Tours of Terror, Dracula Tour 2005, and Bats

Dracula has always held my imagination. I recently sent in my deposit to go on a trip to Transylvania this fall through an outfit called Tours of Terror. (Unfortunately I am on the waiting list as these tours are very popular!) Each Halloween they travel to Romania and visit the sites of legend that are related to the Dracula myths and on Halloween, there is a midnight ball at Dracula's Castle.

Of course the real Dracula was Vlad the Impaler, who's bloody history can still be felt in Romania as you visit the towns and castles where he lived and the tomb where Vlad was buried after he was assasinated. In addition, Brahm Stoker's Dracula lived in the same beautiful countryside. The tour follows the path of Jonathan Harker up through the mountains on a similar journey to the one that Jonathan took to get to Dracula's castle. (Except I imagine you take a more comfortable bus instead of a bumpy carriage ride!) Hopefully I will get off the waiting list and be able to go on this trip this fall.

In the meantime, I have had my own recent run in with bats. My friends, Charlie and Margaret, just moved out of their place in Mahwah, to a home slightly further north in New York state. I toured the house when they were looking at it, a glorious old 1850's home in a small town, but never stayed overnight. I decided to sleep downstairs on the couch, as it was cooler. I turned off the lights, and took off my glasses. As I lay there, I suddenly saw something fly through the room. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Then it happened again, and I realized what it was. Something I hadn't seen in a house since I was a kid.

I called upstairs to my friend Margaret who was still awake. "Margaret, we have a visitor," I said. "A bat." Margaret came downstairs, and we spent 30 minutes trying to get it out of the house. Opening the door, and hoping it would fly out that way. Trying to catch it in a sheet. Trying to bat it with a screen from a window. Once it diappeared and we had to search the living room for it, only to find the bat sitting on top of the window treatments, watching us scour the room for this tiny creature of the night.

Finally, it flew in between one of the open windows and the top half of the window. It crawled way up into the corner of the window to hide from us. We took out the screen and closed the window. Now, when it crawled back down, it would have to fly out into the night. In the morning it was gone. We have not yet figured out how it got into the house, and hopefully this is the last they see of it or it's friends inside their house.

The next night as darkness fell we watched the bats flying overhead outside. Gracefully swooping and eating insects, they are the beautiful children of the night. They just need to stay outside in the night air.

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