Hubby had hoped to leave renovating this house for some time in the future - the distant future, like maybe NEVER! There was too much work in the barn and the fields to be spending time on the house. The fields and the barns are where the money is made so it would be like a store owner or manufacturing plant owner saying that he would put off opening the store for a year or getting the plant up and running a year from now while he instead gets his house fixed up. He would still be needing to make rent or mortgage payments, not have any income and any and all investors would be slightly pissed. For generations, it seems that ALL of the money went to the farming aspect and none to the house. Just look at the farmouses of the past century - the wives considered it a big deal to FINALLY get a washroom!
The upstairs bathroom and my toddler son's bedroom were definite must-do's but unfortunately, we had to add a third room. Something flew past my head one night and scared the crap out of me and my screaming scared the crap out of the poor kids (ages 8 and down). Hubby was in the barn and there was no way that I was doing anything to get in the way of that bat. That bat was free to fly anywhere he (she) wanted. Far be it from me to interfere! Until hubby got in from the barn, that is -- and then he was even more scared the rest of us! But being the man of the house and all that - ah forget that. If he could have left that bat hanging somewhere, he would have but he didn't want to get woken up in the night from one of the kids screaming (or me!) and he didn't want to find it in our room in the night so he got brave and went after it.
Like lots of people, he'd heard that a badminton racquet would work well. Wrong! After trying that method for a while, he gave up and grabbed a towel, swung it and brought the bat down quite easily. Flushed him down the toilet and that was that -- so we thought. Over the next few weeks, we got 10 bats and our housecat got 1. The kids and I were hiding down behind the kitchen peninsula while yet another bat flew back and forth overhead and hubby was, of course, in the barn again. We were down there praying that bats like to fly high only and never along the ground. There was no use trying to hide in another room because bats can squeeze into any tiny space and besides, we wanted to know where the bat was when hubby came in because they can be hard to find if they land. We would peek around the corner of the kitchen cupboards occasionally to keep an eye on his flying progress. We found him on the floor being eaten by the cat (one good reason to run right out and adopt a cat from a shelter, as if eating all the mice in your house wasn't already a good enough reason!). There's no way that the cat jumped into the air and caught him so we figured that the bat must have flown into the ceiling fan in the dining room and been knocked to the floor. I still give full credit to the cat because if he hadn't been there, I would have had to do the dirty work and no thanks!
I don't believe the old story that bats try to avoid people. I'm quite convinced that 'our' bats loved to dive-bomb us outside, expecially if we were on the trampoline. The kids didn't pay much notice to the bats outside but the first time that I got brave enough to jump on the trampoline near dark was also my last and no one can convince me that they were not after me! Anyway, after 5 or 6 bats, we got to be old hats at bats flying around, we had stopped screaming every time we saw one and we learned to walk around with our heads held high (meaning we were looking up!) while scanning the ceiling and top halves of every wall. I still get squeamish to this day however, if I hear anything resembling the sound that they make. If you make 'fish lips' with your lips then make a smacking sound or put your lips and your hand and make a slight sucking sound (I know, I know - that sounds weird!), that's how bats sounded to me. And I still hate them.
It took us a while to trace their entrance hole into the house. We knew by then that there were plenty of them living up in the attic but there were so many places in this old house where the lath and plaster was broken or missing that it was impossible to tell just where they were coming in. The mystery was solved when hubby saw one actually come through one of many holes in the bedroom adjacent to the upstairs bathroom. This entire wall had been covered by nice enough looking floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall cupboards and it was only when this bat came out from behind these cupboards that we found the holes (and the beautiful orange and green 60's wallpaper). So this room also had to be redone at the same time as the other two so in the end, I guess I have to say thank goodness for the bats because now we were renovating a third room!
Sorry, no photos this time. I figured that you could find your own repulsive photos of bats if you wish. I just don't have the desire to look at them right now. They still have that 'ew' factor for me! I might have stopped screaming every time one flew by but...
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