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Poor bat.
I found a bat this morning in my apartment. It was lying in the groove where the sliding glass door normally goes behind the screen door. I was really surprised to see it, as I still have no idea how it could have got there (no holes in the screen door, anyway). At first I wasn't sure if it was alive, but it opened its mouth and showed its sharp and pointy teeth at some point during my observation, and it also moved a little. It was brown and looked very soft, very much like a mouse. My first thought was to open the screen door and attempt to shoo it outside, but it didn't seem inclined to move even with a fan blowing on it, and there are some sort of wasps or bees that frequent our porch. I knew enough not to touch it, as bats carry diseases etc. I felt sorry for the adorable little thing, and I didn't want it loose in the apartment, so I looked up how to get rid of bats online. Then my sister came back from her run. I had considered trying to get it out with some gloves and a towel before she came back, but I thought she ought to see it and give her opinion. Her opinion was to call others. She tried to call her boyfriend, but his phone was off. Then we called our mother (in retrospect, big mistake, as she is prone to worry and now probably thinks we are at risk for rabies). At her suggestion, we called maintenance. My sister got in the shower, and I kept watching the prone bat (one article I read suggested that a bat in a horizontal position was sick). The maintenance guy arrived and asked me if I cared if he killed it. I was surprised and said, "Err." He promptly used a grabber on a pole to snatch the bat. It squealed and flailed horribly. I felt somewhat ill. He then walked out of our apartment, carrying the pinched and squealing bat. I asked him how the bat got in, and he said that bats were like squids, that they could squeeze through any opening, but not to worry, because he'd been here four years and only seen five bats. I probably should have just gotten it out on my own in the first place. Poor thing.
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