Going Batty

Over the summer, while Adam was in Seattle, I stayed away from Waterloo to the best of my abilities. Another housemate of ours, Trisha, had a workterm at OpenText and was never home during the day. The third housemate, Joe, was the only one who was consistently in the big, three story house alone. Occupying the smallest room of the house that was meant for Elvin, who was away on a workterm in Toronto, Joe began to see bats everywhere.

It was quite funny, mind you. I remember coming home one day and Joe coming to my room to tell me that there's a bat in the house and that I should keep my room door closed as much as I can. It was in his room in the middle of the night and he ran out of his room. After some investigations, which included an extensive search throughout the house, doing some googling, and having someone from animal control come over, we could not find the bat and Trisha concluded that it might be living in the Chimney and came out from the fireplace on the first floor (our main entrance is on the second floor and we live on the 3rd, the house is insanely big, as seen in the picture below).

From then on, the first floor was out of bounds for Joe. He was pretty scared. When I walk downstairs to do the laundry, he would immediately close the door behind me and I'd be left in the dark yelling at him to open the door (we didn't fix our lightbulbs down there yet and he stopped doing laundry in Waterloo). When I drive out of the remote control-less garage that can be accessed from the first floor and Joe happens to be outside, he would refuse to close the garage door from me so I would have to get out of the door, turn off the garage door, walk upstairs to the main entrances and walk back downstairs to my car.

Unfortunately, avoiding the first floor was not the end of misery for him. One night, while i was sleeping, I heard him storm out of his room and slam the door of the bathroom. At first i thought he had an emergency, but he told me the next day that the bat reappeared in his room. Another day, Trisha came home and found him sleeping in her bed and when she asked him what's going on, he replied, meekly, "I know you think I'm crazy, but there's really a bat in my room." The thing was, neither Trish nor I have seen this said bat. We were even told that the bat didn't just stay in Joe's room, but also "chased [him] around the living room, flapping at [him] while he had a laundry basket over his head."

When September started and Adam and Elvin moved back, Adam fixed all the lightbulbs in the house and moved in all the furniture and the house became cozy. No bat was heard of and when the subject came up, we all thought Joe really was a little...well...batty.

But then, this morning happened. At around 7am, I heard a lot of pounding, running around and talking next to our room. It sounded like Justin (who took over Trisha's room cuz she's always at her bf's house) and Elvin were taking the house apart. Adam and I got up to see what's going on Elvin tells us that he was woken up by a "bat" brushing his face. After running out of his room with his covers and without his shirt nor his glasses, he see the "bat" banging against the window. Why did I have to quote bat? Well it's because he couldn't actually see the bat without his glasses. After Elvin went to wake Justin to catch the bat together, the bat was nowhere to be seen. After all three guys tore his room apart, no bat was found.

Now, I am not saying Elvin is making this up, especially because we were told by the property manager that there are bats living around the area. But I'm actually a little freaked out because the whole thing sounds so weird.

First of all, where did this bat come from and why was it not around for the last 5 months? And secondly, why does it always appear in the same room and can only be seen by those who live in that exact room?

Here are several theories:

1. There is no bat: It was some flying creature and Elvin thought it was a bat because of Joe's craziness. But even if that is the case, there is a flying creature and we need to be a little worried.
2. There is no bat: The room is cursed and everyone who occupies this room sees bats randomly in the house.
   
3. There is a bat living in Elvin's room: The bat has been hibernating in Elvin's room over Fall and Winter and finally came out of hiding because the weather warmed up. But why was it not found when Joe moved out and Elvin moved in? Also everyone has been searching through every crevice of the room! Plus, bats usually live in colonies.
   
4. My hole theory: There is a hole in Elvin's room connected to the outside of the house. Bats can squeeze through a hole as small as 1cm and we just haven't located this hole.

Elvin has escaped back to Markham for the rest of this week and since reading week is next week, he won't be back for quite a while. Our plan is to tear his room apart to figure out where this thing comes from when he comes back. But if this bat does exist, then it might just show up randomly in the house in the next week or so and although I know Ontario brown bats are harmless because:

• There are no vampire bats in Ontario and also that vampire bats don't suck on human blood, and
  
• Ontario brown bats are helpful to the ecosystem and they are not blind nor do they get tangled in your hair,

it is still extremely nerve-wrecking to see one hanging around the house in the middle of the night.
Let's hope it's theory #2 for the sake of everyone's sanity except for Elvin's :P

Poor Elvin! =(