The temperature has risen a lot lately and every morning I usually leave the balcony door open to let some fresh air in. I sat down at my desk to get some work done when I heard a screeching sound coming from the hallway that I didn’t recognize. I figured that the cat was dragging something around the floor, so I got up to go take a look and I discovered the source of the noise.

When I saw what she was playing with, I jumped a couple feet back more out of surprise than anything. My little Lucy had caught herself a bat and dragged it into the house and it was screeching like a newborn baby.

After a couple of pictures, I pulled Lucy away and the bat swooped towards my head and into the kitchen where it smacked into the window and hung onto the curtain trying to escape.

Seeing at it was already in the kitchen, the idea of bat stew briefly crossed my mind, but in the end I nudged it out the window with the broom where it flew back to the bat cave.

Last night Simona and I went to one of the last concerts in the 3-month long Correggio Jazz series that featured a piano duo. One pianist was Luis Bacalov, an Argentinian whose forte is tangos and waltzes, and the other was Danilo Rea, who could very easily be a stand-in for Bill Evans.

I had never heard of Danilo Rea in the US, but I was literally floored by his performance last night. If he was better known, I have no doubt that he’d be placed in the ranks of Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, et al. Being offset by another accomplished pianist really emphasized how exceptionally he plays.