murciélago

I am normally a pretty tough cookie. Things that bother other people- spiders, snakes, mice etc generally do not phase me, unless of course the snake or spider is poisonous. But I have encountered an animal that I have to say sparks a great deal of disgust and loathing in my soul- the murciélago, or bat. I have been forced to cohabitate with these creatures since arriving in Costa Rica. They live in my roof and from the sounds of it, really seem to enjoy it. In my office when the sun shines, I can smell their presence. I suppose that’s the precious delicate scent de murciélago skat. Ancho described it as smelling like dirty feet. In fact, for about three months, Ancho claimed to not smell the nasty smell that was emanating from the office. When he finally conceded to the presence of a strange odor, he explained, “I just thought it was smelly feet, probably my own.” At night the little bastards hiss and squeak and brush their wings against the top of my ceiling. They are, in a word, repulsive. They smell repulsive, they look repulsive, they sound repulsive. They are repulsiveness animalified.
Despite the fact that I have cultivated a hate unlike any other for these animals, I have tried to manage my hatred. Instead of insisting on their quick and precise annihilation, I have replied to my neighbors, “Well, I suppose this is just a fact of living in the country.” They then reply and laugh, “no it’s just your house because of the type of roof that you have.” But they have mice or some other plague that I do not, so I comfort myself with that thought.
I have found ways to live with my unwelcome houseguests. I purchased a fan to conceal the nighttime noise. I bought scented candles and incense to cover the skat odor in my office. I try to ask myself, “what would the Dalai Lama do?” when confronted with an impulse to pay some campesino to rip off the roof and destroy every murciélago , every egg, every trace of my houseguests.
Today, however, my patient, zen approach to the little bastards was tested again. When I walked out in my usual morning fog to fill up the washing machine with water, I did the usual. I turned on the water on my backporch. I picked up the old red hose that I use to fill up the wash tank that sits just outside my bedroom window. I opened up the lid on the water tank of the washer. Felicia had used the washer last and there was a little bit of dirty water left in the bottom. I prepared to rinse it out. As I began spraying the walls and corners of the washer, I noticed what I thought was a large glob of mud in a bottom corner of the washer. Just before I touched the big glob of mud with my hand, I realized that it was not mud, but a living, breathing animal, looking pretty sluggish and out of it. At first, I thought it was a frog, as they like to get into all things wet. But then as my eyes focused I realized that this could not be the body of a frog. I realized one of those little bastards was curled up in my washing machine sleeping off a night’s work of killing bugs and other creatures.
The only silver lining to my tale is that I did not actually touch the little bastard. Instead, I did what any other reasonable person would do. I called Andres and Daniel, my ten and eleven year old neighbors to inspect and remove the bat from my washer. They were all too pleased to take over this duty from me and I was all to pleased to defer to their innate knowledge of all yucky animals to be found in the area. It was Andres, after all, who one day while I ate an early breakfast with Ancho, came in with a handful of tiny eggs explaining, “look murciélago eggs!” Needless to say, I lost my appetite.
So my young neighbors scooped up the little bastard with the stick I use when burning my toilet paper (which is a whole other story in itself). As they batted the murciélago into waking up (they are nocturnal after all), the bat clenched its teeth around the stick and Daniel carried it triumphantly downhill to show his mother, my landlady. As he carried the bat down the hill, it spread out its wings and looked officially even more repulsive than when I found it in the washer. In the washer he looked sort of waterlogged and small. Clinging to the end of a tree branch by his teeth with his wings outreached he looked, well, rather nasty.

Oh Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.