Monday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, working. The only two coworkers in the office with me were standing by the front door, chatting. Then coworker #1 paused and said “What is that on the light? Is that a tarantula?”, and as my brain was slowly processing that particular comment (because I wasn’t paying attention to their conversation until I heard the word ‘tarantula’), the two of them shifted closer to the object in question, and then the second one said “No. It’s a bat.”

Yes, indeed, folks. There was a cute little bat in our office. It was all kinds of exciting there for a little bit. The bat moved off the emergency light and onto the floor, and since I realized rather quickly that I would likely never have this sort of opportunity again, I immediately dove into my purse for my camera and then did my best at taking a few pictures.

Unfortunately, this came out a bit blurry, mainly because we were all careful to stay a respectful distance away from the little critter, and I didn’t want to use a flash because I thought it might scare the bat, so this is the best I could do. It was such a tiny little thing – about the size of my hand – with little fuzzy round ears and a cute little face.

It crawled for a little bit along the floor, using its wings as its front ‘paws’, and one of my coworkers opened the front door, since it was fairly close by, and the second one constructed a makeshift wall of box lids behind the bat so as to encourage it to head toward freedom, and discourage it from deciding to move further into the office. It sat on the floor for quite a while, staring at the open door, nose twitching madly, little body quivering, and we were all a little worried it might be sick or hurt. Naturally, however, it waited until just when I finally gave up and called Animal Control, and was on the phone to someone explaining about our unexpected visitor, to decide that outside was far better than inside, and make its escape. Or rather, we sure *hope* that’s what it decided, because apparently bats are speedy little critters and none of us actually saw the thing leave.

I hope it found its way to a more comfortable spot to lurk, and that it wasn’t too traumatized by the ordeal. But I admit to doing a lot more peering up at the ceilings in our office now (we’ve got some high ones), and while the bat seems to be gone, we are left with several questions, the answers to which I am not sure I really want to know.

How did it get *into* the office in the first place? Is it going to come back? And perhaps most important of all, did it come alone?