The Furbat Strikes Back

Last week, my friend Lauren invited me over for dinner after work to relax and hang out. As I was pulling up to her apartment, I suddenly remembered the Furbat. I hadn't seen him in a long time. In fact, I had forgotten all about him and our catastrophic first meeting.

When I arrived, Lauren and her roommate Janel had already started dinner. The Furbat was asleep in his lair, out of sight. Good.

We had a fun time cooking dinner and catching up with one another. There was none of the tension one would expect with a bloodthirsty monster sleeping in the next room.

After dinner, we starting watching Daria reruns while swapping teaching stories (Lauren and Janel work for Americorps tutoring children) including tales of a third grade teacher who had steadfastly insisted to her students that the oldest person in Africa was thirty-seven. Eventually, Lauren and Janel's third roommate Shane came home. We ended up watching YouTube videos and laughing our asses off. It was a great night...until the Furbat woke up.

Being nocturnal, the Furbat usually would awaken around 10pm and spend the night running around his cage. Tonight was no exception. He was deceptively cute. Lauren fed him and held him. He seemed pretty harmless - maybe he was tame after all.

I decided to relax my defenses and pet him. I delicately stuck my hand in (in a fist, to avoid losing fingers) to let him smell me. He didn't crab or piss on me or eviscerate my arm, no - he took this as an invitation to use me as a freaking jungle gym.

One minute, he had one little paw on my hand. Next thing I know, he's running up my arm and across my shoulder. When I felt his claws on the back of my head, I screamed. The Furbat clung on. I calmed down after I remembered that I outmassed him by a considerable amount. I gingerly removed him from my head and handed him to Lauren.

Lauren let the Furbat perch on her shoulder while we stood around and chatted about how social the Furbat had become. That's when he struck again.

This was what Shane saw.

The Furbat gave Shane this super intense look - it was only a second, but Shane later said it had lasted forever.

Shane's next view was this.

We all stood there for a minute, stunned.

I was violently reminded of those Alien movies where the creatures would leap out of eggs onto people's faces to impregnate them with alien embryos that would later chew their way out of their hapless victims. 

After a moment of stunned silence, we all burst out laughing. Lauren scooped up the Furbat and returned him to his cage. A shell-shocked Shane left to wash his face and returned laughing. I guess that's all you can do after a near-death experience.

I've still got my eye on you, Furbat.