Going Batty in the Train Room

Some years ago, my wife and I moved into a new house –actually an old house, built in 1865. I laid claim to half the basement and began construction of a model railroad.

First, I installed sheetrock to the ceiling and insulation to the walls in my layout area. The resulting ceiling was low, about six and a half feet, and made lower still in places by support beams and hot water pipes. I’m six feet tall, the ceiling was rather lower than that in spots, but this was the space I was given and I resolved to make the best of it. Generous amounts of foam rubber applied to pipes and beams helped to keep my skull intact.

Above the sheetrock, in a corner of the layout area lived a small family of little brown bats who were spending the winter in the rafters of the basement. With just a half-inch of plaster between them and me, we, by necessity, came to a gentleman’s agreement that prevailed most of the time:  I wouldn’t bother them and they wouldn’t bother me.

I say most of the time. They were a disreputable bunch. They would get rowdy now and then, and they could make a lot of noise, especially when they’d been drinking. If they put up too much a racket, I would bang on the ceiling and shout a few insults at them. Sometimes that would quiet them down. Just as often, they would reply by squeaking insults at me. And their insults could get awfully personal.

Occasionally, one of these miscreants would scramble over to the un-sheetrocked part of the basement and drop down for a few snap rolls and split-S’s around the basement, just to show off. I would acknowledge its aerobatic skill with some fairly colorful comments, while my two young daughters hid under the layout. Or maybe it was my comments that sent them into hiding. I’m not entirely sure.

If the little aerobat got too close, I’d threaten it with my tennis racket. If that didn’t work, I would retreat upstairs and watch “Making Tracks” reruns until the little villains sobered up (the bats, not my daughters).

At their worst, the bats would sit above the sheetrock over my head and tell dirty bat jokes, rolling around, scratching, giggling, and snorting, and using the most gawdawful grammar. It was disgusting.

Of course this is all pretty typical for bats. I never met one that could stay out of mischief or write a decent sentence. Well, maybe one. There was a long-eared bat I met once in Amarillo, Texas, but that’s another story.

When spring arrived, the bats moved out and I patched the crack in the foundation that was their front door. It’s a lot quieter in the train room now, except when I set my workbench on fire with my soldering gun, or when a locomotive derails onto the basement floor. At times like those, I’m kind of grateful to the little hairballs for all the colorful language they taught me.