I’ve been having delusions that either of my loyal readers wanted to know what really happened on my three-week Lake Tschida vacation so I came up with the following  

First I had a heart attack, which was announced to the world and much to my relief the pictures of my angiogram didn’t show up on CNN. So far I’m still here and quite frustrated with all the falderal that goes along with heart disease, but I’ll get back to that in future columns.

Shortly after the big one I was allowed to return to Lake Tschida, and my hope of recovery was significantly enhanced when my 9-year-old granddaughter Kelci showed up to help out. By this time my stent was a couple days old, my new medications were kicking in and I wasn’t sure if those pains were gas or another big one on the way.

So Kelci, Charlie (my daughter’s 80-pound dog) and I hopped in the golf cart to go exploring. We headed down to Yeager’s dock, which is as close to a Jimmy Buffet beach as we have out here, and I sat in the golf cart whilst Charley and Kelci walked out onto the dock.

Kelci nudged Charlie and he slipped off the dock and caught his paw/leg in the loop of a dock bumper, which caused him to precariously dangle from the side of the dock and yelp in extreme pain and panic. I sprang from the golf cart, raced onto the dock, reached for Charlie’s collar and he chomped down on my hand… and I mean chomped.

Once Charlie let go, I grabbed him with both hands, pulled him free and tossed him onto the dock and he scampered off. The pain in my hand was excruciating, his large incisors had pierced my palm in two spots, one almost went through my palm… I hollered at Kelci to get me back to the cabin.

We got in the golf cart; Kelci put the pedal to the metal and got us home in short order. The pain was so incredible it masked everything else that was wrong including the itchy rash that had materialized on my butt from my new medications and my recent heart attack. Charlie’s tooth somehow hit a tendon or bone and damn it hurt all night. The upside is that after a night of complaining, not only did I survive but my family is still talking to me… so the tribe left for the week and week two of vacation got underway with just me and the Missis.

Friday rolled around when Kelci and her dad returned to the lake just in time for us to find bats in the potbelly stove. Grandma Renee and I had heard scratching in the stovepipe the night before, so I looked in the potbelly and found a dead bat lying in the ashes.

Kelci said she had never seen a bat before, noticing more scratching in the stovepipe. Grandpa Dan took a flashlite and sure enuf, there were two bats poking their noses out of the stovepipe. Not knowing what to do, Grandpa Dan found a tongs and hoped he could snag the dang things. Kelci grabbed a pillow to hide behind.

Grandpa Dan shined the flashlite into the potbelly and slowly moved the tongs towards the bats, then quickly snagged one and ran out the door with it. Then he went back and repeated this action four times. They both thought they got ‘em all, but then the scratching began again, and after fishing out seven bats the scratching ceased, and Kelci was quite happy that six out of seven bats survived.

So in attempting to ’splain how all this could happen, the logic is that they came in through the stovepipe on the roof, since there is no screen around the opening. Once in the bats couldn’t get out because they couldn’t open their wings inside the pipe and they obviously had no regard for the fella with the heart condition, nor his sensitive grandchild when they began their descent, so all we can do is hope they learned their lessons and that Grandpa Dan can find some screen along with someone willing to climb up on the roof and repair the problem… and so much for week one and two at Lake Tschida…

May your heart be able to handle whatever emergencies it confronts.