The bats own my house; I just pay the mortgage.

I’m not totally kidding. Right now, I live in the middle of a bat colony, which seems to have established itself in my attic. I’m not totally kidding about that, either; the Public Health Department considers my house a bat colony. Over the past several years, I have found about 14 bats in the house, having taken several to Public Health to be tested. They’re tired of me — Public Health, that is. (I don’t know about the bats). They have declared my bat colony free of rabies, however.

The number of bats that I’ve had to deal with over the years has actually resulted in reducing my fear of rabies in a real-world example of systematic desensitization. Be in the same house with a bat and not get bit? Check. Live with a bat-hunting cat? Keep them in quarantine and then give them a vaccination. Check. Almost step on a dead bat in the living room? Check. Pick up the dead bat with heavy gloves? Check. Worst case scenario? Get the rabies shots. Hasn’t happened yet.

I’m not crazy enough to adopt a bat as a pet, because they’re cute but they carry rabies, which means my attic colony is not without risk. And I want the colony out of there, which will happen soon while we repair the soffits on the old house that allowed this.

Bye bye bats.

Hydrophobiaphobia

I have an irrational fear and have had it for most of my life, which is quite a few years. Hydrophobiaphobia (I’m told this is what it’s called) is fear of contracting rabies. I fear that someday some animal is going to bite me, or even slobber on me, and I am never going to see it again, and then I’m going to get rabies and die.

Dying is almost inevitable in rabies. Only 29 people have survived rabies ever. Even with the Milwaukee protocol, a method of supportive treatment, most don’t survive. Luckily, rabies is rare. Only one to three people in the US die of rabies each year. This is in part because of the over 60,000 preventive vaccine series given each year.

That does not stop me from my fear. I’m better than I used to be as a kid when I would pet cats and dogs and ask myself if they’d bitten me and I just couldn’t remember. I would lose sleep at night checking for brain malfunction.

Nowadays, I just worry a bit and keep an extra close eye on my cats. It’s necessary because we have bats in the house. Cute, fuzzy little rabies vectors that cats like to play with. So it’s a matter of vaccinating the cats and making sure to bring the bats in to the Public Health Department to test for rabies. I think about the actions it takes to get the treatment if it comes to that. And my fear is much better, because I have a solution.

Soaking Up the Weekend

Mood

It’s Saturday, and we’re trying to wake up. Blasting “80’s Alternative Essentials” off Apple Music. I’m grooving on it. Not sure about whether my husband is grooving on it. His choice would have been Celtic; I needed something more wakey than that.

Another bat

(Note: we just packed up another bat for Public Health after we caught Chloe trying to eat it. We’re awake now.)

Weekends with my husband

The big difference for me between weekdays and weekends is that on the weekends, I have my husband all day Sunday and some Saturdays. Lately I don’t see him till 9 PM because he’s practicing to perform in a local musical. Now that I have him all day today, what are we going to do?

We’re in our 50’s. We’re probably going to sit in the living room and soak up the cool, listen to music. I’m probably going to edit my latest WIP. We’ll share things we find on the Internet.

When I hang out with my husband, it’s so much better than when I hang out alone. I can bounce things off him, make faces at him, joke with him.

I’m really scattered today

I keep jumping from task to task, and it’s taken me four or five tries to get this blog finished. I guess I’ll stop here.

Saturday Morning

As opposed to any other day of the week

Working at home in the summer (which consists of a lot of waiting around for things to happen and writing) makes every day blur into another. The only thing making sense of my days is my husband’s work schedule. He’s off on Mondays, works Tuesday-Thursday, off on Friday, at work every other Saturday.

Today is a Saturday when he works. Ideally, on a Saturday, I’d get rest. But I’ve been napping nearly every day, so I don’t need a restful Saturday. And I need to write 2k words for NaNo.

Today’s coffee

Today’s coffee is Wet Hull Java, roasted medium roast. We’ve been struggling to get the right grind for this bean — too fine and the extraction is sour; too coarse and it’s bitter. Today, we have it perfect.

There was another bat in the house

My husband can hear bats. This is handy for when we have bats, which is often in the summer. This one was down and behind the fake fireplace in the living room, and the little girl (Chloe, our youngest cat) was trying to smack the living daylights out of it. I’d say she was successful, because the bat crawled out of her reach like a half-drowned wreck survivor. Because Chloe had had extensive contact with a little creature that can bite you without you knowing and carry rabies, the bat will be going to Public Health to be tested for rabies.

I have a phobia of bats, but we’ve had so damned many in here that I only get them tested for rabies if they could reasonably had human or cat contact. And if I have to get rabies shots (something I think is inevitable someday given the number of bats we shepherd outside every summer), so be it.

What to do today

I have to do my NaNo writing today — so far I have written 4000 words or so toward Kel and Brother Coyote Save the World, and I estimate I have 14k or so left to write. I’m writing NaNo style, which is fast and fearlessly, and I dread the amount of editing I am going to have to do on this document. Outside of NaNo events, I write a little more slowly and thoughtfully. But this is Camp NaNo, and the mode is fast.

What are you doing this weekend?

Drop me a comment!