So I was mowing the lawn in high school when I noticed a frog in my path. I stopped dead in my tracks and let the handle go to stop the mower when the frog jumped right under the mower.

After a deep breath, and a few choice words, I pulled the mower back to observe the carnage. The frog was still alive.

But he was injured. Very injured. The mower blade had removed the top layer of skin from his back, with only a narrow strip still holding it on. If he had jumped again, he would have literally come right out of his skin. He wasn’t going to heal. This frog was a goner.

I felt horrible. I had tried to save the little guy, but I guess he hadn’t been taking his Zoloft and wanted to end it all. I couldn’t shake the gnawing guilt, so I found a shoebox and gave him a proper burial beside the creek from whence he came.

And so I was mowing the lawn last week when I noticed something wiggling in the grass in my path. I stopped dead in my tracks and let the handle go to stop the mower.

I looked. It was brown and furry, and it wasn’t making a suicidal leap under the mower. I leaned down. It wasn’t just brown and furry; it was also a bat. Wiggling around on the ground in broad daylight.

I love bats. They swoop and fly and screech and, best of all, eat mosquitos. When we moved into the house three years back, one of the first things I did was nail a bat house up a tree. But no bats. Not until last week.

Bats don’t sunbathe, so I was pretty sure this little guy wasn’t feeling tip top. I hesitantly reached down and touched his back. He made three short chirps but otherwise didn’t move. I decided to pick him up by the scruff of the neck like a cat so he couldn’t give me a rabid bat chomp.

He didn’t seem to mind much, or didn’t mind enough to try to turn me into a vampire or anything. So I put him on my hand, still holding him by the scruff in case he changed his mind. He had little beady black eyes and was the epitome of bat cute. He was a chipmunk with wings.

What to do with the chipmunk bat? I couldn’t put him on the AC unit or in one of the lawn chairs because the dog could bother him (or worse). The cats would certainly treat him no better. So I put him on the edge of a big knothole in one of our huge trees.

I finished mowing the lawn, put the mower up and went over to check on Mr. Bat. He wasn’t there on the edge of the knothole.

I checked on the ground around the tree. No bats. I looked at my dog. No guilty looks, no shit eating grins. Where was the bat?

Then I looked in the knothole. There he was, floating. I reached in quickly and snatched him up. But Mr. Bat was no longer with us. He had drowned, in an inch of water.

And so now I need to rescue two woodland creatures from the angry path of my lawnmower. Redemption, narrowly missed.