in our front yard. We had a huge yard - at least, to my little girl eyes - with lots of trees and lawn. A little bat was feebly fluttering on the ground under one of the trees, barely flapping its tiny, leathery wings, and we leaned over to look at it, with our pudgy hands behind our backs and our chubby legs bent to get us in for a closer look.

My parents ran like - well, a bat out of hell - when they realized what was happening. I heard all about RABIES - which sounded like the scariest thing ever - while my father came around the house with a shovel, finishing off the dying little creature and then burying it.

ANYWAY, that memory came back while I was going through some of my paintings and prints, determining which ones will make the Tasmanian cut and which ones will find a new home through Goodwill, et al. I’ve had Rapunzel since my parents downsized. She originally had pride of place on my childhood bedroom wall in the same house where I saw my first - and only, thank goodness - bat with rabies, watched the first man walk on the moon, got stung by my first yellow jacket, and made my first best friend. I have to keep her, she’s an emotional umbilical cord.

Rapunzel was my favorite fairy tale. I didn’t have very thick hair as a child, and I could but aspire to having hair so healthy, long and strong that the braid would support a randy man climbing up the tower. (Not that I knew about that randy part when I was five - I just thought he was really nice and brave to try to rescue Rapunzel from her evil mother.)

And don’t you love the cat about to pounce on the love birds at the bottom?

We have three cats. When you have multiple cats, your friends and family think you must collect cats. I have cat figurines, cat plates, cat books, cat bags, cat pocketbooks, cat socks and cat earrings.

Sadly, I actually don’t collect cats. Some cat lady at Goodwill is about to hit the mother lode.

I also have a collection of German prints, given to me by well meaning friends who always find them at local thrift shops. (It’s a military town, lots of retirees who were stationed in Germany jettison these when they downsize. Now it’s my turn.)

I mean, they DID remind me of my time in Germany. And I love that my friends found them and thought of me. But eventually, the cheery frames ran off of the walls and onto the window sills under my little Bavarian curtain. Now it’s time for them to go. My turn to down size. (The little thrift shops and Goodwill probably sell the same items over and over again, for double or triple the profit.)

But this little one - I am keeping her. She is not a print, but a tiny original oil painting by someone like me, who clearly loved Bavaria and wanted to put a little memory of it on her wall. I bought this at a German flohmarkt. It’s not the prettiest, but I can FEEL how hard the artist wanted to get it right, and cram everything in - the mountains, the trees, the roadside shrine, the typical buildings. I think there’s even a group of people traveling to the next village in the distance. Maybe that far away house is a gasthaus and there’s a Fruehlingfest about to start. They’re singing as they walk, I have no doubt.

Yes - this one makes the cut. So from six, I’ve gone down to two. That’s good, right? If I cut everything by 66%, we should come out fine. Fine, I tell you!! I can do it. (Deep breath.)

But I’m pretty sure I need to pick up the pace a bit. I’m off to tackle the books now - one pile for our church library, one pile for Goodwill. I am trying my hardest not to rethink my cull of last week. Otherwise, some might slip back into the bookcase. I have the breaking point of a Kitkat.