Another Critter Problem

 

Atlas has been at the cottage all day. He's not even close to being finished with the latest level of bat-resistance—not even with the kitchen, and there's still the sitting room (which has a similar monster-maw beam problem) and the linen cupboard ahead.* He'll be back tomorrow—but then he has to go save other people's sanity with nails and ply and wood stain. Which means at least one more week of cohabiting with Chiroptera.**

Meanwhile, Peter and I are/were supposed to go to London tomorrow to have an adventure. Peter is still going. I have a streaming hellhound. I have no idea why. I haven't caught him mid-sandwich or mid-whoopie-pie*** or anything † lately. But this morning . . . streaming. This afternoon . . . streaming. I took them to my voice lesson†† so I could keep an eye on them in the car out Nadia's window.††† On the way home we had a nice stroll through the back streets of Mauncester.

Streaming.

So tonight I have an assortment of reasons why I won't sleep very well.

Whimper.

* * *

* And then we sit around for a minute or two and wait for them to find the next chink in the barricade. There's been a little conversation on the forum about the unlikelihood that a single one-way door will prevent them returning next year^ . . . or even several one-way doors. If pipistrelles can turn themselves into sheets of paper and pinpricks to slide under skirting-boards and through keyholes they will certainly find other means of entrance (and exit) to an over-200-year-old cottage they've grown fond of. Because I am a really hopeless wet, my first thought, as recorded last night, to the suggestion of an exclusion license, was oh, no! I don't want to make Hermione homeless! When it occurred to me a little bit later—as, for example, I was pulling the sheet over my head in bed last night^^—that chances are a one-way door (or twelve) wouldn't work, my first thought was relief. My second thought was . . . THEN WHAT?

Now Ajlr has written: . . . the unusual weather conditions this Spring (long dry = fewer pools of water around = less drinking water and fewer insects) may have made other bat nurseries in the locality less desirable. So it's possible, apparently, that extra pregnant females from other roosts may have moved to the obviously ideal location of your roof space and there's just not enough room for them all. . . .

This makes the most sense to me of anything I've heard. When they were still only coming into the attic, that they smelt the water in the water tank theory made some sense. But even then not that much sense—there's always been water in my garden, because I have an old-fashioned, heavily planted and organic cottage-type garden that needs a lot of water.  And which grows big fat juicy organic bugs.  But pots stand in trays with water in them. Watering cans stand around with water in them. There are pools in the gravel where I've sloshed.^^^ And while the plastic half-barrel I use as a water butt does have a lid on it, its lid is even sillier as bat-proofing than the lid on the water tank in the attic is.+ And since the first version of the dry-spring theory was promulgated I've had several bird-bath equivalents++ full of water out in the garden for thirsty bats+++. Or birds, of course. The bats may have been smelling the water in the attic tank as an extra source of water, but Atlas has sealed it up, (apparently) blocked the attic outlets . . . and they're still pouring in. Downstairs.

Population pressure covers the observable data nicely. Now I have to hope we don't have any more dry springs . . . and that the interlopers don't decide they like Bat Cottage better anyway.~

^ Diane in MN wrote: It strikes me that the bat people might be just a wee bit optimistic about being able to locate the one and only entrance to the bat nursery from outside.

^^ Yes. Mosquito netting. Totally. Must investigate. At this point even if it turns out that Atlas' efforts are successful I'll sleep better if I don't have wonder every time there's a funny noise in my little old creaky house, if it's anything to do with wings. Mosquito netting, after all, also keeps out . . . mosquitoes.

^^^ Actually I don't waste much. I do grow things that need water—roses, dahlias, delphiniums, and everything and its uncle and its uncle's best friend in pots—but I water by hand, I don't use a sprinkler or even a hose, and I mulch like mad. In fact I'm impressed at how well things are doing despite the drought.

+ I also have a gigantic open# well taking up way too much space in the corner between me and my semi-detached (and bat-free) neighbour, although since it takes several loooooong seconds for the sound of anything you drop in to hit the water, it may be too far down for even pips to fly. But I'm sure they can smell it.

# Relatively open. The brick wall around it is over knee high and there's a gigantic steel webbing inside. All of the above covered in plant pots of course.

++Very large plant-pot trays.

+++ As well as the possibly counter-productive saucers of water indoors.

~ And yes, sadly, it's way too appropriate for a hellgoddess to live in a bat cottage.

** I used to have to look up 'Chiroptera'. It just runs—or perhaps I should say flies—off the fingers lately.

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopie_pie

Pumpkin? Are you frelling joking? Whoopie pies are chocolate.^

Although they are perhaps not in England. All right, mid Spotted Dick then.^^

^ And of course whoopie pies originated in Maine.

^^ Oops, of course I meant Plum Bolster. http://historicalfoods.com/spotted-dick-recipe 

† My hellhounds. They won't eat their food but they will beg from strangers. Darkness—the streaming one—this afternoon went up to someone eating a great greasy carton of chips^ and came all over charming and dying of hunger. I dragged him away. Although potatoes won't hurt him I think, by the smell, that the cooking grease would be better lubricating jet aircraft undercarriages.

^ French fries.

†† GAAAAH. I am tired of being able to sing^ for Nadia and sounding like an angry pipistrelle the rest of the week. It keeps happening, that at home, it's just me. Nadia's the one with the magic. Not me. Nadia's the one who has me sing this exercise rather than that one, drop my jaw and straighten my spine and think about my vowels and suddenly I'm singing (more or less). I CAN GO THROUGH THE EXACT SAME SET OF SELF-INSTRUCTIONS AT HOME AND I STILL SOUND LIKE A TAIL-TRODDEN HELLHOUND. And now I'm inflicting myself on a choir?^^ Nadia says that I am to start a pre-practise ritual that will enable me to focus on singing when I'm at home—instead of on all the reasons I won't be able to do it properly because it's only useless me. Gaaaah. One of the more pathetic reasons I look forward to my voice lessons is that FOR ONE HOUR A WEEK I get to take my singing, you know, as if seriously, as if I'm really doing something and I have a, like, goal that isn't strictly fantasy. Nadia is delighted that I've joined the Muddlehamptons—who are a perfectly good amateur choir: I've told you that Oisin says Ravenel gets surprisingly musical results out of his motley collection of people going along for a laugh and something to do on Thursday evening—but she also knows that I am at heart a snob, and keeps saying encouraging/alarming things like, Now when you join a really good choir. . . . Eeep, you know?^^^

^ well—it's more like singing, when I'm doing it for Nadia.

^^ Ravenel will at least have moved me from singing directly into his left ear by next rehearsal.

^^^ As I'm writing this I'm listening to William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices on Radio Three. Music to die for.

††† Walked them before and after down the gutter of Nadia's mum's little village street. No streaming. Whew. I can go back next week.