Walking through our dimly lit dining room Wednesday evening, I could have sworn a bat flew past my head. I flipped on a light and turned in time to see large black wings flapping my way and darned if they weren’t attached to a bat.

It wasn’t like watching a misguided sparrow, banging off walls and windows. The bat flew slowly, dipping its way between the dining and living rooms, and finally attached itself high on a living room wall.

And yes, it was hanging upside down.

This was round two with this bat – if indeed there is only one.

The first bat alert was a piercing scream that came late Monday night from the direction of my wife’s bathroom. Speaking from under the protection of a large towel covering her head, she said a bat had tried to enter her sanctuary. We slept that night with the bedroom door closed and upstairs windows wide open.

“Bats sense air flows and will head in that direction,” a bat Web site advised.

The bat we thought was gone wasn’t.

So, home alone and back in the living room. After opening the front door and armoring myself with cap and gloves, I brushed the wall below the bat with a broom. Off he went flying past the open door several times.

So much for sensing air flows.

Same drill a second time.

When it landed a third time above a large photo, it worked its way under the frame barely a half-inch from the wall.

Amazing.

After I removed the photo and dimmed the lights, the bat did not move.

I grabbed the first container I saw in the kitchen, the plastic pitcher from an Osterizer blender. Standing on a table not meant to be stood on, I slowly lowered the blender over the bat. With coaxing it slid into the blender. A calendar between the wall and the container provided a cover, and the bat was mine – not to turn into a bat cooler but to remove from the house.

The bat was calm and hardly moved on the pitcher’s slick surface.

It was a great chance to see its little pointed ears, sharp teeth and very red tongue. After shooting a few one-handed photos through the plastic, I took it outside and watched it fly into the darkness, probably into our attic.

The hour or so out of my evening was worth it in spades when later my wife, Dona, came home from a meeting.

“Hi,” she said. “So what have you been doing this evening?”

And I had pictures to prove it.