Bat Catching

Last Sunday I had to take a duty shift in Hamilton Hall, which was my nemesis building all of sophomore year since I kept getting lost at different twists and turns in the wings. I figured though, hey; I'm only going to be there one night, my room's on the first floor... easy. Wrong! It was the worst time ever.

The bedroom lulled me into a false sense of security. It was enormous. Two floors! A lot of storage space! Stairs! How could this go wrong?





I had my own bathroom, with shower!










Since I was going to be sleeping there anyway, I signed up to work the check-in from four until six. Horrible times. There were a ton of people in Hamilton, and I can't say it was their fault that they got so lost because the architect who designed this building must have been on crack. You could only get to sub-basements A and B by way of certain stairwells, and the third floor was split down the middle by this large Trunk Room that was locked at both ends, so if you were looking for 324 and you were on the wrong half of the building, then you were out of luck until you went down a floor, walked for awhile, then went up a different stairwell. At first it had kind of a fun Hogwarts charm, but that quickly wore off.

I was in the middle of showing some poor woman where her room was when a girl came up to me and said, "there's a bat on the floor over there". I give myself credit that I didn't shriek and run away, especially after I couldn't figure out where the stupid bat was and was getting more and more paranoid that I was stepping on it or something. It was close to the same color as the floor, and not moving. I called Brian the Coordinator and he told me to sit tight (next to the bat) and wait for a police officer to show up. Great. I was in a bat-riddled, very very hot hall, with a lot of cranky conference guests who were taking the lack of building coordination personally. Did I mention how hot things were up there?

Hi, bat. Thanks for causing me grief.








Closer-up of the bat. It's cute, sort of, but definitely wasn't at the time.






The police officer was taking forever so I took a mini break and sat by the window where there was the faintest hint of fresh air. Ooh, ladybug.




I am so proud of the way I handled the bat. While Brian was off trying to find a garbage can to trap it, the police officer just handed me a bag and got a broom. I was so close to the bat. There was but a thin plastic layer between potentially rabid bat teeth and my exposed fingers.


Blurry picture of the officer leaving with the bat.









Farewell, bat.








Anyway, I just kind of went back to my room after than and sweated for awhile longer since I didn't have my fan with me and it was a thousand degrees even with all of my windows open. It's too bad that it wasn't a more pleasant experience since the room itself was amazing.

Moving on: they now have baby starfish in the HUB aquarium. Sweet.






I was cleaning the candy case at work and came across this lovely thing. We had a bit of an argument over whether it's a petrified piece of popcorn or a really, really old dead bee.




The message is, I believe, diluted by the quotes around "no". So, are there circumstances? Is this the poster equivalent of a managerial wink?