The Infamous Bat Incident of 1999

I had to leave the teacher workroom today. I tried not to make a scene and slip out quietly, but people noticed. When later questioned, I had to re-live the infamous bat incident of 1999. I thought that if I finally wrote it down, that perhaps I could put the ghost to rest.



Tim and I lived in Rome, GA for quite some time after we married. I graduated from Berry College in the winter of 1996 and did not get a teaching job until Fall of 1998. For a year I commuted back and forth between Rome and north Whitfield County. The summer of 1999, we decided to move closer to my mother and loaded up the truck and moved to Rock Spring.



Moving is no fun and it was a long day. Tim and a buddy left me at the old house to clean floors and walls etc and headed up without me. I followed much later, exhausted and with a truck load of odds and ends in the back and two dogs in the front. It was late when I set out, about 11:30 or later and pitch dark. I was driving the lonely two lane between Summerville and LaFayette. There are no street lights and no shoulder, and at that time of the night, no traffic. I was alone with my dogs and the summer cicadas, windows down, music playing softly, and no thoughts but to get to the new house and collapse. I noticed a strange flittering in the glow of the headlights and there was a sudden rush of a smack on the windshield followed by a splat on my neck and the sensation of something bouncing down over my breasts, into my lap, grazing my legs and landing in the floorboard. I was immediately hysterical,