Dracula on the Kitten Porch

When we first flew out from LA to see houses with our Atlanta realtor, she had to explain some things to us. For example, in LA the room off the kitchen with the TV and the couch is usually the family room. In Atlanta they say keeping room. A screened porch in LA is just a screened porch. In Atlanta they say sleeping porch.

I asked why on both.

“Keeping room because it’s next to the kitchen so you can keep the cook company. And sleeping porch, I guess back in the old days when people didn’t have air-conditioning they could move out to the sleeping porch if it got too hot in the house,” the realtor answered.

My wife looked at both of us and said “thank goodness for AC. You won’t find me sleeping on a porch.”

“Even if the weather’s nice?” I prodded.

“It may be screened, but it’s not sealed!” was my wife’s prescient reply. “It’s perfect for the kitties though. Instead of a sleeping porch, we can call it a kitten porch.”

From then on, even our realtor was calling them “kitten porches”.

Cut to a few years into our new home in Atlanta with the kitten porch another part of our living space: large couch, loveseat, cozy chair, lamps, rug, etc. Fall and Spring are great out there.

But Alex’s prescience was spot on: we got stink bugs, spiders, a snake, and even a bat on our screened kitten porch.

The bat was discovered one cool night while we were sitting casually on the porch. Suddenly what looked like a giant moth wizzed by Alex’s head. She screamed and ran into the house. I wrangled the cats and joined her.

From the safety of our sealed house, we realized the giant moth was actually a bat. Not wanting the thing to fly into the house, we left it alone for the night. The next day I snapped a photo of it hanging there like it was an extra in a Dracula reboot.

The internet helped us come up with a plan: buy a butterfly net, trap it, and release it somewhere far away. This was easier said than done. Bats are fast and erratic flyers. I spent more than a few frantic minutes trying to trap it in mid-air, then finally it settled on the screen… and I got him!

Okay, now what? I thought.

“Alex, grab a towel or something!” I yelled into the house.

She came out hesitantly.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got him trapped” I confidently stated while knowing I wasn’t so confident what would happen next.

Well, we somehow got him into a box, put him in our car and drove him to his new home in someone else’s woods.

The next cool night, I jokingly asked Alex if she wanted to sleep on the kitten porch.

“I am not about to get bit in the neck by a mini Dracula with rabies!” she proclaimed in her matter-of-fact with a side of humor kind of way.

Probably a good thing I never told her about the snake.