The Adventures on the Farm Continue..

Last night Micah went to go look for ice cream in our basement freezer.  He came running back up saying there was something flying in the basement.

Who was going to go investigate this situation?  Let me set the stage...

The family stood in the kitchen, 4 had wide eyes and the "I'm not going down there look" on their faces.  The decision had been made without a word being spoken, it was up to me to go down into the dark basement to discover what was flying around.  I armed myself with the first thing I could think of that I might need to "take care" of the situation... an empty pizza box.  Yup, I went armed with a pizza box.  Sadly, my weapon of choice, a tennis racket, we do not own.

I lead the troops back downstairs.  Kevin grabbed a pizza box too, and I was really proud that he and the kids followed me down as my backup.  I told them all to stay low, bats usually fly towards the ceiling, and we started searching to see if we could find this black-winged flyer.

We came up empty handed.  Couldn't find that creature anywhere.  As we come back upstairs Micah was a bit worried about the bat.  He says "doesn't bats carry rabies?" I asked him what the other name for rabies was, he replies "hydrophobia." It is so fascinating to me that after we learn about something, life has a way of bringing it back up.

We had watched Old Yeller a few weeks previous and then just the day before we learned all about Louis Pasteur. He was a French Chemist that discovered a vaccine for anthrax and Rabies (pasteurization is named after him as well).  He was thrown into a situation where a Russian doctor brought a little boy who had been bitten by a rabid animal.  Pasteur had a choice to make, either he could walk away from this little boy and the boy would die, or he could try to save him with the vaccine he had been working on which could kill the boy or save his life.  He opted to try and save his life.  Pasteur has quite an amazing story, he was made fun of most of his life for his beliefs of washing hands, boiling medical instruments, and vaccines.  But he believed in what he was doing and never gave up... his unwavering determination saved thousands if not millions.

Anyway, this is the second time someone has seen a flying creature in the basement.  Both times the witness came running back up instead of staying and seeing where the bat went.  Bats can fit through ridiculously small holes/cracks, for those of you that haven't seen my basement... basically my whole basement fits that criteria!

Even with the bats, I'm thankful for this old house and the adventures we are having here!