The family circus got a new act last week: a bat.

I suppose it was my fault. I’ve had a little bit of writer’s block going on recently. The kids have been crazy busy, off doing kid things, and most of those kid things no longer require me to tag along with them.

They’ve been coming home exhausted and slammed with end-of-the-year homework and projects, so most of the time, they’re hunkered down with their laptops, leaving me little to observe and write about.

When I mentioned that they weren’t doing their part to help me create content, E suggested that maybe I try “manifesting,” and the content would appear.

If you’re not familiar with this manifesting trend, it is making things happen to you just because you will the universe to allow them to happen. Or something like that. At any rate, I tried manifesting content, and the universe sent me a bat. Voilà!

Two things before I get much farther:

1. There is an entire protocol for human/bat encounters and I strongly suggest that if you have such an encounter, you look that up and contact the appropriate resources and take appropriate actions.

2. I love bats. Not only are they the most adorable creatures on the planet, but they’re a vital part of our ecosystem, and honestly, having a house bat isn’t my worst nightmare. I know this is a patently bad idea, but I wish it wasn’t.

So, back to the bat. …

Things had just wound down for the evening. The kids were heading to bed, and I was headed to the couch for a little trashy TV. Suddenly I heard shouting from upstairs. I ignored it, assuming that siblings were trying to share bathroom space.

The shouting continued, and then the dogs joined in. So, obviously, something else was going on. I ran upstairs to find G hunkered down under a pile of blankets yelling. He stuck his head out long enough to tell me to get down and cover up because there was a bat.

Now, I haven’t seen a bat in this house in about 40 years, so obviously the first thing I did was argue with him that he must have seen a moth or something. I’m not entirely sure why I would argue with the most outdoorsy kid on the planet about whether he actually saw a bat, but that’s what I chose to do.

The bat obliged by swooping back in the room and proving me wrong.

Although I love them, it still startled me and I screamed. G, startled by my startled scream, started yelling at me not to kill it! So, obviously, I had to yell back that I wasn’t going to kill it but I didn’t want it to come near me and risk having to be killed.

All this excitement drew the two cats in to investigate, and they immediately wanted to go for bat blood. The ruckus made it to the dogs’ ears, and even though they were safely behind a closed bedroom door, it was clear that they were going to do everything in their power to join the party.

The bat flew out of G’s bedroom, which was good news for those of us in it, and bad news because it now had the rest of the house at its disposal.

We quickly shut the door to his room and formulated a plan. The cats and dogs would stay in lockdown, and we would try to clear each room and corner it, and then gently coax it out a window or door.

G armed himself with his fishing net while I picked up E’s tennis racket. “Mom, you’d better not kill the bat,” he reiterated. “I’m just going to tap it lightly to stun it so you can get it with the net,” I explained. His look told me he doubted my stunning ability.

We finally managed to corner it in one bedroom, but both of us chickened out on using our implements. Unfortunately, it was the same bedroom that is adjacent to the attic, which we keep open because the cats’ litter box is up there.

There was no way we were going to find it in all the stuff stacked up there, even though we could hear it bonking around.

So we opened a window, barricaded the door, rolled a towel up against the bottom of it, then barricaded ourselves in our respective rooms, also with towels up against the bottom, and hoped that one bat would go out and no more would come in.

That was the last we saw of the bat, so I’m hoping that it found the window and rejoined its bat friends. The alternative is that it hunkered down and was discovered by our feline friends the next day. They searched high and low, but since I wasn’t gifted any bat parts, I really do hope it turned out well for the bat.

As for me, I’m going to be a lot more specific about what I manifest in the future.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News