From tob@cwis.unomaha.edu Wed Apr 28 10:46:04 1993
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Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1993 10:45:44 -0500 (CDT)
From: Tob Wood <tob@cwis.unomaha.edu>
Subject: Mice & Men (fwd)
To: can <umdesch4@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
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:I am a clueless newbie. More info via `finger' tob@cwis.unomaha.edu:
:.............................................................................:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1993 09:08:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: Tob Wood <tob@cwis.unomaha.edu>
To: cdibble@acsu.buffalo.edu
Subject: Mice & Men (fwd)
Ignore the bad grammar, bad spelling and all the other compositional mistakes.
Also, finger my account again in a few days. I am updating my .plan.
...............................................................................
:I am a clueless newbie. More info via `finger' tob@cwis.unomaha.edu:
:.............................................................................:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 19:06:04 -0500 (CDT)
From: Tob Wood <tob@cwis.unomaha.edu>
To: "Dr. Monzay" <monzay@cwis.unomaha.edu>
Subject: Mice & Men
Two years abo I had an apartment with a mouse. I would see him out of the
corner of my eye running around in the middle of the night. I named him
Oates. I don't know why I named him that. I liked him, but sometimes he
annoyed me by scratching in the walls. BUT THAT'S NOTHING:
I then moved into a house with a couple of guys. One night around 9 or so
I was watching tv, drinking some beers, smoking a cigarette, and reading a
magazine (all at the same time) and something flew by my head. I said to
Scott (who was in the kitchen doind homework) "There's a bird in the house".
He didn't say anything and I didn't think twice about it. A minute later
the thing buzzes my head, I look up and realize it's a bat and not a barn
swallow. Totally calm, cool and collected (I dig bats), I announced to
Scott, "I retract my last statement. There is a bat in the house". Now
I was starting to think that this pretty cool, having a bat flying around
inside, but little did I know, Scott has bat-phobia. As soon as I say 'bat',
he screams, *dives* under the kitchen table, and puts A CARDBOARD BOX OVER
HIS HEAD. I told him not to be such a girl, and proceeded to find the bat
while Scott is having his cow under the table.
The Bat (who I named Mr. Masterson) disappeared down into the basement
so I went down there. I heard Scott (still blithering, and screaming for
me to get rid of it) slam the door to the basement so the bat couldn't fly
back up there. I continued to call him a weenie as Mr. Masterson swooped
around my head and I lit another cigarette. After watching Mr. Masterson
for about 20 minutes, I went back upstairs to drink some more beers. I
found Scott in the kitchen wearing a hat (he believes the old wives tale
about bats getting stuck in people's hair), wielding an oversized plastic
baseball bat and clutching a referees whistle between his teeth. I ignored
him as he was swinging at imaginary bats in the air, lit yet another smoke,
and popped open yet another beer. Scott asked, "Did you get rid of it?"
"Nope," I said, "I'm keeping him". Scott freaks some more and tells
me to go open the basement door so the bat can fly outside. I said, "If
you want him to fly outside, you go open the door yourself" That shut
him up pretty quick. I sat down to wait for Ben (our roommate) to come home
from work so I could show him the bat. I knew he would like Mr. Masterson,
so I left him in the basement and I drank more beer while reading and
watching tv. Scott stayed in the kitchen and practiced his `Bat Patrol'
moves. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the odds of knocking a bat
out of the sky with a plastic baseball bat (albeit an oversized one) were
pretty slim, but I was curious as to what the whistle was for.
Ben comes home an hour or so later and I told him Mr. Masterson was in
the basement. "Who's Mr. Masterson?" he asked.
"A bat", I said.
"A bat?" Ben repeats.
"Yeah, you know; flying mouse type thing generally associated with
Halloween, vampires, nighttime and echolocation? A bat."
"Cool."
So we went downstairs after Scott explained to Ben why he was swinging
a red plastic baseball bat around in the kitchen. We laughed at Scott
while looking for Mr. Masterson who wasn't flying around anymore. Ben
said, "Wait. What was the whistle for?"
"Beats me dude, I didn't ask. Probably Bat-Alert or something. Don't
question it. He had a box on his head before."
We found Mr. Masterson hanging from a rafter. I was amazed that they
really did that; I always figured it was a bat stereotype. I said something
to Ben about this. He said, "Yep, they do that. What, did you think they
reclined on their backs or something?" Ben thought this was funny.
I said, "I don't know. It really isn't anything I ever thought a lot
about before." You learn something new every day.
Mr. Masterson wasn't moving. We were in his face, but he didn't take
off like you would expect. I said "Maybe he's sleeping".
Ben said, "Tob, bats are nocturnal. This is morning for him."
"I know that. Maybe nobody explained what `nocturnal' means to him"
We figured he was sick, and we went upstairs to get some bat catching
equipment. We got a big bowl and a plate, went back downstairs and gently
sort of scraped the bat of the rafter and put him in the bowl with the
plate as a lid. We took him into the backyard and tried to release him.
I kept shouting "Fly! Be free!" as dramatically as I could, but he didn't
go anywhere. Ben said the shock hadn't worn off. Winston (Ben's dog; not
really bright) went over and started to sniff the bat-in-a-bowl. I geuss
this was enough stimulus for Mr. Masterson because he took off rather
sloppily, circled around the yard and then disappeared into the night.
We all went back inside and laughed at Scott some more. I lit a cigarette,
opened a beer, and went back to watching the tube and reading the magazine.
And the story doesn't end there.
A few months later, I awoke at 5 in the morning hearing an odd noise. There
are no lights in my room except for an ultraviolet tube I leave on constantly,
but it's still very dark. I couldn't see anything, and I figured it was just
my fan rustling a plastic bag. I tried to go back to sleep, but this sound
persisted and it occured to me that something was in my room. I sat up and
tried to focus on my coffee table at the foot of my bed. Eventually I could
make out a shape crawling on a pile of clothes that was the size of my fist
(The shape, not the pile of clothes). My train of thought basically went
like this: "Oh damn, a mouse, how am I going to catch a mouse? It will just
go away...no, that's too damn big to be a mouse...that is A RAT How am I
going to get rid of A RAT I DON'T TO DEAL WITH A RAT!"
About this time, the rat approaches the edge of the table and looks like
it's going to jump off. I'm starting to freak about having a rat under my
bed, and while I'm starting to wig, the rat jumps.
Only it didn't jump. It half fell, and half flopped, and the proceeded
to fly around in my room. I (greatly relieved) lie back down while thinking,
"Oh cool. It's just a bat". I was about to fall back asleep five minutes
later when I decided that the bat was probably freaking out. I put on my
pants, got up, and opened the door. He wouldn't leave. I tried to explain
to the bat that I didn't have all night, and my talking woke up Scott in his
room. He asked me what was going on. I said (with ultra-calm), "There's a
bat in my room." He goes ballistic again and I laugh while I watch him
stuff a towel into the gap under the door. I saw Winston stick his nose
out under the door of Ben's room. Ben slept on.
I went downstairs and opened the front door. The bat eventually flew
downstairs, flew around the house while I smoked a cigarette, and finally
flew out the door ten minutes later. I went back to bed.
This happened two more times in the next two weeks. Scott always freaked
and Ben always slept through it all. We never figured out how the bats got
into my room. To this day I don't know if Ben believes that it all really
happened. Scott is worthless as a witness since he never actually *saw*
any of the bats because he was sitting in his room with a towel stuffed under
the door. And he probably had a box on his head.
Tob
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My life in a nutshell (or at least a UNIX shell) 'finger' tob@cwis.unomaha.edu
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