A surprise in the laundry room...

I found a dead bat in the washing machine the other day.

That’s right, a dead bat. A bit mummified, really, and quite, quite dead.

Earlier in the day, I had been looking around the storage room in the basement in our hundred-year-old house, digging through boxes that had once belonged to my husband’s old roommates, who have all moved on to their own adventures in homeownership. I was looking to see if anything was worth keeping. Something caught my eye that I thought would be good for our pup.

We only recently got a dog – just three weeks ago, actually. She’s a good dog: seems very smart, mostly obedient, though she likes to jump up on unsuspecting people, worryingly, often the elderly. Anyhow, she sleeps in a kennel – if she didn’t, she’d be in bed with my husband and myself, which, as you know, would have us end up squashed together on the far end of the bed while the brazen hound takes up the middle. So, to keep her comfortable in the kennel, we’ve put in an old pillow, a comfy old blanket, a few of her toys in an attempt to make a nice doggy comfort space.

Righteo now, don’t forget about the bat. While digging around in the storage room, I came across a box with old books, childhood knickknacks, and a frayed blue towel, presumably all from ancient roommate times. Looking at the towel I thought to myself, gee, this would be great for the dog to slobber on instead of the couch corner. So I pulled it out, popped it into the washing machine with a few blankets that needed a freshening up, and went on my merry way.

Guess where the bat was?

My suspicion is that it was on the old, raggedy blue towel. Somehow, I didn’t notice it when I pulled it out of the box, or when I put it into the washing machine.

When the wash cycle was finished, I went back down into the basement, folded the dry clothes and started lifting the wet blankets and towels from the washer into the dryer. Something strange was at the bottom of the wash tub – something dark and rumpled, with a few sticky-out bits, like the top of an eggplant looks a few hours after being cut off.

I poked it with my finger.

Squish.

Oh no, I thought: that’s not an eggplant top. Realising that it might be something that once had a pulse, and praying that it hadn't survived the spin cycle, I pulled a clean dusting cloth out of the pile on the dryer and slowly, gingerly even, picked up the rumpled dark thing.

I turned it over, and ah! It had a face! A fuzzy, tiny face with slightly chubby cheeks! Slightly chubby, mummified cheeks.

The dog was standing right behind me, as she always does, little shadow that she is, and was looking up at the thing in my hand, head cocked to one side, ears perked up with interest. I assumed, of course, that she wanted to eat it, being a dog that will eagerly eat horse poo.

I took a slightly closer look at the thing without actually bringing my face closer to it – was it a mouse? No, those arm bones were much too long and papery looking – that was a bat, and it was (eek):

        a) in the house

                      

        b) in the flipping washing machine

Pinching it between my thumb and forefinger as far away from my face as possible, I dropped it into the trash bin along with the used dryer sheets, lint, and the remnants of the ‘I’m single, not desperate’ mug I’d accidently knocked off the counter with a broomstick a few weeks ago. And out with it to the trash can in the alleyway. In went the bleach to the washing tub, along with the now definitely unclean but clean-smelling laundry.

I’ve never found a tiny, creepy animal in my home before – and I’ve had a lot of homes. Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. There was the time when a squirrel came in through the skylight of my yurt in Idaho, ran a panicked circle around my roommate’s legs, and beat a path out the door. That was really only for a minute or so. It hadn’t set up residence, and it certainly wasn’t there long enough to become mummified.

Mummified! That brings us back to thought of how it squished a little when I poked it. I think it might’ve become rehydrated in the wash.

Ew.

My sister in law once had a family of skunks set up home beneath her porch in college. That was probably worse than this. Skunks carry rabies, too, and with them comes the danger of them spraying the whole place with their foul odor... and if they’re living under the porch, there’s probably a good chance that they’ll scurry into the house while you’ve got the screen door propped open on moving day. Just imagine that for a second. 

I suppose my dad has caused a few creature-in-the-house near-misses himself. My father has what you might call an affinity for squirrels, a desire to bond with them and develop lasting human-rodent friendships. He loves to feed the neighborhood squirrels, and has even attempted to train them to eat from his hand as he crouches down on the ground nearby. Yes, he's retired. About four years ago, he started laying a trail of unsalted in-the-shell peanuts along the top of the garden fence, with the last peanut set just outside the front door. The result was this: arriving to visit my parents and coming face-to-face with a squirrel, perched on the fence mere inches from my nose, a squirrel now totally unafraid of human contact. One day, while home from his faraway job, my older brother opened the door to find a squirrel, upside down, suspended by its claws from the screen. That was not something that my mother had ever hoped to experience. By the end of that winter, all of the trained squirrels had since died without teaching their offspring to trust the white-haired man on the corner.

Well, no more bats have shown up since the fuzzy cheeked, mummified squashy thing emerged from the washing machine three days ago. By now it can be filed under ‘just another horrible story to tell in the pub.' 

Hopefully.