[Submissions for title requested]

Wednesday morning there was a scratching sound in my hall around 6:15.

Of course Merle was quite interested/concerned about this, evidenced by his anxious crouch while looking toward the source, the decorative plate that covers the air duct that terminates at my hall near the ceiling. So I hit the plate a couple times with a rolled up newspaper, and the scratching stopped. This did not, however, cease Merle's interest in the source.

After my breakfast of steel cut oats and French-pressed Rwandan coffee, I gumptioned up and took the plate off the wall. What I didn't know was that it had two wires that were "spring loaded" that kept it on the pipe. So when I took it out the two wires snapped, startling to drop the plate, which also had a bat attached to the back of it. I figured that the bat was pinned to the plate by one of the wires. I scooted the whole thing, plate and bat, into a plastic grocery sack, tied a couple knots with the handles and set it outside my door to release the bat outside when I was leaving the apartment.

I finished my morning routine, reading my complimentary copy of the JournalStar from Russ's while watching Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN2. With great trepidation, I took the bag out on my front stoop and opened the top of it. The bat didn't come flying out at my face and neck. Because the bat was no longer in the bag at all. It apparently escaped while sitting in front of my door in the entryway.