A Bird in the Basement, a Bug in the Bathtub, a Bat in the Bedroom

Hi!

Oh my gosh, this move is exhausting! My calves hate me right now and are refusing to travel up or down any more stairs. Fortunately, my office-mate allowed us to ride the elevator up to the 2nd floor for bagels (our office is a "garden-level" joint...so 2 flights definitely warranted assistance).

One of the things I dislike most about moving is that my eating routine is thrown off completely. Breakfast this morning was a yogurt drink, 1 little chocolate donut (thanks to Porkchop), and a bagel. Compare this to my usual banana and unsweetened soymilk. We've also eaten out more over the most few days than we usually do in a month. Crazy!

Anyway, so here are the reasons for the title...

A Bird in the Basement
On Saturday, after moving about a third of our things into the new apartment, Porkchop and I checked out the basement. We were going to investigate the storage area when a bird flew out of one of the rooms! Porkchop yelled and then ran off. Well, I should write "ran" off because we were already tired so she really just shuffled off. It was a shuffling run and highly amusing.

A Bug in the Bathtub
Dude, I had hoped this move was going to be "bye-bye house centipedes," but there was one in the bathtub last night.

*groan*

I'm beginning to think it's a St. Louis area thing. Even my office-mate, who lives in Bridgeton, has them. AND she lives a newish subdivision with no suspicious basement.

Maybe St. Louis sits atop a giant house centipede colony! ARGH!

My other thought is that we brought a couple of bugs with us. And this disgusts me more than anything.

P.S. There was also a bug in our bed, but just a tiny one.

A Bat in the Bedroom
So, imagine that it's 3:30 am and you wake up for some reason, decide to go to the bathroom, and then come back into the bedroom and you see a bat flying around. Yeah! That actually happened!

For the first time ever, I was the one to wake up Porkchop saying that I saw something flying around (Porkchop has regular night terrors involving spiders, bugs, and other things). I was all, "what do we do? what do we do? what's our plan of action?" while Porkchop hid under the covers.

Anyway, Porkchop came up with the brilliant plan of opening the screenless sunporch windows and corraling the bat through the living room, dining room, and kitchen and then out the windows. It worked!

YAY!

Conveniently enough, Porkchop's plan appointed me as the key bat wrangler. So, not only did I have to walk around unarmed to open the kitchen door and stuff, I also had to run around the living and dining rooms with the swiffer, encouraging the bat through the dining room door and yelling things like, "here it comes! no! okay! here it comes! no! oh! here it is! SHUT THE DOOR!" Porkchop then shut the dining room door, got the bat into the kitchen, and then closed herself in the bedroom. There, she was able to monitor the sunporch windows AND stay away from the bat. Do you see a theme here?

Keetah was pretty chill during all of the this, but Porkchop walked around with a sheet over her head. I'm worried that we're going to find batshit all over the place or something.

All of this only took a half hour, but no one slept much afterwards.

We think the bat came in the open bedroom window. We found that this particular window does not have a storm window at the top. Since there's only a screen on the bottom half, there's plenty of room for a bat. Is this plausible? I don't know, but it's the only thing we can come up with.

I'm kind of excited to finally have a bat story to share. It seems like everyone we know has a similar story. However, no more bats, please.

What Else?
We're super-tired. I'm glad to be at work and away from boxes. Porkchop dropped me off at work this morning, even though she is also exhausted.

We only have a few things left at the old apartment (prints, framed things, sculptures, some kitchen things) in addition to a huge pile of things to take to the Goodwill.

I miss the old apartment and its lack of bats. Also, its central air...I totally miss that already. Our open bedroom window led to the bat (possibly) and my right nostril starting to close up again (even though I'm still on allegra and nose spray).

Anyway, I plan to clean up the icky kitchen cabinet and unpack a few boxes tonight. Since I'm car-less this evening, I might pick up something in our new neighborhood...maybe something from the kebab take-out place or from the Vietnamese restaurant that advertises "Best Spring Rolls in St. Louis" in neon lighting. If it's in neon, it must be true.

P.S. Porkchop is letting me use the title of this post for free.