I can handle spiders. I can handle earwigs. I can handle the pigeons that insist on mating on my balcony, but bats make me hate nature. Such was my dilemma come finals week last semester. In an attempt to be a good person I left work early to begin studying for my economics final. The freak of nature lying in my hallway halted my plans.

I can handle spiders. I can handle earwigs. I can handle the pigeons that insist on mating on my balcony, but bats make me hate nature.

Such was my dilemma come finals week last semester. In an attempt to be a good person I left work early to begin studying for my economics final. The freak of nature lying in my hallway halted my plans.

I should give a bit of background about how this predicament came to be. One of my roommates had a leak in her room, leading our rental company to cut a hole in the ceiling to get to the pipe. Thus, the spawn of Satan was allowed to enter our apartment.

The scene went something like this: I walked into my apartment, exchanged pleasantries with my two of my roommates and I went to the kitchen to get a quick snack before becoming the perfect student. That’s when I saw the demon on the floor in front of my roommate’s door.

At first I wasn’t sure what it was. I mean, when you think of bats, you picture them hanging in dark, ominous caves before plunging their fangs into innocent animals and small children.

This one lay on the ground, its bitty booty stickin’ up in the air and talons extended in front of it. It seemed like it was trying to bury its head in our carpet, which I can only imagine is a result of the shame it felt from not being able to hang from our ceiling.

We couldn’t even get a cool, vicious bat … we got a bat with a complex.

I informed my roommates of my suspicions and none of us had any idea what to do. One of my roommates tried to make a quick break for our balcony before realizing we were three stories up and our balcony is lacking a staircase to the outside world.

The other roommate crept over to the hallway in question and turned on a light. Sure enough, there was the bat, planted right in front of a makeup kit.

Needless to say, we freaked out.

But freaking out in this situation didn’t produce any progressive results for a while. Unless you consider Googling “bats” and “rabies” progressive. All we really obtained was the fact that we should cover our limbs in an attempt to prevent being bitten. Thank you, information highway, without your infinite wisdom we might’ve tried to fight the beast off with a naked tribal ceremony.

So we regrouped, declaring war on the pest. We donned our uniforms (which consisted of my roommates wearing firemen helmets from Halloween while I wore a construction hat) and pulled our hoods over the headgear. You never can be too careful when dealing with a creature folklore tells you will go for the neck.

Dressed in our best, we were fit for survival. That was until we found out animal control runs on a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. basis, and we’d have to at least trap the animal in a room before the police would get in touch with the on-call person.

And the fiend had disappeared.

Clearly the rascal was mobile, and it was somewhere in our apartment, though we had no idea where or what exactly we would do should we find it. I had a kitchen knife, but I’m not really an athlete so the reality of me using it for self-defense was questionable. It’s more likely that I’d inadvertently injure myself in my hunt than anything else.

Thank God for my brother.

Following a panicked call from his older sister, my brother made his way to my humble bat-infested home. He came in carrying what I can only describe as some sort of enlarged butterfly net that I’m pretty sure is used for fishing or other sorts of manly deeds. We checked every room to see if we could find the critter, including raiding closets and probing under beds, but it was to no avail.

Our bat, the aptly named Batman, hid from our limited human vision. My brother covered the hole in the ceiling and left. There really wasn’t much any of us could do anymore, and there was no sense in keeping him around to be another victim should an attack materialize.

So we attempted to sleep. I hung the ugliest stuffed animal monkey ever created from my doorknob, thinking it would work as a voodoo repellent to the demonic force plaguing my apartment.

Maybe the monkey was something a superstitious old woman would do, but it worked. The bat didn’t get me. No, no … it landed on my roommate’s leg while she was sleeping.

At about 6 a.m. she called me, telling me that the demon was trapped within her down comforter on the floor. I collected a large bowl and a pasta strainer from my kitchen and took the weaponry to her room. We gently pulled back the comforter from its resting spot on the floor, hoping to trap the little bugger before it went for us.

But it wasn’t there. It had crawled into one of her boots, and when she discovered that, she threw the boot at me.

I can’t blame her. It’s an automatic reaction to distance yourself from danger, not to mention she had already made contact with the little devil. I just happened to be standing across from her, holding a pasta strainer in self-defense.

I’ve never been so happy to see animal control in my entire life.