Just last week, it wasn't enough to feel like a superhero at work. Nope, no caped crusader to round out the day, but a real live bat to contend with. Silly girl that I am, I thought a nice cool morning meant I could open our front door to the store. I mean, how heartwarming is it to walk through an All-American small town to see the welcoming sight of doors open on a fine spring day?
Obviously, that's what Mr. Bat thought as well, when he came swooping in at breakneck speeds and instantly dive bombed for the lower level. My boss thought she caught some kind of fast movement out of the corner of her eye, and with customers in our lower level, we truly thought it would be an instant scream that would notify us if that was really the intruder we thought it was. Instead, we heard laughter, and then a very casual "you have a bat down here".
Let me first tell you, of all the creatures on this earth, I HATE bats the most. We could rid this planet of every last one of them, and I don't care if it would mean an horrid bug infestation of epic proportions...I'd still be a happy camper to know I never have to deal with a bat again. I'm the big fat wussy who goes screeching out of my house, into the back yard when a bat appears in our drafty old money pit we call home. Yes, you read that right, I run OUTSIDE where the bats live and hide there until someone kills the bastard. It doesn't matter that there are bats swooping about in the dark while I cower in terror. I somehow feel "safer" when there's a big empty sky for them to fly around in and not eight foot ceilings confining them within a short distance to my head.
That being said, I quickly grabbed our brooms and being the massive chickenshit I am, I hand the broom to the customer in the lower level. Why? Because her blase "you have a bat down here" tells me she isn't bothered by them. I'm so bothered by them that I don't go any further than the stairway landing that's only four steps down from the main level. I'm so bothered by them that I reach further than really is safe in order to hand her the broom, because even one more step down is more than my pay grade allows. As I hand over the broom, I see a swooping blur of brown, and immediately shriek and go running back up to the main level where I cower near the closest rack of clothing.
After a few thumps, Mr. Bat decides the main level is the safe place to be, and comes swooping up in a grand flight of "FEAR ME NOW" in which I shriek again and duck down to the lowest possible position without completely flinging myself to the floor. Because throwing myself to the ground is going to be a much bigger display of cowardice than the shrieking and ducking.
Up comes the customer, who by now, I'm fairly sure is completely disgusted with the wussies who work in this place, and we all realize Mr. Bat has wisely tucked himself away in our storerooms in the back of the store. Not wanting to look like an even bigger wuss than I already do (if that's possible), I sneak back into the storerooms to see where he is crouching. Yup, he's hanging out on the wall above the back door. Making sounds that rival a puppy's whimper, I realize the best option at this point is to open the back door and encourage him to fly to freedom. However, this means I will have to march my cowardly, quivering ass directly below his roosting spot. My overactive imagination that LOVES to run mini-movies of potential scenarios to every occasion in life is already picturing the creak of the door disturbing Mr. Bat, in which he decides to swoop down onto my head and tangle in my whacked out, teased and full of sticky products hair. In which he will get stuck, all while making that godawful bat chirping sound and beating his leathery from the pits of hell wings on my head.
Did I mention that overactive imagination?
I tiptoe back, with the broom-armed customer right behind me. I'm sure at this moment, she's wanting to use the broom on me, because I'm still whimpering and whining. I, of course, don't get the door unlocked right away....oh no...that would be too easy. My fingers are fumbling, I'm mumbling, customer is probably raging, and I finally fling that door open (of course it HAS to open IN and not OUT), I stumble around it like my life depends upon it (because it DOES) and hurtle myself against the storm door nearly screaming in relief when I stumble out into the alley. I prop the storm door open and YUP, you guessed it...STAY OUTSIDE. I hear big thwacking going on, and am sure the only person with a set of balls in the place has destroyed the creature from hell. After a few moments of silence, I poke my head in to see what is going on, and the customer tells me she's whacked him good, but he stumble-half ass flew up into a corner where we are never going to find him.
OH GOODY.
I give her kudos. She DID spend valuable shopping time attempting to locate the injured demon, but after about ten minutes, gave up the good fight.
So, here we are, now enclosed in the store (because of course we shut the doors, before all his little bat friends could join him), wondering if he's dead, dying, or just laying in wait.
Hours pass...YES, HOURS. Hours of barely touching lunch because it's icky to try and enjoy food when there's a bat lurking. Hours of refusing to go to the bathroom, because it's in a dark corner of the lower level, and if he comes swooping down while my pants are around my ankles I will be scarred for life and no amount of coaxing would get me off that toilet and into an even more enclosed space with Mr. Bat than that upper level. Every amount of work we are attempting to get done is accompanied with furtive glances up over our heads. We're telling every customer that comes in so they understand any sudden shrieking and ducking should he attempt to grace us with his presence again.
Suddenly, when the tension is so thick we could choke on it, a customer at the front of the store shrieks while looking down at the floor and says "THERE IT IS!!!", and whoosh whoosh whoosh, the bat is flying at floor level because that's what evil creatures of the pits of hell do when they know you are completely freaked out by them to the very core of your being.
He gained speed, and altitude and thank all that is good in this world, began a lazy circling of the ceiling of the store. It seemed lazy, because it seemed like the slow motion of a horror movie right before something terrible and gory happens. We grab brooms, and my crazy waving over my head is pretty futile, considering I'm only reaching about five feet from where he's playing. But then, FINALLY logic and the magic light bulb goes off in my head.
These suckers are blind. They fly on radar. Movement affects radar. HELLOOOOOOO GENIUS!
We get that front door open again and start waving the brooms like madwomen, trying to encourage (if you really want to use a positive happy word like encourage) Mr. Bat to fly away, get the fuck out of here! Apparently, we are not so genius, because the ceiling fans are still spinning, and considering they are near the front door, he's staying clear of that area. So, calm and rational thinking creeps in again, and we shut off the fans, waiting ever so impatiently for them to stop spinning. It briefly crosses my mind to stupidly stick a broom in the fans to get them to halt so they stop sooner, but yup, once again, logic prevailed through the terror.
With a few more frustrated and desperate waves of the brooms, Mr. Bat escapes to freedom.
I wanted to just lock the doors and call it quits, racing to the nearest bar for the rest of the day, but there were still people shopping.
Yes, people shopped through this whole bat drama. I love shopping, hell, it's like my second favorite thing to espresso, but I'd rather wear a pair of Crocs for a month every time I went in public than shop in a store with a bat swooping around.
So, that's it to the Animal Whisperer saga. Add in a few other encounters, like hitting a bird with my truck antenna. Yes, it actually thought it was avoiding me and THWAK!, leaving a huge chunk of feathers wrapped around the damn thing. Then there was the baby bunny I nearly creamed on the side of the road only blocks from home. My first thought, was of course, to inform baby bunny that Daddy Bunny was hanging in my tree. And, to make my encounters with the animal kingdom complete, there are now so many bugs everywhere you go that they swarm my head, ears, and nose the moment I go outside. I guess that will guarantee an avoidance of communing with nature, which can then guarantee I can avoid another animal drama and finally break this trend.
Unless, of course, Chubacabra rises from the cellar slithering through the return air vents.
That chubacabra is going to eat you...
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