Paradise by the Dashboard Lights

(Meatloaf, 1977)

OK, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same kind of paradise alluded to in the song and it wasn't by the lights of the dashboard . . . it was candlelight on the patio and it was more of a Eden-like paradise. Tonight Ron invited me to a show on the patio. It was a show of bats. About 8:45 every night these creatures of the night take flight in our back yard. Tonight it was only two, but Ron said he'd seen a flock of four earlier in the week. They fly really fast back and forth, in and out and it's really hard to figure out just how many there are. To see them, you really have to throw your head back, so there I am in our patio furniture, legs up on the table face to the sky with my mouth dropped open (it just seems to happen naturally when your head's at that angle). As soon as I realized that bats drop guano, I clamped my mouth shut, but after awhile gravity took over and it was gaping wide open. Fortunately, no guano glopped on me. I may have to get a surgical mask if this becomes a regular habit.

Bats . . . I used to be scared to death of bats. I was a rabid fan of "Dark Shadows," a 60's Gothic soap opera. In the summer I'd hide in our basement because we had a sub-zero window air conditioner and it was dark to watch Dark Shadows religiously, unbeknownst to my mom. The acting was horrible, even for a soap opera, and the plots were, of course, sinister and twisted (although I don't think there was any coffin-hopping going on). For awhile I totally believed that vampire bats could make the long trek from Transylvania to Missouri and end up in my bedroom in the dead of night. An updated version of the show re-emerged in the 80's and of course I watched it. I got Kate hooked on it and we used to threaten/tease Tyler with a visit from Barnabas, the main vampire, if he didn't behave. (We also use to tell Tyler that the stuffed buffalo head at the old Darryl's on Metcalf was going to come down off the wall if he didn't sit still in his chair. Sometimes the similarities between me and Roseanne Barr are eerily disconcerting . . .).

I was talking to my friend Steve tonight on the phone and said we were watching bats and he told that he'd been in a bat cave in the Ozarks where there were so many bats that when they started flying around they couldn't see the opening of the cave they'd just entered. And they were flying into him all the time - shuuuuuuuddddddddderrrrrrrrrr.

Anyway, I've since lost my fear of bats, at least when they number less than four. Or when they come with a Chris O'Donnell "Robin".