A Bedtime Story

It was a dark and stormy night
the kids were in bed
I'd stayed up to clean
before I lay down my head

And about 2am
I finally lay down.
and only 20 seconds later
I heard an odd sound.

It was a loud "THUNK"
then I heard someone call
then the sound of Matthew
as he ran down the hall

He burst into my room
He'd had quite a fright
seems the Thumk had come from
his room in the night

"What happened?" I asked
As he jumped on my bed
I'd heard it too so I knew
It wasn't just in his head.

"It's an airplane" He wailed
It tried to come get me!"
and at that point I wondered
just what he really did see.

Most likely a large bat
was what he really saw
or at least the shadow of one
as it crashed into the wall

Now I know that bats
Use sonar to fly
They don't see that well
so on sound they rely

But this poor old bat must have been
rather deaf (what a shame)
For he made quite a thunk
on my boys window pane

scared him quite badly
and he insisted after that
on sleeping in MY bed
Far away from that bat!

By this time it's 3am
I am quite tired
but the whole bat incident seemed
to make Matthew wired!

He wiggled, and giggled
and hid under the sheet
he was noisy, and kept kicking me
with his strong little feet

For over an hour
I tried to settle him down
But he would NOT go to sleep
and I started to frown.

I was desperate to SLEEP
so I sent him back
to his own room to fend off
the "airplane attack"

Once on his own
he fell fast asleep
And I did too -
for a few hours at least

Today I am tired
there's no sign of a bat
or aliens, or robbers
or any airplane attack.

I know he wasn't dreaming
because we both heard the noise
I'm just happy it didn't wake
the rest of the boys

so have a good night
and beware of deaf bats
that go crashing into windows
giving your kids heart attacks.

the end.