Bat on the Balcony

This afternoon at the end of lesson I noticed something tiny on the ground just outside my classroom door. I almost mistook it for a piece of rubbish. Then a student pointed out it was a bat. I thought the creature was dead but it wasn’t. I carefully picked it up by a leg and put it on a ledge fearing it would be crushed in the lesson changeover. 

I could see it’s chest beating but it lay motionless playing dead perhaps. It was on it’s back so I thought itmight be better on it’s front – you never know with bats?  

 After the lesson changeover and as I had no lesson myself,  I decided that it might be better on some foliage so using paper transferred it to a nearby tree. It remained motionless but breathing throughout.  When I looked two minutes later it was gone. Flown, dropped, alive, dead. I will never know but it was interesting to get up close to this unusual mammal if only for a few minutes.