The thing swooped into the living room like a pterodactyl while I watched TV and Susanne worked on the laptop.

This has happened before. The last time a bat got into our house and flapped its horrible wings over our heads, it held us hostage for hours. This time I was pissed.

I have an unusually intense fear of mice. Not mice in a cage at a pet store. I’m fine with that. But a mouse scurrying around in my home? Forget about it. I lose my mind. Throw some creepy wings on that mouse and give it a face like Steven Buscemi and I am a complete mess.

Susanne screamed and dove under a blanket.

I think I just kept yelling at it. I picked up my guitar and went bat shit (literally).

"No!" I yelled.

I swung my acoustic guitar at it as it dipped and wove back and forth past my head.

"No!"

"Not again, you @!#*$."

"Not again!"

I clunked my beloved guitar on a coffee table after another swing and a miss.

I have a rug burn on my knee and I have no recollection of how it got there.

The thing came at my head like a B movie mechanical creature; like a Halloween prop. But it was very real and my adrenalin was spouting like a geyser.

On my fifth attempt, I got good wood on it (solid mahogany to be precise). I made contact and it dropped onto a white blanket that was draped over an ottoman. I then pounced on it with a good smack. Forgetting that Susanne was still hiding under that blanket, it appears I may have broken her foot. The casualties of war, I suppose.

The flying serpent from Hades then fell neatly off the ottoman and right into Susanne’s sandal where it bled from the ear and met its demise.

Susanne was now not just out a foot - she was also out a sandal to put it in.

How is this about diabetes? It’s not.

However, I think I experienced a number of diabetes-like sensations in my brief battle with the bat.

My heart raced and I felt jittery; my mouth got incredibly dry and I was sweating from every pore.

Oh, and like Charlie, when he’s in the 400s, I think I peed myself.