Night Wanderings

I’m sweaty, Husband is coughing and hacking, and I can’t sleep.  But this is a large house and there are empty beds upstairs.

In the blackness of our unfamiliar bedroom I shuffle across the floor, toward the spiral staircase and a sliver of light.  The stairs are stone, wedge-shaped, five hundred years old and lack hand railings.  If I fall I won’t stop until I reach rock bottom.

I carefully pick my way towards the lit upper floor and flick the switch off while taking aim for the bed.  I lie in the darkness and listen for noises.  I worry that one of the kids is up and wandering, but I don’t hear creaking doors.

The erratic, swooshing sounds continue and I consider that the house may be haunted. Whatever the source, sleep does not come.  I am back out into the pitch blackness, feeling for the light switch that I know is out there somewhere.

In the light, I realize my terrible mistake; a half-dozen bats swoop and dart in the low rafters above my head.  I phobically envision them tangled in my wild, naturally curly hair.

I bolt back to our bedroom but one has followed me.  I cower in a fetal position behind the door while Husband whips at it with a towel.  He wears it down and captures it in a drinking glass.  I can’t even be coaxed out of the corner to snap a photo.

Husband closes the upstairs door and the window.  In the morning, the bats are gone, evidently escaping back through small gaps between the ceiling and the rafters.

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We pick Marco up at the train station and he laughs at my irrationality.  It didn’t occur to him to mention the bats in his house primer.  However, he holds up his hand, fingers widespread. His personal kryptonite takes a different form.

The indigenous Tegenaria Duellica spider is the large but shyer relation of the hyper-aggressive American Wolf Spider.  “Thick, hairy legs,” he tells me, “and they are lightning-quick…”

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My moral dilemma is this: the cousins from Italy arrive in two weeks and will be sleeping in the upstairs rooms.  Do I/we ‘fess up to the potential of bats or just hope it doesn’t happen again?  Would you want to know?  Or is ignorance bliss?