stars and parks and bats, oh my!

the sky here was beautiful tonight. the clearest i have seen in a long time. almost as clear as the arizona night skies, which are the most star filled i have seen to date.

as i gazed up to see what i could see....i saw it...what i hoped was a bird, but birds don't fly at night. damn, its a bat.

then i saw another one, and another, and another....i watched in hopes that it was just the same bat flying back and forth, but no...it was indeed mulitple bats. and god help me, all i could think of was a slightly tramatic, slightly funny moment in childhood.

we used to live in california and my mom was big on making sure that all us kids got to go to all the great amusement parks (darn lucky kids- if you ask me). this particular evening we were at knox berry farm. after the end of very long, busy, fun filled day- the family was heading to the exit gates when out of nowhere my mom let out a scream that could have shook the san andreas fault line loose.

she starts flailing around with her hands on her head and there we saw the menace that was the cause of her frantic motion. a bat had swooped down from the sky, probably aiming to catch whatever california bug that happened to be buzzing over my mom's head. but,the bat missed the bug and got my mom.

her seizure like antics brought laughs and knee slaps from us all, inlcuding her, after she was over the intial shock. as they say on those horrible sports clips gone wrong- and no one was hurt. the bat flew away, my mom ran away, there was no earthquake from her sizemic scream and i was left with this memory that will be forever relived when i see a bat cross the night sky.