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By
the look on his face I was afraid someone had been seriously injured.
"Bill, get your breath! What’s happened?" I demanded.
"Jim!"
Bill squealed between labored gasps for breath, "There’s a bat
out there flying around the racks!"
I
tried to reassure him that the bat probably just came in with a shipment
of wire we’d received and the thing would find its way outside through
one of the roll-up dock doors soon enough. But Bill wouldn’t hear of
it and used some rather colorful language to counter my consolation.
"That
so-and-so thing will get in my hair"! He pleaded with tears welling
up in his squinted eyes. Bill had that Don King/
stuck-my-finger-in-a-light-socket sort of hairdo and if a bat could get
in anyone’s hair, it would be his.
Other
employees were meandering into the break room looking back out a big
glass window to see where the bat went. "All right then, let me go
and see what I can do." And I walked out the door, leather gloves
in hand, to find this flying mouse before it caused a total labor
stoppage.
Most
of the guys weren’t worried about the bat and continued to work. One
of them pointed to where he had last seen it fly. Sure enough, there he
was holding on to the side of a row of palleted seed bags, three tiers
up.
As
I approached, he flew and I took off behind him. He took his time,
zig-zagging from wall to wall until he finally got to the front, then
turned around and headed again toward the back of the building with me
in hot pursuit, this time, to the wire cover of an unlit overhead light.
One
of the warehouse workers threw a wadded-up glove that bumped off of the
lamp and sent our flying friend sailing again. This time when he got to
the front he flew to the upper corner of the warehouse, got tangled in
cobwebs and fell about ten feet from a walk-through emergency exit. Side
cramping, breathless and seeing stars, I gently picked him up, backed
through the exit and tossed him into the air. I’d forgotten we had a
repairman there working on a forklift and the anxiously flapping bat
missed his head by about a foot.
Another
and, by far, the most exciting bat encounter I had was at twilight in
the fall of 1996. I was driving on old Highway 24 between Russellville
and Mt. Hope. Somebody had dismantled an old log house, log barn and log
cotton house and re-built them, stick by stick, next to the road. There
was enough daylight for me to slow down and admire the place and I
cracked the window, not over two inches, where I could see more clearly.
I
sped up after passing the structures and was driving through a place on
that highway where trees hang over the pavement on either side. The wind
was blowing and the occasional leaf zipped by the car.
Suddenly
there was a THUMP in my left ear. Being a big science fiction movie fan
when I was younger, I, for some reason, remembered the scene in the 1972
flick Gargoyles where one of the big, male winged beasts landed
on and held to the top of a fleeing vehicle. I chuckled. But, just to be
on the safe side, I rolled up my window and went a little faster.
Just
then I saw something in my peripheral vision to my right. For a second I
thought it must be a leaf that flew into the car. But wait, my window’s
up…it couldn’t be anything blowing. The alleged leaf fluttered
toward the back seat.
The
road is very curvy and there are huge limestone rocks along the sides of
this highway; so, I was trying to pay attention to where I was driving
until a car came onto the road behind me and, with its lights shining in
my back window, revealed the silhouette of my leaf…a bat walking in
its hunch-backed position on the carpet under my back window from one
side of the car to the other. Like I said, I had to pay attention to the
serpentine road and, besides, there was a car right on my tail where I
couldn’t slam on my brakes.
Then
I thought, nobody’s going to believe that a bat flew into my car. My
camera’s in the trunk and all I need is a good lit up place to take
the photo. The car behind me turned off and I started looking for a
street lamp. There was a zoo owned by a lady in the area who would
appreciate my dilemma, but I’d forgotten exactly how to get there.
Night
service was about to start at this little white church house I was
approaching and they had a street lamp. But, what would all those people
think of some nut driving up with a bat in his car?
My
destination now was a filling station just a few more miles down the
road that I knew had a brightly lit awning. Just then, the bat flew over
my left shoulder and fell into the crack between my seat and the door.
He clawed his way up the seat and, I swear to you, looked up at me as he
crawled across my lap! Over the arm rest he went, then to the back rest
of the passenger seat to fly to the back window again.
I
was sweating bullets but could see the bright, white lights of the gas
station ahead. I pulled in, popped the trunk, jumped out and immediately
asked this great-big fellow standing next to a really muddy, souped-up
four-wheel-drive pickup if he’d ever seen a bat like that? He just
glanced at the critter, climbed in his truck and took off. I took a
couple pictures.
A
lady was at the counter and I asked her if she had something I could get
a bat out of my car with. She handed me a pair of brown, cotton gloves
and, of course, followed me out to the car. After looking at the almost
orange-colored bat, she stood back, I opened the door and without having
to touch it with the gloves, the bat flew off into the night. |
