Bats in My Belfry

Yesterday, Jim and I went to A Twilight Celebration put on by the Organization for Bat Conservation.  It was an evening with appetizers, exotic animals, and awesome art.

The array of bat houses by famous and local artists.

This was the first charity event we have ever attended.  The closest I've ever been to anything like this (i.e. silent auction) has been the Promise Tree Dinner at our school.  The OBC provided a lovely evening for their guests.  It was so fun to be so close to some of the animals who live at the Bat Zone.  Volunteers paraded animals around the tables, and a gentleman played piano*.

*Which I must take a few moments to describe.  I have played for aesthetic purposes many times in my life, and in many different venues.  But there were points that I laughed out loud at the choices the pianist played. A half-hour of ragtime classics truly set me off in a hysterical laughter fit.  I realize this is disrespectful, but I couldn't understand why he would choose some of the material he played.  Until the end of the evening.

Jim and I had noticed a man's name on almost all of the bid sheets for the bat houses.  We spent the evening searching the room, desperately trying to figure out who this man could be.  We had settled on a man who seemed very inconspicuous, and rather odd.  Our theory was that he had a lot of money, but dressed like an average man.  We were VERY wrong.  The mystery man was the pianist!  He took home 3 of the houses!  His last name was Hanson - which we figured was part of the Hanson Windows empire.

However, lets get back to the evening at hand.  There was a photo booth, and Jim and I got silly pictures taken with a Malaysian Flying Fox and a Barn Owl.  It was so awesome!

We also bid on a couple of the bat houses.  Unlike the pianist, we do not have an unending pocketbook.  We were lucky, and had the winning bid this beautiful one:

Dean Rogers is a local artist, and I feel in love with his rendering of a flying fox.  Those eyes!

And this afternoon, Jim hung it in our kitchen.  This is so I can see it multiple times during the day!

We now have one hanging on our house (which has been there for over a year), and one hanging inside our house.