Batnesday

This morning I was awoken by a member of my household rushing into my bedroom an hour before wake-up time (6 a.m.) urging: "Get up. You've got to see this. There's something in the house."
Not knowing what to expect, I immediately arose and was led through the hallway into the living room. I thought, I am glad my dream was over. I also thought, I'm glad the days when the little ones in the house weren't routinely waking me up at all hours of the night and early morning anymore, for the most part.
"Look up," I was instructed. There, on the ceiling, was a brown, mouse-shaped creature.
"What is it? Could that be a bat?" my early rouser asked me in shock and awe.
"It's a bat," I answered, not fully able to focus.
"What are you going to do about it?"
"I'll figure something out after I wake up."
I went back to bed and tried to go back to sleep, some astonishingly good ideas coming to me as I worried about the bat. I remembered that before I went to bed last night I brought a hanging plant in from the front porch; as I carried the plant inside, I heard a rustling noise behind me but was not able to figure out what it was and quickly dismissed it as my neighbor closing her door. As I hung the plant on a hook inside, I saw a spider crawling up the plant holder, thinking that protecting the plant from the cold might be bringing some unwelcome guests into the home.
I thought long and hard about who else besides me could get the beast outside, but I came up with no one. After I resolved that only I am the master of our destiny, I got back up about an hour later, armed with a large, clear, plastic cup and a thin, plastic cutting board, having flashes of my childhood when my parents were chasing a bat through the house and it was flying precariously near our heads and lots of people were running and screaming in all directions for what seemed like an exceptionally long bat-riddance session.
Approaching the ceiling and imagining the worst, I said (as cheerfully as possible), "Hello, Stellaluna," and the plastic cup landed peacefully over the bat. Getting its microscopic fingers to loosen themselves from the bumpy ceiling was troubling. I tried to use the cutting board to get the bat off the ceiling and into the cup, and as one of its feet got stuck between the cutting board and the ceiling it started chirping quietly and quickly like an injured bird.
It dropped into the cup before my arms got tired and I let it outside. It took about five minutes to fly out of the cup and away. All day the young people of the house thought about the bat, sad that it had to go outside and sad that we wouldn't be taking on another pet. The cat misses the bat, too. I don't.