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The story might not have legs, but it certainly has wings.
I try to recap some of the biggest stories that the business desk worked during that last week that were in the Journal and not Outlook.
I reported on a bat infestation at Presbyterian Hospital, a bizarre, but perhaps not that rare, problem.
When I came into work on Monday, I had several messages from family members of patients at Presbyterian who were worried about their hospitalized relatives.
One man told me he was walking out of his uncle's room in the intensive care unit when he thought a bird flew over his head.
A nurse gave him a look of disgust and told him it was a bat. He said other staff members were holding up white blankets in an effort to catch the bats and keep them out of patient rooms.
A different person sent us a video, confirmed by hospital officials, that shows Presbyterian employees in a small room with about a half dozen bats swarming overhead. One man was trying to catch the bats in plastic bags.
I also talked with a couple physicians at Presbyterian, who confirmed that bats were an issue at the hospital.
Let's give Presbyterian a break.
Get Bats Out, a nationwide critter control company, said that bats are a growing threat to hospitals. For one, they are losing their natural habitat. And the size of hospitals offers bats a sense of protection.
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And there's another aspect that I hadn't thought of: Hospital lights are always on.
That means that insects are regularly flocking toward the hospital lights. The bats follow.
Presbyterian told us the hospital is working with a vendor to remove the bats and prevent further entry.
"Our team worked closely with the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) to evaluate any possible exposure to workforce members or patients in the affected areas. We have offered preventive treatment to those individuals who may have had a possible exposure, based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NMDOH," Jon Wade, the hospital chief executive, said in a statement. "There is no evidence of any direct contact between a bat and a patient."
What a strange problem for a hospital to have.
Another story that we worked on was about a toxic vapor plume that is threatening Albuquerque neighborhoods.
Reporter Megan Gleason went to the enclave in Southeast Albuquerque, near the area around Simms Avenue and Carlisle Boulevard SE. There were apparently two dry cleaning facilities in the strip mall that operated from 1953 to 2017, and they left behind a chlorinated solvent soil gas plume that lingers to this day.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started sampling air and subsurface soil gas in 2022, and the state of New Mexico is trying to get the federal government to make the site a national priority for cleanup by designating it as a superfund site.
Between bats and old dry cleaners, we had some bizarre business news in Albuquerque last week.
