Jonathan Kieran

Seclusion will either drive you batty … or find you waking up in the middle of the night to a bat flying around your room. Living in the remote wilds of Big Sur affords me plenty of scope for the artistic imagination and the days are filled with chores that edify sanity due to the regularity of hard work required to maintain a small, oak-haunted ranch. It helps immeasurably that I enjoy my own company and am geared toward the eremitic life, anyhow.

By the way, the bat story is true. Despite best efforts, critters of the high chaparral occasionally find their way indoors. Bats, particularly, can squeeze through the most minuscule openings. One night I awakened to a whirring, sweeping flutter of air above my face and nose. Twitch, twitch. On the third pass, I dragged myself from dreams and went for the bedside light switch.

A cute little bat had somehow gotten itself trapped in my bedroom and was circling madly. (I’d cracked a window for some air that night and later noticed the outer screen was a tad wonky.) I realize that some who read this may recoil at the thought of such a scenario and, I must admit, the sight had a certain Transylvanian creepiness, even for me. I couldn’t let the bat get into the rest of the house because I knew my cat would do mad somersaults to catch the thing and I wanted my be-winged visitor to live a long, healthy existence eating mosquitos around the property.

Had the encounter been filmed, it most certainly would have gone viral if posted on some social media outlet. With the light on and my groggy presence standing and ducking and waving my hands about, the bat only flew faster and more frantically. There was no way I was going to grab it out of the air—I would injure the bat and, frankly, did not want to get bitten and endure a rabies shot (or develop a voracious new affinity for nocturnal blood-drinking and an aversion to my beloved garlic.)

So a grabbed my tennis racquet, which made absolutely no sense at all. I was not about to swat the thing out of the air and kill it, but the racquet did afford a sense of being shielded as I made my way to the sliding glass door on the other side of the bedroom and opened it, hoping the bat’s echo-location skills would allow it to seize the opportunity for escape.

It may have been a stupid bat. Ten minutes of ducking, diving, hiding my head under the tennis racquet, and exasperated curse words later, the “guest” finally flew out the open door. Of course, three dozen moths had flown IN during that episode, attracted by the light.

It was what it was: life in the genuine wilds. But I’d be lying if I told you the whole fracas was not a little unsettling, thirty miles from civilization, alone in the looming shadow of a gigantic forest. Bats are beneficial creatures but you don’t want to be be awakened from a deep sleep by one fluttering directly over your face after midnight, only to bob and weave helplessly as the black menace wheels around head in the bedroom.

All’s well that ends well, and my three rattlesnake encounters were much more troubling.

This being said, how can anyone fail to find inspiration and a sense of removal from the human rat-race when fellows like the one pictured above wander about and pause for a rest on the steps of your woodshed?

Self-imposed exile has its benefits.

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[ THE WEDNESDAY BOX, a dark fable by Jonathan Kieran, is slated for international release June 18, 2026 ]

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