In the fashion of all proper fairy tales, the cottage now has its own villian.
It is a bat. His name is Christopher, resident narcissist, apple stealer and drama queen. He is not pleasant, but he looks a little like Mickey Mouse so it will be very difficult for me to put a hit out on him - even though I know a frog. He operates at night. Hangs upside down during the day and can play dead very effectively if the need arises. (The need arises quite often as I have now had a small array of charming, willing people at the cottage all wanting to remove him from the immediate vicinity of my favourite tree).
Christopher's presence makes me roll my eyes to the sky often wondering out loud why the universe would send me quite such a troublesome creature at a time that I stopped eating chocolate.
He arrived, quite unexpectedly, at the cottage right in the middle of a heatwave. He woke me up flapping about. I implemented my strange-creature-in-the-house-emergency-plan. Step 1: Do not switch on light as light might confirm that the situation is as bad as you think it is. Step 2: Convince self that flapping thing in house is small swallow that again missed the turn to nest and ended up in house. (This happens quite often). Step 3: Stop googling "do birds fly at night." Step 4: Consider calling father or some other form of help. Dismiss plan because of nice, considerate nature. Step 5: Check if all innoculations up to date. Don't switch on light as might confirm presence of bat. Rather read by light of cellphone which will make bat swoop around in fashion of crazy villian. Step 6: Close bedroom door as still is save from bat flapping and get some sleep. Step 7: Deal with problem in the morning if still cannot convince self that bat left on own accord.
The next day, while I had guests over for lunch, with impeccable dramatic timing, Christoper dropped from behind a painting onto the floor where he played dead. Lucky I had a glass of bubbly in hand as resusciation tool and a father on hand who heroically folded him up in a copy of the Weekend Post, like an evil package of fish and chips, and took him outside.
You might all think that I am overreacting now, but wait until you see a bat fly. They are just so damn evil. They sort of slither around in the air and in Christopher's case did not even have the decency to look upset about the whole embarrasing-falling-down-from-behind-the-painting-during-lunch thing.
I thought that after the swift justice dealt by my dad, he would have been too scared to come back. But noooo not Christopher. The next night as I was taking out some apples for Jean-Luc the mongoose, I saw something twinkle in the moonlight. There he was hanging on a branch of my favourite tree.
"You can't come in," I say. He twinkled his eyes at me. "And I want to suggest that you find another tree, the geese will drive you nuts. (The geese still haven't returned from their recent sojourn to the dam where they do make their presence known at all hours by clearly terrorising all water creatures in the vicinity.)
Unfortunately I also, in a moment of great bravery, evicted Rambo the frog from the garage, so we didn't even have any froggy firepower.
Jean-Luc and I looked at each other. We both rolled our eyes.
"We have owls," I said. "And a veritable neighbourhood watch of stealth ninja-swallows. I don't think you must stay, for your own safety."
Christopher twinkled his eyes at me.
I left it at that.
The next morning I phoned for assistance. Got a long sermon pointing out that bats "can be territorial." Bloody hell.
Joined Jean-Luc and Christopher for another chat on the stoep.
"Are you territorial?" I asked. Christopher twinkled his little eyes at me and scratched his ear in a way that makes me think he means more terrorist than territorial.
I roll my eyes again, looking at Jean-Luc. "Why do we always get the territorial ones?" I ask.
Jean -Luc look at me clearly asking: "I know!!!!!!!! They are all like Rambo." Jean-Luc pretended not to like Rambo, but like me he is a little sad that our friend now lives in the dam with the geese.
I proceeded to tell Christopher about the day the swallows evicted Awful-Noise-Bird from the cottage. He didn't look scared. In fact I am quite sure he waited until I was inside to eat the last of Jean-Luc's apples.
So yesterday Helpful-person-who-do-dirty-jobs-I-am-too-scared-to-do arrive at the cottage with a plastic bag, looked around tree, plucked Christopher from his little sleeping perch and left.
"You don't have a nest, only this one," he said walking away rather purposefully with Christopher in bag.
Of course I felt like a gangster who just paid someone to take someone else "out" in Godfather way not in dating way. Jean-Luc looked elated. I just felt bad until the evening when I realised that Christopher was back again cheerfully waving his evil little wings from the tree - making me regret the thought that a territorial, slightly evil twinkle in the eye is so damn hard to find.
