Bat rescue

So tonight I was semi-responsible for rescuing a lost little bat that found itself in RLM.  I’m guessing it was chasing a bug when the doors opened and it ended up indoors.  The way RLM is set up, there are escalators that go from 4th floor (ground level) to 7th, so there’s an easy way to fly upwards.  But once you hit 7th, it’s practically impossible to go up anymore.  Hence, a lost bat.

The first problem that presented itself was, who do you call about a bat in a building?  Inside the classroom is a list of numbers, but mostly for tech stuff.  So I called the campus police, who forwarded me to some other emergency maintanance group or something, who then forwarded to issue to animal people.  While waiting I tried to convince it to fly into a classroom, which would at least narrow down where it could fly, but that didn’t work.  A few times it managed to grab the ceiling and rest, and that was fun to watch.  I don’t think I’ve ever watched a bat this close for this long.

After 25 minutes or so a guy came up the escalator with a net, which I assumed was the bat catcher.  Luckily, the bat took that time to rest on the ceiling so he got it right away.  Of course then the bat didn’t want to leave the net, but it was fun to watch.  Apparently the guy had just rescued a bat from the music building too.  Silly bats!

Now for the synchronicity part of this.  Normally I’m real big on the students handing in their labs on time, which would be by 7.  Tonight I let them work, and I had just one student there till 7:20.  Had I not let him work, I wouldn’t have been there when the bat flew up, and wouldn’t have been able to call.  Who knows what would have happened otherwise.  So I’m glad I didn’t worry about time tonight so I could watch the bat.  :-)  What’s wierd though, is when this stuff happens, I’m never conscious of making a choice.  I don’t get this gut feeling that I should stick around, or hear a voice or anything.  It’s just something I do for seemingly no reason.  So it appears that I do listen to my gut, but it’s so subconscious that I never know it.  I’ll have to think about what that means later.  I need to reserve brainpower for my midterm.