Stake Out

Jim, our critter control expert (AKA Batman), showed up at our house on Wednesday afternoon. After a little walk around and walk through, he thought he saw where all the bats were coming in. Again, he seemed to think that the walls of our house were infested with bats. Since August and September are bat months (that’s when they have their babies) it wasn’t surprising to him that we would have bats now.

Ron and Batman looked in the basement to try to rid the basement of our current resident bat. Somehow, he got away, since even after a thorough search, the bat was no where to be found. Batman even looked in our coal room* for the bat! I know that’s brave, because even I won’t go in there and I live there! That door stays shut for a reason!

(*the coal room is a room in the basement that used to hold all the coal for the coal burning furnace that was originally in the house. The delivery truck would pull in the driveway, open the hatch to the room and dump the coal down a shoot and fill up that room. Then as the coal was needed, it was shoveled into the furnace. There are no windows, so now it’s just a dark creepy room that I’m positive is filled with all kinds of ookie things like spiders and bugs and stuff.)

Batman told us that we need to install these valves in the attic. The valves would let all of the bats out, but wouldn’t let them back in again. After five days with the valves, Batman would come back and take the valves out and seal up the holes. All this for the low, low price of . . . are you sitting down? For the low, low price of $1,680.00. Yeah, luckily I was sitting down when Ron told me THAT price. I’m assuming those valve thingies are made of solid gold or something.

Batman suggested that Ron and I stake out the house at night and count bats to see how many were really living in our house. He suggested starting about 8:45 and as soon as we saw our first bat come out, count how many of them come out for the next 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes were up, multiply the number of bats we counted leaving our house by 10 and that is how many bats are in the house. For the last two nights now, Ron and I have staked out our positions around the house. He took the corner so he could see the north and the east side. I took the south and the west side. We set up our lawn chairs and we hunkered down. Wednesday night, we were out there for 45 minutes. By 9:30 it was too dark to see. Last night we tried again, and I didn’t last quite long due to all of the darn mosquitos. After all that, in two nights we didn’t see one bat leave our house.

So, Ron came up with a great idea! Let’s NOT pay Batman $1,680 and instead, spend $50 or so and just caulk and plaster and fill up any and all holes that we think are there and call it good. Here’s hoping that turns out to be a great solution and that we find all of the holes. I’m done bat watching and I’m done being afraid to be in my own house.