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Bats in the Bedroom

Lily loved her new bedroom. When the family first moved into the ugly olive-green house, over a year ago, the upstairs hallway had doubled as her bedroom. Joseph and Dannie galloped past her bed every time they ran to their room. Every sound in the kitchen floated up the stairs and to her room. The hallway bedroom had been a sore trial for Lily.

But just after school had let out for the summer, Papa had finished off a special room for Lily up in the attic. And now she had the best room in the house.

The window was Lily’s favorite part of her bedroom. She pretended it was a picture frame, changing throughout the day and night. Mama had made a fluffy white curtain for it but Lily liked to keep the curtain drawn back so she could look out at the tall pine trees. The breeze that swept through the pine branches sounded like whispers to Lily. Sometimes, when she lay in bed, she wondered what they might be saying to each other, if trees could talk.

She could see the rolling mountains far off in the distance from her window. The mountains changed color throughout the day and night. They went from pinks and lavenders at dawn to blues and greens at dusk. In the night, she could see the moon travel across the sky.

The walls were a soft honey color made from smoothly varnished maple boards. In one corner, Papa had built a closet. It was nice to have her dresses hanging neatly inside of it instead of on a hook on the wall. Mama had painted the plywood floor lavender and made a bright purple rag rug to use beside her bed.

The rug matched the pretty purple cushion Mama had made for the chair beside the bed. A long, low chest of drawers stood along another wall. Grandma had crocheted a lavender doily for Lily’s little oil lamp to stand on. And Grandpa had built a pretty bookshelf for her books and made a small nightstand for her bedside. Lily kept a flashlight on top in case she woke during the night.

Tonight, after she got ready for bed, Lily pulled her diary from its special hiding place—far from the eyes of curious little brothers. She wrote a few paragraphs about her day and tucked it away again. As she crossed the room to blow out her lamp, she paused by the window to gaze at the moon, a tiny sliver above the distant mountains. If she squinted her eyes, it almost looked like a cookie with a big bite out of it.

She climbed into bed, pulled the covers up under her chin, and closed her eyes. Everything about her room made her feel happy.

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Lily’s eyes flew open. Her heart pounded like a drum. There was a strange noise in her bedroom. She held her breath and tried to listen. There it was again! A rustling flapping bumping noise. Something was in her room! Her hands trembled as she reached over to get the flashlight. She flashed the light around her room and found the sound: a bat fluttered about her room, darting and diving, trying to find its way back out.

Lily quickly ducked and pulled her covers over her head. She heard the bat fly around and around her room. She couldn’t stay in this room for one minute longer. She jumped out of bed, holding her pillow over her head, dashed out of her room, and flew down the stairs to knock on Papa and Mama’s bedroom door.

“Who is it?” Papa sounded sleepy.

“It’s me,” Lily said. “There’s a bat in my bedroom.”

Papa opened the door. “There’s a bat in your bedroom? What does it look like?”

“It looks like an ugly little mouse with wings. And it keeps flying into the walls.”

“Wait here while I get something to catch it.” Papa put his boots on by the kitchen door and went out into the dark night. A few minutes later, he came back inside with the buggy whip. He told her to stay put as he went upstairs. Lily wondered how Papa could catch the bat with a buggy whip. She had never even seen him use the whip. It had been carried in the little whip holder outside the buggy as long as she could remember. She thought he didn’t know how to use it.

Lily’s curiosity got the best of her. She tiptoed up the stairs and opened the door to her bedroom a tiny crack so she could watch. Papa stood in the middle of the room watching the bat. It flew back and forth across her room, bumping into the walls, trying to find a way to get out. Papa snapped the whip lightning fast and the bat fell to the floor. Lily clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from squealing out loud. Papa bent down and gingerly picked the bat up by the tip of one of its wings. Lily hurried down the stairs and waited for him.

“Did you kill it?” she asked when he came downstairs.

“No. I didn’t intend to. The whip knocked it out for a little bit, but it will wake up soon. Bats are helpful little creatures as long as they don’t get inside the house. They eat mosquitoes.”

Lily shuddered. The bat looked hideous to her. She would rather get a few mosquito bites than have a bat in her bedroom again.

Lily waited to go back to bed until Papa double-checked her bedroom to make sure that there were no more bats. Then she climbed into bed and fell sound asleep.

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For an entire week, no bats came to visit Lily’s room. She’d settled into a peaceful sleep one night when she suddenly woke, startled to hear the same bat-like flutters and bumps. She flew downstairs to get Papa.

This time, she waited downstairs while Papa knocked the bat unconscious with the buggy whip. Again, Papa double-checked her room for bats before she would go back into it.

The next morning, Papa went to inspect her room. “I need to see if I can find how these bats are getting into your room. This has to stop.”

Lily couldn’t agree more. It was horrible to wake up in the middle of the night because a creepy bat flew around her bedroom. What if the bat flew right at her? What if it touched her? Or bit her? Just thinking of its mousy little face made her shudder.

Papa examined every inch of the walls and ceiling, but he couldn’t find any cracks big enough for a bat to squeeze through. “I can’t figure it out,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how they’re getting into your room. Hopefully, that’s the end of it.”

And it was. Until the next week, when another bat found its way into Lily’s bedroom. Two days after that, another one.

Papa had had enough. If he couldn’t find a way to stop the bats from getting into Lily’s bedroom, he decided she would have to move out of her pretty little attic bedroom. At first, Lily thought that meant she would have to go back to having a bedroom in the hallway. How sad!

But Papa had built a nice big addition to the house, and he and Mama already had planned to move their bedroom into what used to be the old kitchen. They would give Lily their old bedroom. “The bats only moved up the timetable,” he said. Papa spent that Saturday moving all the furniture from one room to another.

Lily was sad to leave her pretty attic bedroom. It was private and away from little brothers, and it had a purple floor. Her new bedroom was on the second floor, near the stairs, and she would hear the boys clomping up and down. On the other hand, there were no bats in this new bedroom and that was a definite plus. She still had her pretty purple rug and cushion. Another plus.

That night, as Lily got ready for bed, she looked around her bedroom. It wasn’t nearly as pretty. There was ugly green-and-brown striped wallpaper on the walls. The floor was dark blue linoleum with big red swirls all over it. It almost made Lily feel dizzy to look at it. Looking out the window wasn’t much fun. The pine trees that had seemed so tall and majestic in her attic bedroom only blocked her view of the distant mountains. But she could still hear their whispers. That was a good thing.

As she lay in bed, she thought about her pretty attic room. She wondered if it felt sad and empty without her. Did things have feelings? She would have to ask Papa, she thought, yawning.

Since bats slept throughout the day, maybe she could play in the room during the day! It would be a fine place to play with her dolls or read a book. Whenever Cousin Hannah or Beth came to play, they would have a perfect place to play and not worry about being bothered by little brothers. She yawned again.

With plans on her mind to turn her attic room into a playroom, during the daytime only, Lily drifted off to sleep.