Cuckoo… do you remember my post many moons ago about the bats? Well if you don’t or if you are reading this blog for the first time check out Like Father Like Son. Why, you might ask, and justifiably so, is this relevant? I’ll tell you. Because I fucking bought my in-laws’ house — that’s right — the bat house. Except that for the past five years there haven’t been any bats, because finally a miracle happened and some genius from the local pest control company figured out where the bats were coming in and plugged up the holes. Or so we thought.

I wondered just how confident my in-laws were about this development. I was not surprised but simultaneously not comforted by the discovery, upon moving in this past June, that a tennis racket still hung on the back of the bedroom door on a hook, “just in case.” If you don’t know what I am talking about then stop, do NOT pass go, and immediately read the post I referred you to in the first paragraph!!!

There’s nothing like bat tennis, let me tell you. Ridiculous, I proclaimed, and promptly removed said tennis racket and relegated it to the basement. We certainly won’t be needing that, I thought (and may have even said it out loud). A couple of weeks after moving in an invoice arrived from that local pest control company for the special “bat” service, which was an extra annual fee. I called my father-in-law. Do we really need this, I inquired? He convinced me to keep it “just in case” for one more year. What the hell, I figured, and sent in the check.

Fast forward to three nights ago. I was home alone with my father who was staying over so that I could drive him into Boston for cataract surgery the next morning. I came down the morning of the surgery at about 5 o’clock to make a coffee and saw what appeared to be fresh animal droppings on the counter. Shit, I thought (literally). A mouse.

And then it occurred to me that although it might be a mouse, it could, in fact, be… yes, you guessed it, a bat. Dang.

I texted my FIL. He responded with a barrage of inquiries concerning the size, texture and general nature of the excrement. The gist was that guano (a/k/a bat shit) looked very similar to mouse shit (a/k/a mouse shit) and that it might be that we had a bat. That they had returned. That we were foiled. That the five bat-free years were simply a fluke. Fuck.

I contemplated a (potentially rabid) bat flying around on the third floor with my 86-year-old dad. I contemplated it swooping down and heading for his newly operated eye. Not great. I thought about retrieving the tennis racquet from the basement. It was so old it didn’t even have an oversized head. Just a Dunlap or Wilson circa 1978. Jesus.

Given the task at hand, however, (cataract surgery), I pushed these thoughts aside, cleaned up the rodent poop with spray (Mrs. Meyer’s, of course) and a paper towel, threw it in the trash, and drove my dad to the eye place for surgery. Meanwhile en route I phoned the local pest control place and asked them to come over at some point that day to investigate the “situation.”

Fast forward again to post op and the afternoon. Dad was asleep on the sofa or in there watching Serena Williams play (real — not bat — tennis). Meanwhile, my FIL called and demanded that I save the droppings. “It’s very important!” He stressed. Ok. I said, and fished through the trash until I uncovered the paper towel and a couple of the minute turds I had wiped up earlier. I put the things in a plastic baggie and proceeded to wait.

My FIL had explained how to look for the bat, which would be sleeping, seeing as it was daytime and bats are nocturnal and shit. “It will be very small, like a chocolate.” He informed me of the usual places to look (the main directive being UP HIGH) and I set about scouring the house for something resembling a salted caramel stuck in a window or hanging upside down from a light fixture or curled up in some draperies. To no avail.

The pest control expert showed up around 1:30. I exhaled, thrust the plastic baggie at him and said, Well, is it a bat or a mouse? You could hear my pulse. Time seemed to stand still.

“It’s definitely a mouse,” he said. PHEW. I mean, PHEW, I thought. And then I thought it was pretty sad that I was so excited about having non flying rodents in the house and that I probably need to get out more. But still, a mouse is better than a bat. Believe me.

The pest dude poked around the house and plugged up a hole, replaced bait and found a (mouse) body under the basement stairs. I was assured that all would be fine and that I should call if there were any further mouse activity. I breathed a sigh of relief, and stopped worrying about it.

That evening, my FIL called and said that “just in case,” I should fill up the sink with water because sometimes the bats would fly into the sink and if it were a bat I might find it there in the morning. I declined to do this, given the confidence of the pest control expert that we were dealing with a mouse. “I am so not doing that,” I snapped. And didn’t.

And I am happy to report that the next day there was no evidence of further activity.

But this morning I came down and was in for a rude awakening. I began regular coffee-making procedures and then I ran my hand over the counter at issue just to check. And there it was. A fresh dropping. I then looked all around and found a number of similar droppings on the floor in front of the counter.

I wouldn’t say that I was horrified, but I was somewhat nonplussed, at this discovery. Again, I cleaned the counter and swept up the floor, carefully preserving the evidence in a zip bag. I made coffee, drank it, and climbed the stairs to report the incident to my husband. I wondered if the pest place was open on a Saturday, and prepared to call them. Then I returned to the kitchen and held the bag up to the light to determine if bats might, after all, be at play.

And that’s when I discovered that the droppings this morning were cylindrical in nature, more tubular in appearance and less like grains of rice with pinched ends.

This could only mean one thing. I bit my lip. These droppings, were, in fact, not mouse droppings at all. They were… wait for it: chocolate sprinkles, a/k/a “Jimmies,” which the children had spilled on the floor (and one on the counter) while making their ice cream sundaes with the babysitter the night before. Just think of me as a regular Sherlock Holmes, although perhaps a bit slower on the uptake. All that time in London really paid off, eh?

I smiled. I mean it really doesn’t get any better than discovering that what you thought was shit is in fact, Valrhona chocolate sprinkles, does it people?

Amen.