Our resident Listings Editor, Anita Overcash, loves animals. No. I mean, looooovvvveesss animals. And she seems to have encounters with critters all the time — like, way more than the average human. As a result, we thought it only made sense to have her start blogging about her meetings with creatures (both great and small) in a news series of blog posts titled: "Anita's Animal Adventures."

I have a tendency to stay up much longer than I should during the week (concerts, movies, TV, socializing, exercising, and browsing Facebook, all contribute to keeping me occupied and not sleeping). This leads to the usual downfall of me being rather sleepy and of course, wondering sometimes whether or not I’m losing my mind. So, it should come as no surprise that when I was awakened early in the wee hours of the morning by strange scratching type sounds outside my bedroom window, I was confused and alarmed, as I hurriedly stumbled out of bed and let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

Looking out the window, without my contacts in I didn’t see very much. I was, as the ol’ saying goes, “Blind as a bat.” I did see the shape of a small creature fly past by window and then to my astonishment hit my window head on. "OK, that kind of freaked me out." So, I decided to hop back into bed for some ZZZZs and to ignore whatever was capturing my attention. One thing was for sure: It was still dark, and I wasn’t going outside to check it out until daylight.

So what was it? Well, the next morning I saw nothing as I stood outside of the house and stared up at my bedroom window, located underneath the gable vent of the attic, which my room sits under. Later, however I would learn from a large amount of poop (yuck!) in the driveway below (and a family member's exploration of the attic), that what I had heard and kind of seen was a bat. But, there wasn’t just one “hanging out” near my room. More than 50 of the small creatures were taking refuge in the gable vent I had stared at earlier and thought was "way too small for any creature to fit."

From research I have done since this animal adventure, I have learned that bats love small, hard-to-get-into spaces. It makes them feel safe from predators while they are sleeping. Ahhh ... isn’t that what we all want?