Wild thing, you make my heart sing...

The following outline two encounters with Michigan's most feared beasts...

1.
It was a Wednesday. Our garbage can was full so I opted to play "good roommate" and take out the trash as I was leaving for class. I've got my backpack on, my M-Card out, and I grab the trash bag and tie it tightly shut.
I walk down to the dumpster and open the lid, taking note that the previous day must have been garbage day as there are only a few bags in the dumpster. I throw it in and I realize (DUM, DUM, DUMMMMMMM).... One of the bags is actually a sleeping raccoon, awaiting his nighttime climb up our cherry tree.
I barely missed the raccoon with the bag I chucked in, so I booked it away from the trash. You just don't know about those things.

2.
(And this one is even more horrific.)
It's 2:30 am and Kellie and I are returning home from seeing a midnight showing of Snatch at the State. We are walking up the stairs and I notice a shadow flying above us. I think to myself that there's a very large insect up there. Is it a moth's shadow cast by the hallways lights. I realize that it's much bigger. And far faster. It must be a bird. No, no... a bat.

I inform Kellie of this, as she's directly in front of me on the stairs; she flips out. We run down the stairs and out the door. BY this time, Kell is basically hyperventilating. Our neighbor from across the hall is just arriving home for the evening, too, so we tell her of the unfortunate animal events.

Our apartment building is designed so that there are 4 units on each floor, and a connecting set of double doors that lead to the next building over, where there are 4 more units, connected to 4 more, etc. So, we decide to go through the other building so we can watch the bat through the doors. We start to devise plans to get to our apartments. I run downstairs to at least open the door to the outside, in case the bat decides to fly downstairs and can then get out. I even sat outside, jingling my keys in hopes that the high pitched noise would draw it toward me.
After a few minutes of no luck, I go back upstairs, having left the door propped open downstairs. However, I'm worried about raccoons running into our building, too!
So, here we have a physics PhD candidate, and two MPH candidates sitting outside the doors trying to brainstorm how to get to our apartments, 15 feet away, without having the bat swoop in our faces as we're unlocking the doors. The only thing we think is to call the emergency maintenance phone number, where the guy isn't really happy to hear from us at 2:30 am, but ready to drive 45 minutes over to our building to save us. Of course, we don't want to sit in the hallway for 45 minutes waiting...

We decide to stay quiet for a while. The sound of our voices seemed to draw the bat toward us, and it was constantly swooping at us, on the other side of the doors. I even came up with the selfish idea to draw the bat to the other side of the double doors so it was no longer our problem.
After many minutes of watching and hoping it would fly downstairs and out the door, we finally realize that we don't see it swooping around it's path. So, we get our keys out and parade down the hallway, hunched over, and hurriedly unlock our apartment.

Kellie, scared as she was, decides to conquer her bat fears by walking downstairs to ensure she didn't see it. She closed the outside door (so the scary raccoons didn't march in and take over), and ran back upstairs, hood pulled tightly over her head to protect her of the "just in case" potential.


And that's how we conquered our bat tonight... in fear, and with luck.