I was visited by a bat this evening! Yes, a real live bat. I have no idea how it got into my apartment. I was watching TV, and then I saw something dark out of the corner of my eye. Every once in a while I see a fly or a spider or something like that, but this dark shape was clearly too big for that, so I think I must be mistaken, and I go back to watching my show. Suddenly, I see this giant shape swooping over my head, and I'm like, "Yikes! What's that?!" I'm thinking that it's got to be the biggest insect ever in the whole world, because "insect! gross, gross, gross!" is all I'm thinking. Then I get a good look at it, and once I recognize what it is, it turns from a "giant dark malevolent shape" to a reasonably small flying mammal that still looks bigger than ideal being inside my room and not outside where it belongs. I feel a little better that it's just a bat, but not great. I open a window and close all the doors to the room, and then I call maintenance. When they get back to me, they suggest opening all of the upper windows in the room (I had opened just one lower window before backing far, far away from the bat--I'm not worried that the bat is going to kill me or anything, but I don't want to deal with a panicked bat flying into my face or something like that). I watch it warily for about 30 minutes while it swoops around and occasionally knocks itself senseless against a wall before it finds one of the open windows.
12:08:14 AM