Photostory Friday and Boo Radley

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

632 North Brainard was an 74 year old Sears Catalog home, The Vallonia, with an addition built on it sometime in the 1950's. This was our first house. The best part of this house was that it was down the street from the house me, my sister, and my mom were born in: 839 N Brainard-my grandpa had given the house to my parents, so my first house was on the same street as theirs-I don't know why that is significant, but it just is. Anyway, it was my dream to someday have my own daughter be born on the same street, and when we bought this house I thought for sure we were on the right track. Well, Sophie was created in this home, but THANK GOD she wasn't born here. Looking back on this house I realize that almost every story is fantastically funny, gross, ridiculous, or just plain stupid. At least to me. So every once and awhile I will, like today, throw in a story about the house that just wasn't meant to be Sophie's. Again, Thank GOD!
I took the picture below with an actual Polaroid camera back in 2001, and will use it for every story- adding a new element to represent whatever the story is about.......should be a completely full picture by the time I'm done! So here goes. Oh and this story will be broken up into 3 chapters (posted separately because I tend to be long winded)

To Kill a MockingBat!*

Chapter One: What's all the racket?

Nate and I woke up one night to the sound of very loud scuffling going on in the room next door to our bedroom. This room could only be accessed through a tiny service door in our closet and it gave way to an unused, unfinished attic, that had once been almost turned into an upstairs bathroom. You can imagine our surprise when we heard the sound of what we thought were a bunch of feet dragging across the floor. I was instantly scared, as I am the biggest chicken on the planet, and Nate just laughed and said it's either the wind or a bird. Oh My God! I made him check it out immediately.

Once he crawled through the tiny 3 foot door, he fumbled for the string attached to the light bulb. While fumbling, something did a fly-by close enough for him to feel the breeze on his ears, and close enough for him to abort turning on the light and run back to our bedroom.

"Yep, it's a bird," he told me. "It just about clipped my ear as it flew by. Totally freaked me out."

Great. So there's a bird. A bird doing fly-bys in my attic. Nice. OK Tweetie, game on!

Well, about two weeks later, Nate was on his way back upstairs in the middle of the night, (there was no bathroom on the second floor) when he thought he saw something fly through the living room. He told me about it the next morning, trying to be casual enough not to alarm me, that the bird has somehow made it out of the attic into the house. I got alarmed. Very alarmed.

One night not long after that we were watching TV in the family room when the bird decided to come on out for another little game of hide and seek. This time we saw it -plain as the couches we were sitting on-this was NO bird. It flew way to fast, but not in a straight line, and it's wings were crooked. At least that's what we thought. I had insta-chills and involuntary tears ran down my face when we realized we had a bat in our home. It was a bat. A real live bat, mocking us every once and awhile-literally playing peek-a-boo. OK, so Tweetie is renamed Boo. A real live Boo Radley in our own home. Good times.

Not really. I totally freaked out. I mean completely melted down. I couldn't stop crying and there was no way I was going to fall asleep. We called animal control and asked what to do. They said to literally sleep with a tennis racket within reach and keep the lights on because bats typically don't go in bright places. They would be there in the morning to help us catch it.

All night long the lights stayed on in the entire house. All night long I slept with tennis racket on my face like a mask. I'm not kidding. All night long. I was so freaked out. Thankfully, Boo was done playing for the night.

When animal control got there the next morning, they said that a bat can fit through a hole the size of a dime and can even hide behind a picture hung on a wall-they are that small. They have a wing span of about 12 inches though when flying. **shudder** So, they searched the house,but told us it was like finding a needle in a haystack. They took a tour outside and found a hole between the wall and the roof the bat probably used to get in. I have that spot marked in the picture above. They then told us, in order to find out if there was more than one! (HOLY CRAP), we had to watch the outside of the house and wait at dusk to see if any bats came out. More than one? OMG! They said if it was a colony, they would come out at dusk. (A colony is anywhere from 20 to 30 bats. Yes, that's right a small colony that is...20-30 BATS!!!! ~OMG again.)

Stay home to see if a colony of bats lived in my attic, or have a drink with my cousins at girls night out. Hmmm. Yeah. Poor Nate. He was sitting in the side yard, flashlight in hand, waiting for dusk as I kissed him bye bye--going to have drinks with the girls. He just sat there in a lawn chair staring at his own house. I can't imagine what our neighbor's thought of us. He stayed that way for 3 hours.

After all of this he saw nothing. No bats in; no bats out. We concluded no colony. Phew! But Boo was still there and still playing peek-a-boo. For two more weeks..........we started to get used to it....we even put the rackets down, and eventually I was able to turn the bedroom light off to go to sleep, but I always left the TV on.

to be continued.

*I don't mean to steal the famous title like I'm some sort of Harper Lee author myself, but every time I remember this particular story I think of the book To Kill A Mockingbird. I can't help it. There are a couple more references to the book as the story continues, basically just playing on the metaphor that the title itself suggests.
Every single story from 632 N Brainard is a true story btw; I'm not creative enough to make this stuff up. Scout's honor! hee hee