Bats Enjoy Diving at my Face

June 22nd, 2005 Posted in Essays

It’s true. My face is a magnet for bats. Maybe I secrete some manner of bat-friendly pheremone; maybe the craggy angles of my face translate to “comfy, dank rock outcropping” in bat-sonar. I admit I’m completely mystified as to the details. All I know is this: bats dive immediately, and without hesitation, for my face.

I can’t even take comfort in the fact that bats are known to dive at any human face, since they aren’t known for that at all. If offered a room of standing-room-only human faces in which to attack murderously while screeching, ten out of ten bats will exclusively attack mine. My face, it seems, simply triggers some deeply ingrained violence mechanism in bats — one which states, in clearest terms, “I, a bat, must now destroy this face.”

I first noticed this phenomenon at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. My girlfriend Karla and I had spent an enjoyable afternoon smoking cigarettes, making fun of fat children, taking patriotic hand-on-hearts snapshots of each other in front of bald eagles, and otherwise enjoying ourselves at the expense of others. We’d visited the seal house — a breed of mammal so hilariously meatloaf-shaped in design that we immediately dubbed them the “sausages of the sea” — then checked out the lions and tigers and bears, oh yes. We even watched monkeys fuck. Naturally we took pictures and applauded their efforts, to the terror and confusion of a nearby class trip group.

When we finally arrived at the bat part of the zoo — appropriately housed in the section that dealt with creepy, non-cute things like spiders and things excreting slime — there was a smallish cave-like exhibit separated from the populace by a thick pane of plexiglass.

Karla and I joined two other people gathered around the cave exhibit and watched several adorable looking rodent-things, snoozing upside down in the dark while perched meticulously on cave branches. Awwwwww. Lookit ‘em all scrunched up. Why, their wings are like a blanket! Hey, Karla, look — aren’t their wings totally like a blank—

A bat launches itself suddenly at my face, stopping only upon full-bore impact with the plexiglass divider, thumping against it with an irritated shriek.

At the sight of a screaming, flailing maniac bat flying directly at my face with teeth and claws bared, I do what any red-blooded male would do — I emit a small, high-pitched girlish wail and jump back in purest terror. The older couple next to us offers up a sympathetic chuckle at both the attack and my reaction. Karla, god bless her, emits a far less sympathetic chortle. I immediatley want to fill her face with bats.

My heartbeat drumming in my ears, I try to salvage the situation with light banter. “Man,” I say, “I didn’t see that com—”

Another bat chooses this awkward moment to also launch itself murderously at my face. As with the other bat, it shoots like a bullet into the glass divider, then flies guiltily back to its perch.

Once again, I squeal like a baby and jolt backwards. The older couple gives a sympathetic “They seem to like you!” comment. Ha ha. Karla, god bless her, just laughs and laughs and laughs, the bitch. Her face is so getting stuffed to bursting with bats. I suggest that we leave the bat exhibit just as a third bat launches itself at my face.

I’d assumed the incident was merely indicative of Chicago-area bats until today, when I was out on my deck this afternoon in the blazing California sun. I’d noticed a poor wayward bat, most likely miserable in the oppressive heat, trapped between my building and the building beside mine, and evidently looking for whichever belfy or attic it called home. Bats aren’t normally up so early, I mused — this little guy must have been up late partying, grabbing himself lots of delicious bugs and whatnot, then lost track of the time.

I’m quietly, motionlessly observing the poor little bat when — of course — it decides, from over twenty feet away, that my face would be the best possible place in which to launch a remorseless shrieking attack towards. Unlike at the Lincoln Park Zoo, I now lack a handy plexiglass divider between myself and the bat. I am acutely aware of this as I hit the deck and the bat soars over top of me into the wall.

Crisis averted, I now turn my attention to the matter of being trapped in a tiny closed-off deck with a rampaging angry bat. Allowing my finely honed jungle instincts to take over, I unhesitatingly start shrieking like a little girl. The bat, now more secure in its bearings, decides conclusively that the best course of action would be to, natch, launch itself directly at my face.

My hands come up defensively and wave around in a flurry, managing to glance the bat in mid-attack route, and sending it careening over the balcony and back out into daylight. I wisely decide to cut my losses and head back inside.

I’m starting to feel like that one guy at the bar who gets into fights all the time simply because he has a face people don’t like. Bats, I have to know: what’s the deal? What is it about my face that you hate so much? I have no problem at all with bats. Hell, I have a collection of Batman comics — I’m obviously a fan. Whenever a down-on-its-luck bat asks me for change on the street, I’m willing to offer up some change. So why the antagonism?

Or is it that you love me, and your attempts to express your love — dive-bombing my face like a B-11 Cyclone bomber — are just getting misconstrued by me — the cowardly, fetal-position-shrinking object of your affection?

I propose a classy truce, bats. You agree not to find my face irresistable for savagings; and I promise to keep in touch more. Have you over to the house once in a while, put on some light music and offer a generous selection of gourmet finger foods.

The ball’s in your court, bats. You have my cell.