A couple of nights back, I woke up in the middle of the night to see something like a bat enter through the bedroom window and heard it fall on the ground. Bats have done that before, and I am always rattled. I heard some shuffling noises that seemed to go away from the bed, was too scared to investigate, so I covered myself from top to toe with a sheet, and actually managed to sleep off soundly. Souvik was away in Saigon.

Woke up in the morning and cagily searched the house, but no sign of the bat (didn’t look too carefully). Later, when I picked up my clothes from the ironing table near the window, I saw it plop out of nowhere. I screamed LOUDLY and flung off the towel. The bat squeaked and darted off in fright somewhere. EWWWW. The towel stayed on the floor, and I was almost worried that I’d hurt the bat. Waited for my maid to show up, expecting her to be a little braver. Some English-to-Vietnamese translation later, she giggled and looked for the bat all over the bedroom. Nowhere in sight. I asked her to dump all the clothes from the ironing table back into the wash, and she found it amusing to think that the bat might also have a wash cycle with those clothes!

The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and I tried to believe that the bat had flown out, but the heart refused to believe it without visual evidence. Come darkness, and I heard the telltale squeaks. I shut the bedroom door, and the poor guy was stuck inside. This time, the windows were all tightly shut too, so it had nowhere to go except around the room, knocking a few things in the process. I ran down to the security guys, and had to go through another round of English-to-Vietnamese translated explanations to get one of them to help out. A couple of them came and poked around the room, but again, no sign. They sure looked as if I was the ‘batty’ one around, squealing every time they probed a dark corner. One of them managed to convey to me that they were leaving, and I was to call them if it showed up again.

This time, I switched on all the lights in the house, opened the bedroom door and the main door, hoping that the bat would figure out the straight path out of the house, and waited, watching some cheesy suspense drama on DVD. Sure enough, half an hour later, the bat got sick of hiding, and came flapping out, and almost found its way to the main door. Alas! it hit the door on the wrong side, and got disoriented. I scrambled off to the bedroom to call back the security, while the bat unsuccessfully did a couple of rounds around the room before hiding away in disgust. When the security officer showed up, I did some ‘flapping’ imitation of the con dơi (bat) to explain the situation. He searched in all the dark corners, when suddenly he spotted it on the window curtain. (He) sneaked up from behind, caught it in a plastic bag, and took it away to my eternal relief!

Souvik got home late at night, and was regaled by my shriek-by-shriek account of the bat’s adventure. Later, when we shut down for the night, closed all the doors and windows, switched off the lights, …………. we heard squeaks again! Thank goodness I didn’t have to pretend at any sort of bravery, and let Souvik check it out. And yes, my fluttering heart, there was another bat. Was too late at night to try any stunts, we cheaply shut our bedroom door and let it settle in the drawing-room somewhere. That was last night.

Haven’t seen it all day today, not that we’re expecting to. It will probably make an appearance at night, when it’s safe for the bat to fly out. Until then, every tap, every scrape, every thump sends a shiver down my spine. Any bright ideas, people?