This lecture, like the zoo one, involved a disembodied wing and a few skeletons; a box containing multiple bat corpses was passed from child to child, none of whom seemed to find anything wrong with getting up close and personal with the stiffened bodies of a few long-deceased critters that, in life, would have been just itching to bury their little claws in somebody's hair and hang on for dear life, listening to the screams. (Yes, I heard the lady say that bats were more afraid of humans than we are of them. Obviously, she hasn't reckoned with my level of fear.)

Halfway through the talk, one of the cages started hooting loudly. I have no idea how they managed to time it so appropriately; maybe the teenage assistant secretly jarred the cage and awakened its napping occupant. In any case, the lady presenter whipped the towels off the cage, revealing an orange dove, whom she called Tangerine...or Nectarine...or Peach. Some fruit, anyway. She opened the cage door, grabbed the bird about the middle, and yanked him out into the middle of the suddenly very noisy crowd of kids. He promptly pooped. The kids cheered. I shuddered.

"Will he fly around?" one of the little girls yelled.

"I won't make him, because that's mean. He might do it on his own, though," she said.

I felt a chill and sank into a litany: Oh, please, don't let him fly, don't let him come here, let him just sit there and stare and hoot, don't let him fly around, don't let him move, no flying, not around me, oh, please. The bird cocked his head and ruffled his feathers; he seemed content to stay where he was. The kids began to plead with Cantaloupe to move, but he wasn't interested in catering to an audience. The woman decided to go on with her talk, tried to pull the bird's wing out for display - and he took off.

He flew in circles for no more than two seconds before coming to roost on top of his cage, but in that time I found myself pressing my back into the wall, clapping my hands over my face, and emitting a quiet keening sound that nobody heard because they were too busy cheering again. The bird looked around, then laughed. I thought I imagined it, but the kids went into hysterics. When they settled, the woman explained that the "laughing" sound was Pomegranate's way of letting us know that he was dominant over us.

She plucked him off the cage and tried to continue her talk, but the bird took off again, this time landing on a chair - right next to me. I tried not to climb the wall too obviously, but the kids wouldn't have noticed; they were in transports because the creature had showered them with stray feathers during the second flight. The bird was recaptured, the talk was finished, and Fruit Cocktail went back into the cage.

The second part of the demonstration was nowhere near as traumatic an experience for me, though it did involve the handling of a live bat. They're smaller, see, and she was holding it quite firmly in gloved hands. Had this creature been allowed to fly free, I would probably still be cowering under a table or something. Actually, he wasn't all that scary, though he did chitter quite menacingly.

I will be beyond relieved when this summer program is over and I can feel confident that the only non-human animals in the library are two-dimensional.