Over the past weekend I’ve spent more time on the road than any other weekend this year, but over half of that time was spent in a car full of family and good friends.
After a long and eventful couple of days, it was good to walk back through the doors of the place we call home. Everything seemed as it always did, and we began to settle down for the night.
Exhausted and weary my husband and I crawled into bed only to discover a flitter in our upstairs hallway. Knowing all of our children were tucked into bed, my husband became curious and went out into the hallway. “You’re not going to believe this.” He told me. “I think there’s a black bird in our house.”
“A black bird?” I could hardly believe a bird had gotten into our house. “How did that happen?” I went to the doorway.
“Nope, I lied.” He confessed. “You may want to stay in here and shut the door.”
“Why?” There was a bird in our house!
“Well,” he admitted after a long moment’s pause. “I don’t think it’s a bird.”
“What do you mean? Then what is it?” I poked my head from around the bedroom door and looked down the hallway. This is what I saw…
Hanging right over the door frame of my son’s bedroom. At the sound of the soft shutter of my camera, our unexpected houseguest took flight once more, down the hall, down the stairs, and into our living room. My husband opened our front door and grabbed a box.
“What now?” I asked.
“You can go back inside our room and shut the door, or you can help.”
I grabbed a laundry basket and stood at the top of the stairs cringing that it would fly back my way. For several moments black fluttered through our foyer and I could hear the scramble of wings against a cardboard box as my dear husband attempted to capture it and send it packing.
However, our unexpected houseguest had other ideas and decided to return back up the stairs – right into my laundry basket. I thought my heart would explode and once I realized it had hit the inside of the laundry basket I shuddered. I gave the bat a toss back towards my husband and it flew out our front door.
“Hurry up shut the door.”
As my husband shut the door, I sat on the stairs with a big sigh of relief. Our unexpected houseguest was flying off through the night, hopefully to find more suitable accommodations.


