The Fruit Bat Incident

You have to remember that when you come into contact with my father, Dale, make sure you don’t let your guard down for a second. He will play a trick on you that will haunt you like a sarcastic specter for the ages of time. My mother Lori seems to forget this important lesson that my sister Michelle and I have found out thru the years.

My father, for some reason, had a bunch of time on his hands one day. He also had a broomstick, twine, a banana, plexi-glass bat wings and glue. My father is the MacGeiver of tomfoolery so this would become a perfect Saturday afternoon messing with my mom. Now, my mother isn’t afraid of bats, per say, but she doesn’t like it when things come rocketing at her face. This fact will come in handy for my father and his partner in crime, my sister.

What kills me about this is that he spent time and energy into making these wings to freak out my mother, no doubt giggling like a little school girl to himself while grinding the proportions out perfectly, sanding the rough edges of the wings. He then took great care of using a glue to attach the wins to a banana, which only my father has the know how to pull this off. Attaching it to the broomstick with the twine he was ready. After the masterpiece was complete, he must find a victim. This was easy, my mother seems to fall victim to our pranks. Well, the really good ones.

My father then called my sister to the garage, or as I like to call it, the Honeycomb Hangout, to unleash the plan to my sister. They plotted; they schemed and hissed with subdued laughter. While my father, who is afraid of heights, but not of a really good “owning”, climbed up on the roof and positioned himself near the back door. Where the plan was, my sister would lure my mother out with a claim of a “fruit bat” in Michigan.

My mother, falling for the claim and telling my sister she was crazy came out the backdoor, where my sister yelled, “ There it is!” pointing in horror. My father swooped the “fruit bat” he constructed at my unsuspecting mother. She yelled, and did a sort of karate chop at the direction of the psedo-fruit bat, before running into the house.

Thus, the “fruit bat incident” was born. The fruit bat stayed with us until it became rotted and old. But the story, it still is as fresh as the yellow fruit bat that lives at our back door.