Sunday, September 04, 2005
Day of the Bats
On Thursday I got to work and found a rather inactive winged rodent hanging out on the ledge overlooking the first floor of the mall. Closer inspection revealed the beast to be worse off than I first thought. It was, to paraphrase Monty Python, "an ex-bat."
Later on I ran into one of the maintenance guys and he retrieved our furry little departed pal with some kind of pool skimmer device. I figured the rest of day was going to be bat-free but the way my summer has gone, I should have known better. A couple hours after that I was hanging out at my counter pondering how many limited edition Coffee Kit-Kat bars I was going to buy that night, when suddenly I spied a furry brown thing go whizzing by along the floor.
"Cool, a mouse!"
But this mouse had wings and it was flapping merrily through the music room aisles about two inches off the floor. Yep, another bat, this one very much alive. I watched it do a couple lazy figure eights around the CD bins before taking a right at the door and heading back into the mall proper. A minute later I was still scratching my noggin, pondering whether or not to call the maintenance guy again, when I saw him run by in the direction the bat had gone. He was doing that crouch-run you see military commandos doing in the movies, except instead of a gun he had a walkie talkie in his hand saying things like, "Crackerjack this is Dumpster Diver. I've got an eyeball on the critter, quadrant seven. Over!"
Lucky for us it was a slow day. The last thing I need is a gaggle of terrified soccer moms spotting a bat, leaping up on the counter and screaming their lungs out.
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On Thursday I got to work and found a rather inactive winged rodent hanging out on the ledge overlooking the first floor of the mall. Closer inspection revealed the beast to be worse off than I first thought. It was, to paraphrase Monty Python, "an ex-bat."
Later on I ran into one of the maintenance guys and he retrieved our furry little departed pal with some kind of pool skimmer device. I figured the rest of day was going to be bat-free but the way my summer has gone, I should have known better. A couple hours after that I was hanging out at my counter pondering how many limited edition Coffee Kit-Kat bars I was going to buy that night, when suddenly I spied a furry brown thing go whizzing by along the floor.
"Cool, a mouse!"
But this mouse had wings and it was flapping merrily through the music room aisles about two inches off the floor. Yep, another bat, this one very much alive. I watched it do a couple lazy figure eights around the CD bins before taking a right at the door and heading back into the mall proper. A minute later I was still scratching my noggin, pondering whether or not to call the maintenance guy again, when I saw him run by in the direction the bat had gone. He was doing that crouch-run you see military commandos doing in the movies, except instead of a gun he had a walkie talkie in his hand saying things like, "Crackerjack this is Dumpster Diver. I've got an eyeball on the critter, quadrant seven. Over!"
Lucky for us it was a slow day. The last thing I need is a gaggle of terrified soccer moms spotting a bat, leaping up on the counter and screaming their lungs out.
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