Okay, to hell with that. I’ve been trying to “go Vietnamese” lately and not use my air conditioning. I’ve been just sleeping with the windows open and fans going, etc. It’s pretty comfortable at night, but not so nice during the day. But electricity is fairly expensive here and I figured if all of the Vietnamese could make it with no air conditioning, so could I.

Again, to hell with that. I was sitting here on my couch typing an email about ten minutes ago when a damn bat flew through my open window and dive-bombed me. Well, he probably wasn’t really trying to dive-bomb me, but he came through the window and came straight at me, so from my perspective he was dive-bombing me.

Let me just say that it is amazing how fast you will abandon to whatever forces of physics might come into play a relatively expensive item like a laptop when a damn bat is dive-bombing you. Inside your apartment. I threw my laptop over onto the couch beside me so I could jump up and get the hell away from that bat – but it might as well have been onto the floor or out the window. I didn’t really care at that point.

Anyway, as I maneuvered away from the bat, it looked to me like he flew back out of the window. But he was actually just behind my curtains – still inside my apartment. Which I soon realized when he (she? I am not a bat-sexer) dive-bombed (dove-bombed?) me again. I got out of his/her way again, and watched him/her . . . it land on the top shelf of my bookshelf.

I opened up the front door and opened up a back window – trying to give it as many ways as possible to get the hell out of my apartment. Then I took a pillow and hit the back of the bookshelf, making the bat fly off and back out into the room. (Oh, I should probably mention that by this point, I had put on my red rain poncho, thinking that if I covered my body up with as much plastic as possible, I was less likely to be bitten and catch rabies or syphilis or whatever the hell bats in Vietnam might be packing. So at least I looked cool as I danced around my apartment like a scared girl trying to get this bat out of here.)

Anyway, to my chagrin, the bat did not fly out of the open windows or doors, and instead flew into my bathroom and landed on the water line to my shower – hanging there upside down looking nasty and threatening and generally creepy. (I should probably also say that this was a pretty small bat. It looked like a little mouse with wings. But I still did not want the damn thing anywhere near me. If you think I was overreacting, let me let a bat – however small – loose in your home and see how you react.)

So I took my yellow Tom & Jerry pillow of death and hurled it at the wall next to the bat on my shower line. (I didn’t want to kill it, just make it fly out of the bathroom and hopefully out of my apartment.) The bat flew onto the floor of my bathroom and sat there looking pitiful on the floor in the corner of the bathroom. I decided that I would try to put a garbage can over the bat, then slide a piece of cardboard under the bat and carry it out of my apartment.

I turned on the light in the bathroom so I could see better, and the bat flew or hopped or did some nasty bat-like maneuver and ended up in the other corner of the bathroom behind the toilet. (I should probably mention that before this happened, as I was steeling my nerves to try to put the garbage can over the bat, I was talking to the bat. Literally. Out loud. I think my exact words were “Look, dude, I want you out of here more than you want out of here. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to get you out of here.” I’m serious.)

Anyway, the bat was now behind the toilet and I couldn’t see it. So I had the idea to grab the little water hose/bidet thing next to my toilet. (It looks like the thing on your kitchen sink where it has a flexible hose and a little water gun at the end and you squeeze the handle and water comes out. A lot of the toilets here have them – I assume they’re to keep your toilet clean, because god forbid . . . anyway.)

So I grabbed that thing off of the wall and started spraying water behind the toilet. A lot of water. The bat did not fly out. So I got up the nerve to crane my neck and peer over the edge of the toilet, and I saw that the bat had landed in another garbage can between the toilet and the wall. it was laying there looking as pathetic as only a wet bat trapped behind a toilet can look.

I saw this as my big chance, and quickly put the garbage hand I was holding over the other garbage can – making a nice little cage for the bat. Got him/her/it!

I started to carry it outside and let it go, but I remembered that Thao was coming by my apartment in a few minutes to drop something off so I let the bat sit there for a few minutes so Thao could see it. After Thao checked it out and was suitably creeped out, I used my bunched-up poncho to pick up the garbage cans and carry them and the bat outside where I let it go.

Anyway, I immediately shut all windows and doors and fired up the air conditioners. My little experiment at living like a Vietnamese with no air conditioning has come to an abrupt halt. I don’t care if my air conditioning bill is $300 a month, I am not going to be attacked by bats in my own joint. Can you imagine if that damn thing had flown in during the middle of the night and landed on me as I slept? You would probably not be reading about this because I probably would have had a heart attack.