Critter Contact - Again

We left Nelson early in the morning, stopped at Safeways for muffins and Starbucks and continued to our next destination - which shall remain nameless for the time being. But I do rate businesses on how well they handle problems so this particular hotel may not stay nameless for long.

It was a very nice hotel with good facilities that, I expect, is relying on its location to attract business and is not concerned about the unfortunate experience of one visitor.

It was a dark and stormy night. Isn't that how all tales start? It was night and it was dark outside. It was about 10 o'clock and we were all sitting on the beds reading. When I saw this thing and I made I've seen a thing noise. I saw a bat - in our bedroom. My happiness meter dropped. Before any of you say what's the fuss it was only a bat; you need to know that the bats in Alberta carry rabies hence my concern and this bat was flying around our bedroom.

So I did what all people in the right mind would do - hid in the bathroom. And the spousal unit did what all calm, collected people do - caught the thing.

His first thought was shoo it out the window but the window had a screen on it - it obviously hadn't come in that way. His second thought was to shoo it into the corridor but that would have moved (literally) the problem onto other people. So he picked up the recycling bin, waited for the bat to tire and rest and then he trapped it against the ceiling. I had offered advice on my way to hiding - don't let it bite you!

So there's my husband standing with his arm in the air holding a bin against the ceiling with a bat inside and I was on the phone summoning help (not a time to take a picture) except no help on the other end just the infernal 'please hold'. I ran down to reception, explained the situation and that we needed someone to our room pretty quickly. Actually someone did arrive quite fast. Two women from housekeeping. One older who knew what to do. She sent the young one to get some cardboard which the spousal unit slid between the recycling bin and the ceiling and then handed the precariously sealed unit to the older woman.

Now I don't blame the hotel for there being a bat in the room. Although I do wonder how it got in there. We were in the middle of the third floor and the window had a screen and there wasn't a fireplace. But, I would have thought they might have checked on us to see if everything was OK. Not a word. When I checked out a couple of days later, I expressed surprise that nobody had checked that everything was now OK.

So when I got home and saw a couple of e-mails from the hotel I felt a little glow of happiness, but they were just requests to complete a survey. I sent a wonderful missive to the name on the survey but no response as yet. I'll give it another week as Canada Post is not the most reliable but then this hotel will be outed.