2026, animals, Family, Kids, Nature, Theatre, Uncategorized

Bats

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Boommate and I hoped to go to a matinee at our local movie theatre tomorrow see The Odyssey. Our theatre, the Palace, is a 100+ year old former Vaudeville theatre that the community has restored and renovated for our local theatre group productions, movies, and concerts. The Missoula Children’s Theatre was scheduled for a workshop and a production as well. Tuesday we got the word that everything was cancelled. During the recent Green Earth Players production of On Golden Pond a bat was noticed soaring around the very tall ceiling. It apparently brought quite a few friends along, too. The bat mitigation company can’t come until next week. The Missoula Children’s Theatre has been moved to the Catholic church.

I am pretty sure the Palace was first movie theatre I went to as a child. Boommate and I took a trip to Sioux Falls on Tuesday to run some errands. Our travels took us to downtown Sioux Falls where we noticed the State Theatre, where we both remembered seeing The Sound Of Music when it first came out. It was the only theatre that had a big enough screen and modern sound system to accommodate the movie. My dad took me and it was memorable. I was about 7 years old.

Our 8 year old grandson is coming to stay with us for a few days next week and I hope the bats get removed before he arrives. The Palace always has children’s movies during the week and I would love to take him. I really want him to experience the Palace.

What was the first movie theatre you remember going to? Any bat or rodent stories?

26 thoughts on “Bats”

  1. I cannot remember the theater name. But it was at the intersection of Broadway and Main in Fargo, ND.
    The movie was the classic Forbidden Planet.
    I remember that Dad had parked down the hill toward the park. On the right going down were accesses below street level to something down there. Scared the hell outta me to walk past.
    Years later, while cruising Broadway, the typical route, took us over Main and down the hill. I still have chills over seeing the Monster.

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  2. I remember Bambi in the theatre and also Fantasia but I doubt those were my first – although to be fair, when I was very young, money for movies would have been way down on the priority list for my family’s budget. And I looked up both Bambi and Fantasia and neither of them were in re-release when I was pre-teen, so who knows.

    There have been three movies in my life that captured me so completely that I went mutiple nights in a row to see them again. Two of those three happened in Northfield at the Grand, which is also a refurbished old theatre from the late 1800s. Blazing Saddles was the first – I went back three more nights; I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard in my life. Then Star Wars came out in `77. It’s hard to remember now how revolutionary that movie was with its jazzed up special effects. Went back two nights for that – I pity any young person who hasn’t seen that movie on the big screen!

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    1. The Grand hosts celebrations and music events now. They’re busy every night of the week. It still looks grand, but could stand some renovation. The seats were replaced with tables and uncomfortable chairs. The stage looks very nice.

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  3. Renneeinnd, you always remind me of good memories from Luverne area. Oh yes, the Palace Theater. Such fond memories. We saw a lot of John Wayne movies since mom loved John. I do remember the colorful mural they had as you walked into the theater. And JuJubes. I too say Sound of Music at the State in SF.
    Wife and I were deeply involved in the Rochester Repertory theater. She and 3 guys started in 42 years ago and still going strong. We did a show 10 November which is a play with music about the Edmond Fitzgerald. A very moving show. During the scene taking place on the deck discussing sea gulls and a bat entered stage right, swooping across the deck a few times then exited stage right. That became the cameo of our idea of a sea gull. It was a very old building.
    Paul Skattum

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    2. Paul stole my story, I was gonna talk about that same bat. I was in that show, and I don’t wear my glasses when onstage, so I couldn’t see the bat that well. I just stood there saying my lines. Other people ducked and swerved.
      Only time a bat actually appeared during a show that I can recall.

      Every now and then I’ll open a shed door and a bat will drop out. Course we see them at night swooping around after bugs. Never had one in the house. They don’t bother me.

      I don’t recall my first movie. I remember mom and dad taking me to see ‘The Sting’ at the old Time movie theater. I would have been 9 in 1973. I’m sure I saw some of the old Disney movies before that.

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  4. My first house in the Twin Cities had a “bat problem”. I’ve never been afraid of bats but for our first three years here, we had a “boommate” and he was terrified. I’m not sure if we even knew there was such a thing as bat mitigation but we couldn’t have afforded it anyway. Wasband and “boommate” spend three weeks spreading going up to the attic during the early evenings (when the bats were out and about) and plugging up gzillions of little holes with bits of steel wool so the bats couldn’t get back in and then eventually spreading a bunch of moth ball material up there. This wasn’t a working attic and luckily the moth ball smell didn’t waft its way down into the house. It did seem to work.

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  6. Can’t remember my first movie, though my mother told me it was The Unsinkable Molly Brown (have since seen it so I kind of know what it’s about). Remember seeing Sound of Music in Des Moines (the big time).

    Love seeing those old theatres and always think of Carol Kennnicott and Main Street when I do. Bless those women trying to bring “civilization” to those places they found themselves stranded in, largely abandoned now.

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  7. Would have been the Vista Theater in Storm Lake IA (I just looked it up). Not sure of the first movie, but we got coupons on the last day of school for a summer matinee series, and one of those movies was a Ma and Pa Kettle. I was allowed to walk the 8 blocks from home on my own, felt very grown-up.

    I think I told here how we had a bat in our mailbox last year. Took him to the garage while I researched for what to do, and he apparently left…

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  8. I don’t remember where I saw my first movie. I’d guess it was probably in Owatonna. I remember going to the drive-in theater a few times as a kid. These were exciting nights for us. We rarely did anything as a family, so that was a big deal. I don’t remember what we saw, just that we went. There were a lot of mosquitoes, and there was a big, gray speaker thing that dad spoke into to place an order for popcorn.

    Oh, yes, I have bat stories. More than one. We had bats in the old house at Cannon Lake. They mostly stayed upstairs. There were two antique brass beds up there, all made up with nice sheets and quilts, completely covered with bat droppings. That house was sold separately from the lot, placed on a trailer and moved to Medford, MN. We built our home on the site where the old house stood. No more bats.

    My house in Waterville had bats. I may have told this story before, but I fell asleep on the couch one night, and was awakened by a poke from a wet nose. My dog, Bailey, woke me up. I looked at him, he looked at me, then he looked up toward the ceiling. I followed his gaze, and freaked out. That bat kept me up all night. You’re supposed to turn on all the lights, open all the windows fully, and it will depart on its own. Right. My house filled with bugs. I fled to my bedroom with Bailey, closed the door, and I could hear that damn thing enter an air conditioning vent, fly through the duct work, straight to my bedroom, then exit the air conditioning vent in my bedroom. I ran out of the bedroom, carrying Bailey, and slamming the door behind me. I gathered my courage, went back in, flipped on the light, ran to the windows, removed the screens, and cranked the windows wide open. By then it was dawn, and daylight was dimly growing. The bat actually flew at me, baring its teeth. I know that’s just the way they look, but I could have sworn that thing was really trying to get me. I ran back out of the bedroom, leaving the light on, and slammed the door. I had to go to work – utterly exhausted. I closed up the house, tried to kill a few bugs, and left. When I came home at noon, I gathered my courage again, and went into my bedroom. No sign of the bat. I looked at everything, because they can hide in tiny places. I literally tore my bedroom apart, but no sign of it.

    There were other bat stories from that house, like the baby bat I found in a pail in the utility room on the floor. I just took the pail and turned it over outside. The baby fell out. I don’t know if it survived. I should have tried harder because they can’t take off from the ground, but…

    I figured out how they were coming in. They came straight down the chimney. I went to a hardware store and bought a chimney cap with a filter thing on it. My friend helped me go up on the roof and put the new chimney cap filter thing on. I never had another bat.

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  9. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I am not sure what the first movie was. However, the ones I remember early on are Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Old Yeller, and 101 Dalmations, all shown in the “big town” of Sioux City, Iowa. In LeMars, the local theater had a 10 cent Saturday matinee for children that was often full to the rafters. It was a laboratory of bad behavior, with flying missiles, popcorn everywhere, and spilled pop and a noise level that did not allow you to hear the dialogue. Why they thought that was a good idea without an adult in sight is beyond me. I saw the Nutty Professor on one such Saturday. The clean up after those matinees must have been disgusting.

    I have talked a lot about my dislike of rodents. Bats are not far behind. Nuff said.

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  10. I’m guessing that my first movies were Disney – Bambi, Fantasia, Snow White, etc. My hometown didn’t have a movie theater so we had to go all the way to Cambridge (6 miles). The theater was on Main Street and had a single screen.

    Bats? During my junior and senior high years our house had lots of them. The upstairs was a large bedroom with knotty pine paneling and a large attic. Apparently bats got into the attic through the eaves and then could get into the house via the paneling. Occasionally a bat flew down into the main floor. I remember one time Mom & Dad played badminton with a bat – the living room and dining room were essentially one big room. Mom stood at one end, Dad at the other, and they were volleying the bat back and forth until it died. One time Mom was taking sheets out of the washer and discovered a dead bat rolled up in a sheet. Anytime we had to get something from the attic, we wore a “bat hat” – one was a plastic pith helmet, the other was a straw hat with a wide brim – so bats would not get tangled up in our hair. I did have a close encounter with one in the attic. It looked like it was flying in slow motion and thankfully avoided me. Mom discovered a way to get rid of them. She put a small amount of water in a 3 pound coffee cans and set them in the attic. The bat would go for a drink but couldn’t fly out of the can. She found drowned bats several times. Sometime after I graduated my folks hired someone to plug up any possible entry points in the eaves. After that there were no more bats in the house but for a couple of years there were a bunch of bats flying around the house at night seeking entry.

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  11. 101 Dalmatians, at the theater in downtown Hudson. I don’t remember that much from the movie itself, but my sister and I had a Viewmaster with stills from the movie that I looked at often afterwards, so there are some images from the movie lodged in memory.

    I don’t think we went to another movie in a theater till Mary Poppins.

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  12. I’m hoping that the “bat mitigation company” that you are referring to uses safe and humane ways of removing the bats from the Palace Theatre. I don’t think most people are aware of how incredibly important bats are to ecosystems all over the world. Not only are they important pollinators and distributor of seeds, they eat vast amounts of insects; we should do everything we can to protect them.

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      1. I actually had bats regularly in my apartment while I lived in a run down old mansion here on the West Side, Krista. Fortunately, a teacher friend of mine had been advocating for bats for years, and had managed to impart enough facts about bats to me that it wasn’t that hard to overcome my fear. I bet your friend TJ will tell you the same about snakes.

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        1. Snakes don’t bother me. Bats do. I don’t hate them, but I want them to be outside. They do try to come in beginning at this time of year, when the nights start to get cooler and the days begin to shorten. I don’t kill them. I do all I can to get them outside. I understand the threats to their populations. I don’t have to like them.

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  13. My first movie was Snow White. I remember standing in line outside a theater In Newcastle with my mother and auntie Marge, but I have no recollection of seeing the film at that time; I was two years old. I did see the film some years later in Stubbekøbing.

    I remember seeing Dumbo and Pinocchio at the only theater in Stubbekøbing when I was about five years old. Pinocchio made a big impression on me, and it scared the wits out of my three year old sister when the whale swallowed the raft with Geppetto and Pinocchio on it. I really liked Jimini cricket a lot. My recollection of the characters in Pinocchio is amazingly vivid, still.

    I saw 101 Dalmations on a date with Asbjørn Bustetun, a Norwegian medical student, in Basel.

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  14. There was no movie theater in Biwabik, where I lived for much of my early years. The first movie theater I went to was in nearby Aurora. I googled the theater, and it’s called the Tacora theater. It’s still there, but has been closed for quite a while. I saw Bambi there and Lady and the Tramp. I’m not sure which was first; I was about five years old.

    When we stayed with my aunt in St. Paul during the summer, there was a movie theater right next to her house. My cousin and I were given money for admission (I don’t remember the amount, but it was in coins, not bills). We’d take our dolls and buy tickets and watch whatever kid-friendly matinee was playing. I remember seeing The Trouble With Angels with Rosalind Russel and Hayley Mills. The theater is still there (the Mounds theater) and has been restored for use as a performing space for plays and concerts.

    I vaguely remember bat incidents when I was a kid. One was at my grandparents’ house, an old historic house near Fort Snelling. The kids (including me) were sent to one of the bedrooms to wait it out while the adults crashed around trying to get the bat.

    Bats have sometimes been attracted to our hummingbird feeder. We see them flitting around if we’re sitting out on the deck at dusk. I enjoy watching them and imagining all the mosquitoes they’re eating.

    As for other rodents, Charlotte (our cat) has presented us with several mice over the past year, most recently a couple of weeks ago. We were surprised that mice would be getting into the house in the summer; maybe the heat was too much for them. She used to just catch them and play with them until we were able to get them away from her, but she’s become a more serious hunter lately and they don’t survive. At least she doesn’t present them to us in bed (I know several people who have experienced this). Instead, she brings them to the door of Son’s room, and he gets to dispose of the wee victims.

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  16. ive always been a movie guy. as a kid i moved to minneapolis at age 3 and i dont remember a movie before thatbut once here my mom got us to lots of movies. disney…fantasia snow white pinocchio jungle book bambi and stuff like shane and old yeller. i loved musicals like my fair lady oklahoma music man poppins sound of music and all the nutty professor flubber kind of stuff. tv cowboy shows were all the rage and i loved roy rogers wild bill hickock hopalong cassidy sky king neighborhood theaters downtown theaters cooper monster theater mann southtown i loved them all. remember smoking in the back rows where ash trays were on the back of the seats in front of you?

    i loved bats but did have a friend sit on a bat and get bit and had to go through rabies shots. no fun

    bats and bees and butterflies are all challanged by a changing world. i hope they make it

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