" Are those--”
“Bats,” he said in a low voice, but he sounded triumphant.
While I was trying to decide whether to be amazed or terrified, I settled for being put out. “Bats are not rodents.”
“I know, but don’t they look like mice with wings? Pretty cool, huh?”
“Unless they wake up, swoop down, and attack us. Don’t they carry rabies?”
“That’s an old wives’ tale,” he said. “A very miniscule percentage actually have rabies. Watch this.”
Reaching up, he unhooked a bat from its perch.
“Are you insane?” I whispered.
“Shh. It’s okay. They’re hibernating.” He hung it on the sleeve of his jacket and held it up to my face. “Is that awesome or what?”
It was kinda awesome. I’d never seen a bat up close like this.
“Go ahead and pet it,” he said.
It looked pretty harmless. I reached out--
It released an ear-splitting screech and flew toward me!
I let loose a blood-curdling scream and found myself face down on the floor of the cave, with Josh lying on top of me, covering me, while the cave filled with the horrendous echoing of a thousand angry wings.
When things finally quieted, we scrambled out of the cave, sliding down the snowy embankment until we landed on even ground.
I was breathless, my heart beating so hard that I figured it would wake up all the hibernating creatures within a five-mile radius.
Laughing, Josh dropped back in the snow, like he was planning to make a snow angel or something. But I figured that was the last thing on his mind.
“They’ve never done that before. Scared the crap out of me,” he said.
I figured I’d just scared ten years off my life expectancy. I was shaking, and it wasn’t from the cold. "

― Rachel Hawthorne , Snowed In