Concerning a hoped-for absence of bats

 

I'd been expecting Atlas back at the cottage this morning, to continue with the barricade. I got up so I would be not merely awake but upright and dressed when he arrived. Articulate was going to be pushing it, but I'd be chugging my first cup of tea down as fast as possible.

He didn't show up. Arrrrrgh. No, wait, that may be aaaauuugh. What if the Evil Bat God, the one who is planning on taking over the planet, and putting water back in all those drained swamplands to create more mosquitoes, good luck in the weather around here honey, heard that Atlas as my instrument was trying to limit the reach of the Largest Bat Nursery in Hampshire, and, employing regiments of bats working in perfect consonance and symmetry* stole Atlas' distributor cap**, let all the air out of his tyres and put sugar in his petrol tank?

So after potting on a lot of gasping snapdragons*** hellhounds and I ventured up to Third House to find . . . Atlas peacefully getting on with staining the new door.† About the bats, I said. He looked at me in surprise. I finished yesterday, he said.

Finished? I said. Where is the steel cladding? Where are the six watchtowers, and the martial-arts-trained sentries?

Atlas, fortunately, is a little used to me. No, he said, don't worry. The wake of destruction left by the cowboy plumber has been sealed, corked and stoppered.†† If they're still getting in . . . they're getting in somewhere else.

So . . . I said with deepest reluctance. I should open the attic hatch and . . . see what happens.

Yes, he said, not without sympathy. If you're still having bats, ring me, I'll come back. †††

I went back to the cottage and stared at the (closed) attic hatch. I'm going to open you, I said, and found myself downstairs making a fresh cup of tea. It's been like that the rest of the day. Every time I go upstairs, I'm going to open the attic hatch, and the next thing I know I'm downstairs cavorting with hellhounds or in the garden planting dahlias. ‡

Meanwhile I'm becoming increasingly schizophrenic about my lodgers. Peter and I went to my Bowen massage lady today‡‡ and I was telling her about my bats and she said oh, how awful, it's like a horror movie or something, bats swooping at you and getting tangled in your bed canopy‡‡‡—and I said, no, no! They're little! They're cute! They're warm and furry! They're pregnant mums, and they feed their babies milk!

I JUST DON'T WANT THEM IN MY LIVING SPACE. I ESPECIALLY DON'T WANT SEVERAL HUNDRED OF THEM IN MY LIVING SPACE. SEVERAL HUNDRED FECUND ONES.§

I have to go back to the cottage now, and go to bed. And stare at the attic hatch some more. I am trying to take comfort in the fact that I haven't seen another bat in the kitchen. . . . 

* * *

* Exactly how I would not like to moot

** Do cars still have distributor caps? It's been a long time since I've done anything but take a car to a mechanic and say 'fix it please'.

*** Last time I went to the garden centre the snapdragons weren't on sale yet. Went yesterday and they were not merely available but cracking their little Styrofoam trays and sending roots twisting down the legs of the display tables. That was before I picked up the bag of exploding Sterilised Farmyard Manure. The Evil Bat God is definitely on my trail.

† The new front door! Yaaaaaaaay! The old front door belongs to the same mindset as the plastic baronial chandelier that used to hang in the hall. I haven't got round to replacing the light fixture, but the naked bulb looks a lot better.

†† Note that the hole Atlas thinks was the likeliest bat portal is one I hadn't even seen. This is why I love Atlas.

Note also that the cowboy plumber was nothing to do with me. Another of my predecessor's blunders.

††† This is a handsomer offer than you realise. Atlas has about as much spare time as I do. Spare? Time?

‡ Just on the mark for a TOTALLY FRELLING UNSEASONAL FROST. IT'S SUPPOSED TO GET DOWN TO FREEZING TONIGHT. IT'S THE END OF RUMPLEHAMMER MAY IN SOUTHERN GRANGBLATTING ENGLAND. GIVE ME A (*&^%$£"!!!!!! BREAK.

‡‡ I love this business of going in tandem. In this weather I sit in Tabitha's garden for the entire hour that she's pummelling Peter, soaking up rays, breathing in the scent of her roses, listening to the water running through and over Tabitha's-husband-the-architect's complex of channels, statuary, tiny step-falls and shallow pools of big shiny pebbles, and knit. And . . . um . . . I've started the sewing-up of Secret Project #1. Um. What am I missing, about the unspeakable horrors of sewing up?^ It's just frelling mattress stitch—well, what I'm doing is just frelling mattress stitch. It's a little rustic but then anything involving the squares I've knitted is going to be a trifle rustic. I'm also doomed because I've used three different kinds of yarn and am deliberately putting the different colours next to each other—and the mottled-green yarn doesn't go with itself. There is a certain creativity involved in getting the edges to match up . . . and since I haven't had a clear idea how much tail I should be leaving there's going to be an awful lot of extra ends after I finish sewing up the holes. Still. As horrors go, this one is kind of a non-starter. I've no doubt I'll feel differently if I ever get to the end of some garment for which rustic is not appropriate. Off hand I can't imagine this happening any time soon.

^ Barring trying to use your nobbly yarn. I am not driven too mental by knitting with it any more—beyond the fact that my knitting is still a little nobbly generally—but SEWING UP with nobbly yarn??!???? First I had to rip it the frell out, and then I CUT OFF ALL THE NOBBLES AND DID IT AGAIN. Arrrrgh. But the nobbly squares have long, sew-uppable tails like all the other squares. Because I thought I was using them for sewing up. MY MISTAKE. GAAAAAAAAH.

‡‡‡ Tabitha didn't say this, but what kind of fruit loop has a bed canopy in the twenty-first century anyway? It's not like I'm keeping out malaria mosquitoes. Yet. They're supposed to be on their way to southern England, if the science guys don't get 'em first. If it's a choice, I'll keep my mosquito-eating bats. . . .

§ Bats are the second-most speciose^ group of mammals after rodents. The approximately 925 species of living bats make up around 20% of all known living mammal species. In some tropical areas, there are more species of bats than of all other kinds of mammals combined. (Hill and Smith, 1984; Nowak, 1991; Vaughan, Ryan, and Czaplewski, 2000)

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Chiroptera.html

I didn't know this. I'm trying to tell myself that the fact that there are nine hundred and twenty five SPECIES of bats has NO relevance to how many pipistrelles are living in my roof.

^ Rich in number of species.

http://www.defineonline.com/Definition.aspx?Word=speciose