Do I even need a title

 

When I got back to the cottage this afternoon and did not find a bat crushed up in a corner somewhere, I didn't think, Hey! Great!, I thought, I wonder what I'm missing. And where I'm missing her. Or them.

Atlas comes tomorrow to begin the Final Attempt. They are clearly getting in downstairs; I have my suspicions about my linen cupboard* and I know they're getting in in the kitchen. Whimper. Was it only a week ago I was saying that if they were getting through downstairs—if they were, for example, barging in through that gigantic channel hacked out for the wiring above and behind the huge ceiling beam in the kitchen—I was totally and utterly frelled?

It turns out I am perhaps not totally and utterly frelled. I had borrowed the stepladder** from Peter since if Bat Lady and I were going to try to tackle the problem ourselves we would need it. I'd been up there examining the kitchen ceiling on a stool last week when I was first worrying about holes not in the attic, and already knew that the news, if there was going to be news, was going to be bad news. And in fact I've wondered about those holes since I first bought the place, but the cottage is over two hundred years old, and nothing seems to have happened so far.*** Cue hollow laughter. But once I started finding splinters and bits of plaster on the floor, the counters and the hellhound crate† however . . . when I went up yesterday and looked steadily at the situation I knew there was nothing Bat Lady or I could do with a tube of polyfilla and some wood seal††.

She came anyway because she had another bat to pick up. I'm not quite sure why I'm no longer allowed to release them out the kitchen door after twilight. The one I rang her about on Friday, it was early in the day and she was clearly not a happy bat, but this one yesterday was so lively I was surprised she was bothering with the pretence of collapsed and crushed, because she came out of the gate like the first race at Newmarket and it's a good thing it was a large dustcloth.††† I nearly lost her, and I had a lot of trouble stuffing her in the box. She didn't like the box. She liked the corner of the kitchen door behind the bottom bolt much better. I'm sure she would have been fine under the honeysuckle: no rat would have dared. However, I succeeded at last.‡

The really cool thing is that the Bat Lady had brought exhibits. I'd expressed interest in her bat hospital, so she'd fetched a few samples. One of them, poor thing, was a pip that had been mauled by a cat, and only had one and a half wings left; but he was still a doughty crawler. Then there was a BIG pipistrelle—I think it was another pip—oh, you know, ten grams or so—but the scene-stealer was the brown long-eared http://www.bats.org.uk/publications_download.php/213/brownlongeared.pdf 

TOO TOO TOO FRELLING CUTE. ‡‡ If you read through the pdf it says that it curls those ears back like rams' horns but this is way more adorable in person than any of the photos.‡‡‡

Anyway. The Bat Lady climbed the stepladder, and also had a look at the linen cupboard—and we had a survey as well over the now-pretty-well-sealed attic. I told her that I was going to get Atlas in again to address the latest awful discoveries, and she said, it is up to you, and it is your house, but . . . if you want to apply for an exclusion license, I will support you.

An exclusion license means that at the end of the breeding season, when the babies can fly and forage for themselves, some human comes round and installs a one-way door, so that when the last bat has left, they can't get back in again. No more bats.

No more bat nursery.

You'd think I'd be burning a hole on my way to my computer to draft that letter. Well . . . no. I'm a wet knee-jerk liberal who gardens organically, rescues bees, and brakes for unicorns. I even let spiders alone if they are smaller than my hand. My bat nursery has been around a while. It's an established part of the system. And yes, when all those tiny pregnant bats come back next year, they can find somewhere else to roost and rear their even tinier offspring.§ But I bet there will be some losses. As well as a great big red FAIL for the human/nature balance.

No, I can't live like this for five or six months every year during Chiroptera parturition. But I'd rather hope that Atlas is successful.§§

* * *

* I am so not looking forward to shifting nine bedrooms' worth of sheets. Okay, seven bedrooms' worth of sheets, since Peter has two (bedrooms). Or even five bedrooms' worth of sheets, since Third House still has two beds, even if the attic is not precisely a bedroom. It's still a lot of sheets.^ Not to mention the Clean But Still Hairy hellhound blankets which also live in that cupboard. Maybe I'll find my iron however. I think it's in there somewhere. I haven't seen it in a while.

^ Especially in a house with one bedroom.

** The *&^%$£"!!!!!! stepladder. It's one of these dranglefabbing convertible numbers which means it can be a kind of low platform or tall stepladder or an extending ladder or a three-piece suit with a hidden pocket for whatever you're packing, roscoe, loppers, or sharpened hedgehog. I only wanted a stepladder. There was language.

*** At least nothing that was making it onto the paperwork. I wonder if a title search can be expected to bring up a slight bat infestation?

† I also resent the extra housework. Some of you probably read The New Scientist? Peter does, and passes it on to me, where it makes a gigantic pile with all the other periodicals I mean to get around to reading. I have no idea when this particular issue was from, but there was a query on the last page—where you can write in your vaguely science-related questions and other readers, if so moved, will respond—saying that dust on shelves and tables seems to mound up in layers, but the stuff on floors rolls up in whorls and heaps, and why is that? I may be suffering from unseemly and unbecoming CRANKINESS due to bat-related issues, but my reaction to this is, BECAUSE YOU WALK ON THE FLOORS, STUPID, AND STIR THE STUFF UP. Or, possibly, you have low-flying bats. One of the clues that I had aerial visitors were the sausages of dust that began appearing on my countertops. GAAAAAAH. It did get me up there to sweep off the tops of the frelling kitchen cupboards. We've had this conversation. Who designs cupboards that do NOT go to the ceiling? People who have never had to DUST anything. It should be a criminal offense punishable by 1,000,000,000 hours of remedial housework and a substantial fine to install cupboards that do not go all the way to the ceiling in a kitchen with an Aga in it. Which creates dust the way hellhounds create hair.

†† Well, I could wring my hands.

††† Actually it was not a dustcloth. It was a tea towel. There is now a Dedicated Bat Catching Tea Towel. Thanks to bats my dustcloths are dustier than usual.

‡ And gosh was there ever language. I didn't know bats had it in them. I had not, in fact, till last summer, listening to them chatting through the wall^, realised that bats made any noise within human hearing range. They also do vituperation extremely well for something that weighs one-fifth of an ounce. The hellhounds found this very interesting.

^ Poor naïve fool that I was

‡‡ http://www.wildaboutdevon.co.uk/?attachment_id=255 This is perhaps not the cutest long-eared bat photo, but I am riveted by its being described as filed under 'plants and fungi'. Oh, of course.

‡‡‡ Lots of stuff here: http://www.arkive.org/brown-long-eared-bat/plecotus-auritus/

§ In my wet knee-jerk liberal way I can ask about bat houses. I mean made for the purpose bat houses.

§§ There's also the little matter of living through this final breeding season if he isn't.