With Halloween only weeks away, it is time to start decorating. I prefer pumpkins, ghosts, and witches. Other people insist on adorning their homes with decorations that make my skin crawl. Bats.
     During my first 10 years of selling cars, I had more than my fill of the creepy creatures. They hung out under the ramp that accessed the show room of the suburban dealership where I worked. Nearly every day, one or more cars had to be brought inside. In order to do this, the extra-large glass doors at the end of the building needed to be swung open. The ramp outside the doors would be adjusted until it was just so, and the car would be carefully driven up the incline. All the salespeople on duty would have been paged to the show floor because the second the vehicle was in the building, its engine was shut off and we were responsible for pushing the brand new Chevrolet to its resting place.
     More often than not, a bat accompanied the vehicle. It would fly willy-nilly from one window to another, swooping up to the high ceiling and dipping down towards the office cubicles. When that happened, I would make a beeline up the stairs and hide in the women's rest room until the intruder had been caught.
     I will never forget the day a nice couple asked me what it would cost to order a pickup truck with the exact options they wanted. Ushering them into my office, I took my place behind the desk and reached behind my back to the drawer where I always kept my price books. As my hand grabbed hold of the book, it also grabbed something unfamiliar. I turned quickly and saw a black bat. Before I realized it was a fake, someone's idea of a joke, I had screamed and scared the customers out of their chairs and out the door.
     Years later, when my husband was golfing, it was the real thing I found in my scrub bucket. I had opened the door to the basement, grabbed the bucket, and noticed a fuzzy, mildewed rag at the bottom. A second look made clear it was a fuzzy bat. I carefully set the bucket down and put a towel on top of it, then gently closed the door and locked it. I put another towel along the bottom of the door and ran pell-mell up the stairs and closed myself in the bedroom. I got into bed and pulled the covers over my head. And waited.
     When Arnold Palmer arrived home, he put the bucket inside a plastic garbage bag, carried it to the garage, and locked it in the trunk of the car. "Are you sure it can't get out?" I kept asking, as I looked over my shoulder to the back seat. We drove to the car dealership where I worked at the time, dropped the bag into the garbage dumpster, and headed home.
     "They've got radar, you know," my husband said, as he pulled into our garage. "I'll bet he's already here waiting for you."
     Everyone's a jokester, aren't they?