When I decided the last hot days of summer had passed, I pulled the little A/C unit out of its window to stow in the closet until next spring.  There, somehow, on the little piece of lumber I thought I was using to prop up the air conditioner's back end was a little brown bat, breathing softly.

I wondered if he didn't lay there incapacitated in some sort of catatonic death sleep.  The little dark-brown piece of lumber with its pale brown swirls was perhaps deadly.  A few years earlier, I had purchased the wood from a specialty hard-wood dealer.  I'd searched all throughout the city to find just the right wood for a planned pair of carved-wood spectacles I would make for myself.  I'd consulted an online dealer of wooden glasses frames, secured a Dremmel tool from a friend, tried my hand at carving a pair out of oak to some success, I'd even spoken to a wood shop about the dangers of working with the wood I'd bought called "Wenge", an exotic African hardwood known for its toxic qualities, but beautiful and dark like a loaf of marble rye, perfect for what would have been a classy pair of frames.

But the more I thought about it, the more I feared its toxicity.  I could use precautions when carving the wood and even coat it when finished, sealing in its harmful poisons  But, could I really get comfortable with them sitting there on my face, inches away from my eyes, lumber culled from a deadly tropical forest, its poisons surely becoming deadlier with each merciless generation?  Too beautiful to let go of and too dangerous to pursue,  I set the wood on a shelf in the back of the closet where the pets couldn't get to it, and shelved my glasses for now.  When I was putting the A/C in the window, years later, at a different apartment, the wenge was just the right size to prop it up.

The little bat rested there on the wenge that evening while the breeze and street noise came in through a window rarely opened.  The only thing to do was to take bat and wenge outside, brush him off the board in the yard and hope he wouldn't be killed by the effects of taking a nap on a poisonous wood his Ozark species should have never come in contact with.  Before taking him out, I admired his soft brown fur.  In spite of all the stories about the creepiness of bats, I felt the urge to take this soft little mammal in my hand and feel it breathing.  Then, I thought of all the reasons this was a bad idea and kept my distance as I brought him to the yard and brushed him to the ground.  He lay there where he fell, still breathing.  To my delight, when I looked the next day, he was gone.

Perhaps it was a different bat from the same roost that surprised me months later, in winter, when I returned to my dining room one night to find it hanging there on the wall near the ceiling, boggled as to how he might have gained entrance to the room, and with little idea how long he'd been present as sat in my chair typing.  Once again I admired the little bat while I considered how I might get him back outside.  With my winter gloves and a kitchen towel, I pulled him from his roost on the wall.  He vibrated like a ringing cell phone and chirped an alarmed echo-location as I wrapped the towel around him, breaking, once again, the sense of normalcy that had settled in the room .  He was warm through the gloves and I remembered my regret at not taking the chance to feel the soft fur of the previous bat's coat before I released it.  I was determined not to make the same mistake twice.

I set the towel on the ground and removed the gloves.  After a moment of quiet, I peeled back the towel toward the little breathing lump beneath and felt my heart thumping in my chest as its little head emerged.  I inched my index finger toward the spot between his large ears lying flat against his fur which I could now discern was more than one shade of brown.  I sensed that he could feel my trepidation as my hand approached.  When my finger shakily grazed his fur, the large triangular ears shot up and I jerked my hand half back while we both processed the shock of first contact.  I remained persistent, however, and after a moment, returned my hand to the fur of his back.  Somehow, it was so much softer than I had imagined.