Duck...Swallow...

It was your normal run of the mill kind of Tuesday and I was heading off to Super Double some coupons at Giant Eagle. I walked into the Produce Section and something flew past my head. How ironic, a bird was trapped in Giant Eagle. It was diving and swooping and making quite a scene in the checkout areas and the female based population seemed a bit nervous. Based on its aerodynamic acrobatics, I decided it must be a swallow. One poor woman was especially attractive to the bird as he continually tried to light on her head and then her cart and then her foot. She made it out physically unscathed, but I can't vouch for her mental state.

I felt so bad for the little thing (sadly enough, the bird, not the woman). How terrifying would it be for a bird to be trapped in a grocery store. Probably as terrifying as it would be for a human to accidentally wander into some huge enclosed Bird Sanctuary and not be able to find the way out (Don't panic Danielle, that would never happen). I wanted so badly to rescue the little thing. I tried to use my fictional telepathy to guide it out, but that didn't work. I thought about trying to be the Bird Whisperer and calming it with my voice, coaxing it to land on my shoulder and me walking it to freedom. Thankfully, I seem to have most of my mental filters in working order and I didn't say any of these things or act on them either (family experience has been showing us that those filters fade quickly after you become about 50, so I have a few good years yet), which allowed me to continue to appear normal. I said a little prayer for the desolate swallow and went on my Merry Super Doubling way.

Epilogue

My chatty cashier later told me that the "bird" had been captured and released outside of the store and that my little "swallow" turned out to be a bat! Now, the above situation would have played out a lot differently if I had known that it was a bat and it probably would have involved a lot of screaming or at least making strange scared noises since I don't scream so well and hiding in the enclosed Beer Section. Remind me sometime to tell you about my childhood bat trauma...