On Saturday my husband, daughter, and I were at Panera for lunch, it was the Brookfield location at Ruby Isle, and if you’ve been there before you know about the separate dining room that is off of the main room. It’s quieter in there and for some reason it’s Zoe primo spot when she’s choosing a place to sit.

So we were eating our lunch, and there was a couple of ladies a few tables away, but other than that we had the room to ourselves, when all of a sudden, I swear to God, I heard a bird chirp. I glanced around and didn’t see a bird, nor did I see anything that could have made that noise, so I went back to eating. A few minutes later I heard the bird again. I looked up, thinking I’d catch it flying across the ceiling or something, but again, I saw nothing. My husband and daughter heard the chirping too, so at least I wasn’t hearing things.

This is where I have to say that stuff like this drives me nuts! I know I heard a bird, but I never ever saw it. I’ll bet in all we heard it at least five or six times over a 20 minute period, yet every time I looked around, I couldn’t find it. If it were not for those ladies sitting a couple tables down, I would have done a complete top to bottom search of the room. However, since they were there, and didn’t seem to even notice the chirping, I’d look rather insane if I dropped to my knees and started looking underneath all the tables in search of where the chirping was coming from. Although, I did take the opportunity to look behind the garbage cans when I cleared our trays.

Zoe kept saying, ‘Okay, if I hear that chirping again then I know there’s a bird here for sure!’

Folks, let me tell you this: There was a bird there, I’m sure of it. And if I would have had the time, I would have done a stake out, if only to say ‘A ha! There’s the bird!’  and then I’d have gone about the rest of my day, just waiting for the next crazy thing to happen.

One time, at our last house, I was in our family room watching tv. My husband, and daughter, who was just a baby, were both sleeping. All of a sudden something flew across the room! My mind started to flip through it’s internal rolodex of all the possible things it could have been, and it stopped on: bat. A BAT!!! There’s a bat in my house! In the room where I am sitting!!!

And that’s when I started shrieking and threw a blanket over my head. I was frozen in my chair, and thought that if I got up and ran to the other room, the bat might just fly into me. SHRIEK!!!!! SCREAM!!!!!

My husband came running from the bedroom, saw what I was screaming about, and pretty much commanded me to get into the kitchen where we could close the swinging butler door behind us, thereby quarantining the bat in the dining room and family room area. I shot like a bullet across the room, with a blanket over my head, and he shut the door behind me.

Now what do we do? How in the heck do we get that freaking bat out of our house? Well, we walked around outside to the front door, opened it, and then waiting for the bat to fly out. Which he did, and it only took a few minutes actually. That stupid bat. That was probably one of the craziest things to ever happen.

(Cross posted @ Thoughts Outside My Head)