The Hairy Bat in the Mouth

What is it like to wake up with a hairy creature in your mouth? The columnist says she would gladly trade away half a fingertip, although her phone would not appreciate the exchange.

She recounts the story of a woman in Virginia who dreamed that a small mouse was crawling into her open mouth. In the half-awake state between dream and reality, the woman reached inside and pulled out something living and hairy. Thankfully, it was a bat, not a mouse. The woman happened to be a doctor, which meant she could immediately give herself a rabies shot from the refrigerator.

The columnist says bats remain unsettling, though they rank above the invasive jellyfish currently disrupting waters around Venice. The creatures reportedly consume the lagoon’s food supply and, when food runs out, eat one another. Their name, the sea walnut, sounds remarkably charming for such an extreme animal.

Her own first-world problem began while she was grating carrots with a very sharp slicer and cut off half her fingertip. The bleeding initially seemed impossible to control, but the injury created another problem: she needed the finger’s print to unlock her phone, and the device refused to recognize the altered fingertip. The column recalls an earlier meme culture in which people in wealthy countries joked about similarly privileged inconveniences.