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BATS!

Jim Alfredson
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Jim Alfredson Enthusiast

Jim Alfredson

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Like any old house, we have a problem with bats. They used to get into our bedroom from the attic. Our bedroom had a drop ceiling which was covering a gigantic hole in the original plaster ceiling where the previous owners ran plumbing and electrical for the upstairs. Since the walls of this old house are un-insulated, the bats would come from the attic, down through the walls, and out the hole in the plaster ceiling and then fly around inbetween the real ceiling and the drop ceiling.

It would suck to wake up in the middle of the early morning to hear that high-pitched "squeek squeek" that they make and hear their wings flapping around up above your head. I would usually send my wife to the couch, open up a panel in the drop ceiling, wait for the bugger to come down, then swipe him with a home-made net and put him outside. This could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.

Last fall, after three straight nights of this happening, I finally ripped down the drop ceiling in our bedroom and put up insulation and drywall. Problem solved.

This weekend I was up in northern Michigan playing a casino with Root Doctor and I got a call from my wife. "There's a bat in the house!!!" How did he get in? Well, she left the back door open and even though there is a small mud-room / porch back there, the screens are all really bad and the bat must've found a hole to come through. Lesson: Don't leave the back door open until we get a new screen door.

Anyway, I told my wife to trap him in the living room, turn out all the lights except the front porch light, and open the front door and he should fly out. She did, waited a few hours, then assumed he was gone.

I got home about 1:30pm from the casino today. I just took a short nap and proceeded to do my daily ear-washing routine (I've had earwax plugging my right ear for about three weeks). I finally got the damn earwax out of my ears and I went into my bedroom to put my tennis shoes on, which I did not bring up north, and go outside for a walk.

I put my right shoe on, then my left and suddenly hear this "squeek squeek". I started looking around at the bottom of the closet, thinking he's somewhere in there. Then I feel movement in my shoe.

NO WAY!

The little bastard was in my left shoe. Fortunately he did not bite me. Unfortunately I think I squished him pretty good and broke one of his wings and/or crushed his little body. He's currently laying at the bottom of the tree in the front yard, not really doing much. I don't think he's going to make it.

BATS!

Patrick Apprentice

Patrick

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I am reminded of the scene in The Big Chill where Kevin Kline heroically pursues bats in the attic while humming the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark. What would you be hummin?

7/4 Newbie

7/4

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  Patrick said:

I am reminded of the scene in The Big Chill where Kevin Kline heroically pursues bats in the attic while humming the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark. What would you be hummin?

Donna Lee, Countdown...Giant Steps, you know...the hits.

Dan Gould Mentor

Dan Gould

Posted
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  J Larsen said:

I think somewhere on these boards I posted the story of my bat-infested dorm room at Princeton. If not, I'll retell it. What a nightmare that was...

I think I've posted my experience with a bat that slipped into our apartment my first year in grad school at Washington University in St. Louis, but what's one more time?

It was a Friday night, and rather than going out with the roommates (both of whom were also Political Science PhD students) I stayed in to do some studying. The old apartment building had free heat through a radiator system and because there was no way to moderate the temperature, we had to leave windows open in order to keep the place from turning into a sauna.

Bad move (on this night).

I'm sitting in the living room when a bat comes flying through out of the kitchen. :excited:

First I barricaded myself in my bedroom. I figured, there's no way it can get in there, I'll just try to relax and eventually go to sleep. Then I thought about my roommates and what they would discover when they wandered back in a drunken stupor. So I decided I'd better go find them and tell them what had happened. Fortunately I knew that they had gone to a great bar in University City called Blueberry Hill (I believe it was owned by Chuck Berry but its been a while so maybe I made that up in my memory) to meet some other grad students.

So I grabbed my coat, held it over my head, and ran like hell for the door. When I got there and found my friends, everybody was fascinated by my tale. At this point, I needed a few beers, so basically I caught up with everyone else and we all walked back to the apartment in varied states of inebriation. Frankly at this point I was just glad I wasn't going to confront it alone, because, after all, as Jim so eloquently put it in the opening post .... BATS! :crazy:

To make a long story short, the bat flew around a few times, and one roommate tried to herd it down the hallway. Unfortunately, the people he was herding it toward were more toasted than most of us, and didn't do much of a job swinging the tennis racquets. So now its gotten past them, into a little sun room in the front of the apartment that no one really used. But where is it?

Then I spotted it, all balled up, against the brick wall (its quite amazing how small they can be when they want to, yet have lick a two foot plus wing span when they go motoring around). And one of us had a brilliant idea:

Get the vacuum cleaner!

So we grabbed the vacuum cleaner, one of those tube typed with the long hose, and crept forward (I wasn't getting too close at this point, so I was just watching). And at the signal, they moved the tube closer and someone threw the switch.

And all of a sudden, this thing was making that squeak squeak sound over and over again, cuz he was inside the bag! :w

And someone took the bag out and I don't remember if they tried to open it up or just pitched it but that was the end of The Night of the Bat. :rlol

MoGrubb Newbie

MoGrubb

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  Jim Alfredson said:

.......The little bastard was in my left shoe. Fortunately he did not bite me. Unfortunately I think I squished him pretty good and broke one of his wings and/or crushed his little body. He's currently laying at the bottom of the tree in the front yard, not really doing much. I don't think he's going to make it.

BATS!

If he's broken put him out of his misery, don't let the ants, etc. do it.

Or, maybe you could send him to Ozzy Osborne to do it for you. :D

I've got a minor problem of a birds flying down the chimney of the furnace and getting trapped. I close off the room, open the furnace compartment and let him out. It's usually so tired from trying to get out of the furnace that he flies around for only a minute or so, then I catch it and put him outdoors.

Noj Newbie

Noj

Posted
Posted

Bummer. They're really fascinating critters. I like watching the little ones by my house hunt for bugs around dusk.

Imagine this one sneaking in the living room:

kosteniuk08i.jpg

Don't think he'd fit in your shoe, Jim!

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