The logic is erratic.
This evening at work went from mind-numbing tedium to awful, when I realized that something that was just underneath the row of carts I'd pulled away was squeaking at me.
For a moment, it just looked like a scrap of black plastic rolling over in the breeze, but suddenly it was alive, scrabbling along the ground and making this high-pitched noise I almost thought I was hallucinating. Too many crashing carts, too many bleeping alarms, my ears must have been ringing.
The shock and denial didn't last long, obviously. I ran to the nearest supervisor, and fought through hysterical tears to tell him what had happened, that I might have just crippled a bat beyond any repair. He walked over with me to see, nudged it with his foot, and laughed, saying it was fine, it was moving, it probably just wanted to soak up the heat from the asphalt. I wasn't so sure -- the wings looked a little more 'off' than batwings tend to, bending in odd shapes, and at least one had a little hole in the membrane. Another cow-orker came over, figured we were freaking it out by being near it, and I reluctantly returned to the task I'd had before it all went to hell.
Needless to say, I still wasn't very good at it. Paused between tasks and punching clocks to coax the little thing onto some leftover flyers (even frantic, I'm not about to handle something with parasites or rabies barehanded) and nestle it under a bush so some frightened Libby looking for wine coolers wouldn't run over it deliberately in fear. Tore up a cherry left in someone's cart, even though they're insect-eaters, nudged it in front of its nose in case it couldn't crawl anymore. Stupidly didn't think of warming it up under a nest of tissues until I finished my shift to hit the bathroom for an empty box. By then, it was just barely breathing, slowly. Not moving.
Probably in shock. It might have been injured before I ever ran over it, but I surely must have made it worse somehow, to make it squeak like that. It's in the garage, nestled with the cherry and the boxes and the nest of tissue paper. I realized when I scooped him up that I was probably just bringing him home to die. I didn't know what else I could do. I got a hold of the guy from the animal shelter in spite of it being a holiday, but his phone was cutting out and the signal was lost before I could hear anything past "warm place".
I have work tomorrow, but I'm considering a shot of sherry tonight. There's no way to make anything better, and the sight of the little guy as I found him was just too upsetting, too clear. It's just a bat, yeah, but. It's not just a bat. I don't know what else to say.