Tonight is the night for tricks and treats and candy-corn dreams. Mummies doing the limbo, and problematic Halloween costumes. It is also that time of year to discuss how dads chase bats out of the house in a classic dad fashion. Bat Dad fashion.
It came up when the Cut news editor Callie Beusman noted that she’d suddenly become acquainted with the ubiquity of dad-chasing-bat stories, and asked people to share them:
last night I learned that a shockingly large majority of people have a very vivid story about their dad interacting with bats. please let me know if you, too, have a bat-and-dad story; they are my new passion
— Callie Beusman (@cal_beu) October 30, 2018
People shared, and it was clear that bats had been evicted through various means by many fathers throughout history, doing what dads do and taking whatever is near by and putting it to good use.
They used wood chippers:
My dad accidentally sent a bat through a wood chipper and inhaled the resulting bat mist and spent the next year worried he was about to develop rabies
— M. Owens (@eatsomefat) October 30, 2018
Margarine containers:
i actually do! my dad found a dead bat in our yard and for some reason put it in an empty margarine container in the fridge. A few days later my mom pulled it out and opened it and the bat flew out bc it actually wasn't dead thanks dad
— laura "hacked" lloyd (@lauralloyd) October 30, 2018
War:
a bat “invaded” our victorian house when i was a kid n my dad treated it like we were under siege he wouldn’t rest until the bat was out of the house it lasted all night none of us slept. idk what my dad was tryna prove to who his face was contorted with anger from the bat…..
— helen (@helen) October 30, 2018
Gladiator nets:
my dad used to like gladiator-net catch them with a blanket at the cottage while my sisters and i uncontrollably shrieked nearby
— monica heisey (@monicaheisey) October 30, 2018
Shoeboxes:
when i was a kid a bat got stuck in one of those mouse sticky traps and my dad spent all night using qtips and nail polish remover to free the bat. then he put it in a little shoebox home and put it outside. it was gone the next morning ¯_(ツ)_/¯ #savethebats
— Geraldine (@meangeraldine) October 31, 2018
Wicker Thanksgiving horns:
when I was 6 a bat got in my ballet studio and idk how my father was called but he brought the decorative wicker thanksgiving horn of plenty and a serving platter and scooped it out
— saint poor choices (@rodeo_cat) October 31, 2018
Brooms:
they used to fly over my dad's farm in virginia and he'd chase them with a broom
— paige (@belishabeacons) October 30, 2018
Smoke:
oh my god. i DO! when i was maybe 10 there was a whole family of bats living in our chimney — you could hear them Screeching at night. my dad smoked them out and we listened as they flapped away into the gathering darkness, still crying
— Helen Holmes (@helenbholmes) October 30, 2018
A towel:
YUP, one flew through our chimney so my dad wrestled them out with a towel and threw them into a starry, winter night.
— Jennifer ?️? (@JNohalani) October 31, 2018
A tennis racket:
yes; a bat flew into my childhood bedroom once and my dad tried to attack it with a tennis racket and a vacuum and then to lure it out of the house by playing a radio!
— Claire Fallon (@ClaireEFallon) October 31, 2018
And hockey sticks, like some game of Quidditch:
MY DAD went to help a friend's dad, who had a bat come through his fireplace. We lived in Northern Ontario (Canada), so they went at it with parka hoods up, goalie masks on and hockey sticks flailing. I've heard this story 5k times. I do not know if they caught/killed the bat.
— Lauren Ballem (@curlylfb) October 30, 2018
Some dads are not so great at bat removal:
We had about a dozen bat incidents in our house growing up, we never got used to them, it scared everyone. the worst one was my dad having to figure out a way to clean up a bat eating a dead bat in my Barbie house. He puked and threw the whole thing out lol
— Lauren Nostro (@laurennostro) October 31, 2018
And even granddads have gotten in on some bat action:
I had a bat-and-granddad story! A bat flew into my grandparents' house & settled in my grandfather's bathroom. There was an epic battle involving a tennis racket. He was wearing a bathrobe and was highly stressed (my grandpa, not the bat, though the bat was likely stressed too.)
— cruella dawson (@brosandprose) October 30, 2018
Nice, glad there was something good on Twitter this week. But did the dads do it right?
The better course of action would be to close the bat off in a single room, open a window, turn off the light, and leave it alone until it rights itself, dads wouldn’t be dads if they didn’t overdo it and jump into action, turning it into a battle to reestablish the patriarch’s true authority over his domain. That means gearing up and eradicating the bat through any method possible until the bat is gone. It could take a minute, it could take hours or it could take all night. But make no mistake: Dad will get that goddamn bat out of the goddamn house.
Still, the highest possible honor for best Bat Dad goes to the Irish Bat Dad, who shows immeasurable calm, restraint and endearing dedication in the face of a rogue bat flitting around the kitchen. The Missus stands in the adjacent room peering through the door glass, the dog pisses on the floor amid all the commotion and the son narrates the chase, coaching him: “Catch it! Catch it!”
What a crazy day ????? #BatDad #CatchHim pic.twitter.com/ztXpAf03qn
— Tadhg Fleming (@TadhgFleming) September 5, 2017
It’s reminiscent of Dan Aykroyd and John Candy’s bat stare-down in The Great Outdoors:
But as of press time, there has still been no Bat Dad moment to surpass Irish Bat Dad, though San Antonio Spurs player Manu Ginóbili swiping a bat in mid-air during a 2009 game comes pretty darn close:
For the record, the bat lived. Ginóbili, also a dad, did a pretty dad thing after and didn’t gloat. Instead, he let everyone know that bats are pretty cool and we shouldn’t really be messing with them. He did not want to kill it. Also, he got a rabies shot.
Perhaps you don’t care, and you’re simply wondering: How did this fucking bat get into my house?
Bats don’t typically fly into open windows to haunt our homes on purpose. Their presence in our homes is more of an accident: They unwittingly chase after a moth or insect into our lair, or slide in through a gap or crack to take refuge in an attic to roost or nurse, mostly attracted to more pleasant temperatures inside because they’re so sensitive to the air around them. They’re more likely to be inside because they got lost in the walls shifting around when the temperatures changed and are trying to find their way out. On occasion, they end up in a washing machine, which usually doesn’t turn out well (for the bat).
That might be why dads and bats can wage such a relatively friendly war. Even though the bat is an unwanted guest, there’s also a grudging respect: It would be unfair of man to treat him like a predator when he’s simply a nuisance who has gotten lost, and just like any man, will absolutely not stop to ask for directions.
This gentleman’s agreement allows men to rescue their family from the bat, but also the bat from itself — satisfying a primal urge to conquer nature while still remaining a civilized specimen of humanity. He saves his family. He sets the bat free. Order is restored.
That’s what a colleague told me when I asked our fellow MEL men why dads seem to like chasing bats out of rooms so much.
“Do they?” Jeff Gross told me. “I guess there’s a hero complex at play. Shooing a blood-sucking fiend has traditionally been a man’s job.”
For what it’s worth, it is also now a couples Halloween costume.
What’s the best couple’s Halloween costume you’ve seen? My girlfriend and I got a pretty good suggestion of “A Dad” and “The Bat He is Desperately Trying to Get Out of the House.”
— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) October 31, 2018
