Bats!

Bats.

We have bats in our attic. And not the baseball kind.

We took a trip to L.A. in April and when we got home, we noticed some kind of animal droppings all over the porch by a side door. Opossum? Squirrel? Way too big for birds.

So we swept it up and kept an eye on it. Sure enough, a few days later there was more. I set up a camera with a motion sensor to see if we could capture what it was. I got a lot of videos of us opening the door (not it). I saw a bird or two (uh-uh). I was sure I would see a fat ol’ opossum lumber its way across the porch and do its nightly business on the door sill. Must-see TV.

Nothing. But there was the poop again. Tons. Gross.

I went to the internet to compare the poop again, because unless the mammal was invisible, it wasn’t something that walked on the ground. I found more than a few images that pointed to bat guano. So I looked up guano and I found a lot of matching photos. I also found this:

Yeah, I don’t know why, either. But it wasn’t helpful because I didn’t find any discarded pro-union signs on the porch. Just guano. Isn’t the internet great?

One day, our neighbor said she noticed bats flying out of our attic. Apparently they had the same problem a couple years ago and it cost a lot of money to get rid of them. Wonderful. As the sun set that night, we watched the side of the house and sure enough, bats. Cue Scooby-Doo theme. We counted about 26 swooping out of the tiny space between the siding and the brick before we decided we had seen enough.

The thing is, we love seeing bats fly around at night, doing their crazy lopsided, loopy dance over our heads. They can eat their body weight in mosquitoes in one evening. That’s not only impressive, but extremely helpful. So we don’t want to kill the critters, but we also don’t want them making a home in our attic. Besides being creepy, their guano is highly toxic. They’re also a protected species in Illinois. Thankfully, the guano is not protected and we can dispose of it with a clear conscience.

We called a pest control professional and they took a look in the attic. There was one little bat visible, but more notably was the lack of insulation throughout the whole attic. Sigh. Home ownership is fun! The pest control dude said he would first send out a crew to get rid of the family of flying mice, then work on the insulation.

It’s fascinating how they do the “bat extraction” without hurting the little guys. They seal up every nook and cranny on the outside of the house, then they put in what’s called a “bat valve.” It’s this little tube at the main access area the bats were using that lets them out but not back in again. Where they go from there, I have no idea. Maybe they hide on a ship like the Demeter and move to England. Maybe they’ll take up residence in our other neighbor’s house. In either case, they’ll be out of here.

Around 2 AM, I woke up to some fluttering noise. I started having anxiety that maybe there was a hole in a window screen somewhere and the bats decided to make it their new entrance. When I looked out the window I could see masses of bats swarming around the bat valve, presumably wondering if they left their keys in their other pants. Thankfully everything was sealed up and I could go back to dreaming about The Monkees serving hot dogs at an airport.

Next week, the bats should all be gone and people will come to clean the attic and put in some insulation. All of this fascinating extraction business and insulation will set us back about $8,000. Did I mention how much fun it is to own a home?

The good news is, we don’t have to miss seeing bats forever. Which seems like a strange thing to feel after this experience, but like I said, they eat their weight in mosquitoes. I found plans to build a bat house and we’ll be putting it up in our backyard — far away from the house.

I will leave you with the song that has been occupying space in my head for the last couple of weeks.

Featured image by James Wainscoat on Unsplash