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Sign up for updates now »During my three years in Omaha between college and the big move, I lived in an apartment complex called London Square. It was a great location, right in the heart of Dundee, one of Omaha’s most desireable neighborhoods, but my first unit there was the cheapest one that I could get: a basement apartment. The unit certainly had its faults in its first months: a dishwasher that leaked stagnant water, flooding that soaked the carpet of much of my living room, frightening insects that were at first sight, unidentifiable, and some extremely smelly old ladies that lived across the hall, that were known to wander the hallway in their diapers. These are all stories of their own, but nothing sticks out of my stay at London Square like “The Bat Story.”
One day I was doing my laundry in the London Square basement laundry room. I was transporting my clothing from the washing machine to the dryer, armful by armful, when a dead bat fell out of said clothing onto the floor. I thought that I had screamed, but I do know that nothing audible came from my lungs. I simply stared down at the tiny bat, wondering if perhaps one moment I would wake up, in my bed, in a cold sweat – but it did not happen. It felt like one of those traumatic experiences that has a surreal quality by virtue of it not immediately feeling nearly dramatic as you know it will sound when it is retold. “Is that what I think it is? Yes, it is a bat? Is it…whoo, yes, it is dead.” I of course transported what clothes that were now in the dryer back to the washing machine for a second go.
The call to the property manager was interesting: “Yes, this will sound incredibly odd, but the other day when I was doing laundry, I discovered that my clothes had been washed with a dead bat.”
The response of the typically customer-service challenged property manager was disturbingly nonchalant even for her: “oh, that’s funny, someone called and said they had seen a bat in the laundry room, but we went over there and ya know – we didn’t find anything.”
Hmmm. Bats live in caves – maybe they should have looked in the washing machine.
Don’t believe me? Here’s “The Bat”:
Ron said,
May 5, 2006 @ 5:59 am
We need a web-site for posting basement apartment horror stories.
BTW, you won for most horrifying. Or lost. I guess it depends on your perspective.
Lesson learned people, never live below ground level.
Never, never, never, never!
Six said,
May 6, 2006 @ 12:04 pm
Ooh, that’s fascinating! It wouldn’t freak me out to find one of those dead. Alive, maybe, but not dead.
Yes, I’m one of those freaks who loves scary stuff. You’d have to do better than a dead bat to really scare me.
Philip Schriver said,
October 17, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
At least it looks pretty clean.
Mary said,
October 18, 2008 @ 12:11 am
From my recent post at http://writingqueen.wordpress.com:
My apartment is in an active ninety-year-old church, which is clean and well kept, with modern offices and classrooms and a magnificent sanctuary. But all of us here deal with the occasional bat. People will be chatting in hallways or gathering in their classes when — inexplicably to the clueless observer — everyone screams and runs in some random direction, inevitably smashing into each other in their panic. Bats can be very startling.
This is especially true if a couple of them fly out from behind your shower while you are showering in it. It’s even worse if the bathroom door is closed and they keep flying around in that erratic sonar-guided way they have, so that you have no idea where they’ll end up or which way to dodge. I speak from experience. One minute I was showering, the next I was naked in the living room, having gotten there without traversing the distance in between, making me the only human being who has ever, literally, made a quantum leap.
kadavy said,
October 18, 2008 @ 8:29 am
Wow, Mary – you definitely have me beat with that one!
Mary said,
October 18, 2008 @ 8:58 am
Oh, I’ve had numerous close encounters with rodents. I think you left RDG before the Rat Army was discovered, with barracks under and behind my shower. Long, grisly story. Suffice it to say, for now, that my bathroom was gutted and rebuilt, literally from the ground up. –M