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Lowell Folk Festival and the bat.
Jul. 25th, 2010 11:17 pmI took the day off from the day job friday so I could rest up and go up there and do all the check in adminisitrivia at leisure. That worked just fine. But few friends had shown up yet, so I went home early, catching up on my e-mail and suchlike. Friday night, I go to bed and as I'm laying there in the dark waiting to fall asleep, I hear this odd scritching noise, and various other forms of noise that sounded like a small furry mammal. I know the house has mice, we get them every summer. So I turn on the light and yell, which usually drives the mice away long enough to let me fall asleep. But this noise keeps returning every few minutes despite repeating the lights and noise drill. I'm looking around and finally I catch some movement out of the corner of my eye. There is a odd looking brown lumpy shape hanging on the edge of the window frame, and it's moving. I look closer, and it's a little brown bat that somehow got inside, and it's crawling up the inside of the screen of my opened window, and then it squeezed itself around and is clambering up the side of the upper part of the window. But when it reaches the top, it can't quite reach around the overhang and falls off. then he crawls to the open window and keeps on trying to get out.
What then ensued reminded me of a bad benny hill routine. I'm trying to stay far enough away from the bat so it can't bite me. But it is a small window, only about 15 inches wide, and every time I get close, the bat looks at me, bares it's teeth and hisses, making me even more nervous. I wait until the bat is clambering up the screen, and I slide the window down to only about three inches open and using a handy stuffed animal to block up the opening, I reach in and brave the hissing bat to slide the screen up. This takes several tries, as I forgot to slide the screen latch open the first couple of tries. Then I do get it open, pull my hand out and quickly close the window. The screen reacts to my slamming the window closed by sliding back closed, trapping the bat inbetween the glass and the screen. I ponder what I'm gonna do next, seeing but not hearing the bat hiss at me through the glass. I decide to go to sleep and figure it out in the morning.
The next morning, I procure an old pill bottle and using the same handy stuffed animal, open the window a little, and then slide the screen up, prop that open with the pill bottle and quick like a bunny, close the window again. The bat remained silent, hanging upside down from the screen though this entire process. I left the bat undistrurbed and went to Lowell to festivate. When I got home that night, I left the window closed and when I woke up sunday morning, there was no more bat.
Saturday in Lowell was one of those 90/90 days. That is to say, 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. There were thunderstorms and showers that were aiming at Lowell all day, but they kept veering off at the last minute. We never quite ran out of water backstage, but were close a couple of times. Other than the heat stress, my stage was plagued by a series of annoying sound system problems. Bad mic cables, broken DIs, three different bass amps, monitor mixing board got swapped out for a backup, the microphone splitter had a couple of bad channels, and a stage power multistring started randomly tripping the GFIs for no apparent reason. This made all our band changes take longer and made everyone frustrated.
Saturday after my stage closed down, I was supposed to meet an acquintance from Lowell for random socializing. Unfortunately, he got called for work starting at 9pm, and I was so exhusted from working in the heat that all we did was chat in front of the hotel for about 20 minutes before I fled to my car, and the drive home, and the blessed long cool shower awaiting me there.
Sunday was much nicer. Humidity was lower, temps were down, the breeze picked up and the one rainstorm was light and only lasted about 20 minutes. Just long enough to cool everyone down but not long enough to make puddles on the stage an issue.
The various bands on our stage were all good, albeit not all of them were to my taste in music. The dancers with the hiphop group were extraordinarily good. Although one of them on Saturday was looking ill enough that I was worried he was gonna need medical attention for heat stress. Several bottles of water and some gatoraid while he sat in the air-conditioned building behind the stage brought him back to being okay after his set.
What then ensued reminded me of a bad benny hill routine. I'm trying to stay far enough away from the bat so it can't bite me. But it is a small window, only about 15 inches wide, and every time I get close, the bat looks at me, bares it's teeth and hisses, making me even more nervous. I wait until the bat is clambering up the screen, and I slide the window down to only about three inches open and using a handy stuffed animal to block up the opening, I reach in and brave the hissing bat to slide the screen up. This takes several tries, as I forgot to slide the screen latch open the first couple of tries. Then I do get it open, pull my hand out and quickly close the window. The screen reacts to my slamming the window closed by sliding back closed, trapping the bat inbetween the glass and the screen. I ponder what I'm gonna do next, seeing but not hearing the bat hiss at me through the glass. I decide to go to sleep and figure it out in the morning.
The next morning, I procure an old pill bottle and using the same handy stuffed animal, open the window a little, and then slide the screen up, prop that open with the pill bottle and quick like a bunny, close the window again. The bat remained silent, hanging upside down from the screen though this entire process. I left the bat undistrurbed and went to Lowell to festivate. When I got home that night, I left the window closed and when I woke up sunday morning, there was no more bat.
Saturday in Lowell was one of those 90/90 days. That is to say, 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. There were thunderstorms and showers that were aiming at Lowell all day, but they kept veering off at the last minute. We never quite ran out of water backstage, but were close a couple of times. Other than the heat stress, my stage was plagued by a series of annoying sound system problems. Bad mic cables, broken DIs, three different bass amps, monitor mixing board got swapped out for a backup, the microphone splitter had a couple of bad channels, and a stage power multistring started randomly tripping the GFIs for no apparent reason. This made all our band changes take longer and made everyone frustrated.
Saturday after my stage closed down, I was supposed to meet an acquintance from Lowell for random socializing. Unfortunately, he got called for work starting at 9pm, and I was so exhusted from working in the heat that all we did was chat in front of the hotel for about 20 minutes before I fled to my car, and the drive home, and the blessed long cool shower awaiting me there.
Sunday was much nicer. Humidity was lower, temps were down, the breeze picked up and the one rainstorm was light and only lasted about 20 minutes. Just long enough to cool everyone down but not long enough to make puddles on the stage an issue.
The various bands on our stage were all good, albeit not all of them were to my taste in music. The dancers with the hiphop group were extraordinarily good. Although one of them on Saturday was looking ill enough that I was worried he was gonna need medical attention for heat stress. Several bottles of water and some gatoraid while he sat in the air-conditioned building behind the stage brought him back to being okay after his set.
