The last couple of months haven’t been the best for my family, and to tie a bow on the already poor situation, we just discovered bats in the attic of our house.  It’s like one bad thing just followed the first and they piled onto each other until it hit rock bottom.  It was like a crazy chain reaction, one bad thing would happen and then another bad thing would follow and another after that.  The worst case of the domino effect that I have ever experienced, and I used to think dominoes were incredible.

To start off my bad luck, a rain storm hit and blew branches, and garbage, and all sorts of things across my roof and knocking shingles off, causing leaks.  Then, my sister discovered mold in her apartment and moved into my house temporarily; since she had to take everything that wasn’t infected with her, we had to move all of her things into the attic.  To follow that, one of the leaks from the rainstorm had caused some rotting to the wood in the attic which my husband stepped on and fell through while moving my sister’s things; the area was right over the car port which then meant that we had a gaping hole that led right into the attic. Cue the bats in the attic.

While a roofing contractor was looking at the damage to the car port, she noticed a strong smell and small black dots along the floor so she called a friend to confirm her suspicions. We had an infestation of about 40-50 bats in our attic.  For the last month and a half we have been practically living in a construction zone with everything that is going on around us.  All I know is that after all of this, I had better win the lottery or something.

We have recently discovered bats roosting in our walls.  Actually, they’ve been there for about two months now, only my husband and I are just realizing it.  My four year old daughter, Gracie, on the other hand, has known about it the whole time.  My sweet Gracie could hear the bats in the walls before my husband and I could even comprehend what was happening, of course she was too young to understand exactly what it was.  The worst part was that we had let her watch the new Ghost Busters about two weeks before, so once noises started in her bedroom walls, she was convinced there was a ghost living in the walls.  Knowing there was no such thing in the wall, I dismissed her claim as wind or noises from the furnace.  Now that I know what it is, I feel very guilty about the whole thing.

If it wasn’t for Grace, I don’t know that we would have ever noticed the bats in the wall until it had gotten way out of hand. She woke me up about once a week, crying about the ghost haunting her room, (I feel terrible) but I continually told her that there was no such thing as ghosts and ushered her back to bed.  After two months of this, I finally gave in and let her drag me into her bedroom to hear the ghost noises.  The surprising thing was that I actually heard them.  That’s when I made Rob (my husband), investigate the sounds.

It turns out that we had bats in the wall, I couldn’t believe it because it didn’t look like there was any way for a bat to access the inside of the wall anywhere!  Well about a year ago, we had some small problems with a woodpecker that would occasionally wake us up by drilling at the east wall of the house, the same wall where Gracie’s room is now located.   After the woodpecker had left our house, we thought nothing of it OR the holes that it had made.  Now, a year later, the bats had used those holes to get inside of the walls! That’s the bad news, though.  The good news is that I have a company coming out to inspect the house and hopefully will be able to get rid of the ‘ghost’ that has been haunting our house!

I haven’t had to see a doctor for anything more than a check-up since I was 12 and had the flu; but this morning, I was bitten by a bat.  I have never once in the 13 years that I have lived here, seen a bat any closer to my house than flying over it at night.  I’ve never had one on my porch, in my attic, or even in the trees so I cannot imagine why this one ended up in my front yard today.  What I do know, is that I am not very happy about this.

So here’s what happened: it was about 6:30 am and I was getting ready to take my daughter to early morning choir practice.  Of course it was too early to put on tennis shoes so I had slipped on some $2 Walmart flip flops to go out and start the car.  Walking across the lawn, I suddenly stepped on something soft, I quickly retracted my foot and turned on my phone’s flashlight.  I couldn’t quite tell what it was so I lightly turned it over with my foot.  That’s when it happened.  The nasty little thing reached out and bit my toe.  I yelled out in pain, shook my foot free, and drove myself to the hospital – don’t worry I dropped my daughter off at school on the way.

Now here I am, sitting in a hospital bed waiting for test results that I don’t know if I want to see.  The chances are definitely slim of me having rabies, but I’m getting treatments any way.  I’ve called a professional to go and find the bat.  It may sound impossible but it flew into the tree in my front yard after I shook it free, so hopefully it isn’t too hard.  I would like to have the bat tested also.  I’m still in disbelief that this all happened, I mean how many people do you know that can say they were bitten by a bat? If nothing else, it makes for a good story.

To say I have a ‘little’ bat problem, is a BIG understatement. We bought a new house in June completely expecting it to be run down and have issues, we specifically like this property because it other buildings around it that we could use or tear down. We were ready for work and prepared for rickety, but we never thought we were buying the bat cave! After the final signings and the house becoming officially ours, it took us about a month to get out to it to see exactly what we bought (we didn’t check before because we planned on rebuilding anyway). When we got there, we realized we took on what could be an impossible fight.
The property had a bat problem like I have never seen in my life, the floors in ALL of the buildings are littered with guano and what I thought was black paint on the ceiling was really the oils from the bats covering everything! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, luckily there weren’t any bats there at the time, though I’m not sure where they went, but it was obvious they had been occupying the space. Well my wife and I agreed that while we did love to see wild bats, we did NOT want to live with them. We could deal with old wallpaper, cracked floors, and an assortment of broken things and maybe even holes in the roof, but we couldn’t deal with this bat problem on our own.
We called the insurance immediately and asked what they would be willing to help us with. They told us that there was nothing they could do unless a professional would come do an inspection. Well prior to this I didn’t know that there were people who specialized in bat problems like ours, but there’s someone to do everything I guess. We got in touch with a “trapper” who agreed to make the trip out to American Fork to help us out with our ‘little’ issue. Hopefully everything they find convinces the insurance that they need to help us with our BIG bat problem.

I could not believe it when I saw the bats on the ceiling in church last week. Our church has your typical high, vaulted ceilings coupled with large beams making a beautiful pattern; perfect for staring at instead of paying attention during mass, am I right? However, when I saw the bats on the ceiling, I wasn’t fighting sleep during a long spiel from the pastor. Instead, I was enjoying an activity with my Girl Scouts troop. We were gathering to plan fundraisers we could do besides the typical sale of Girl Scout Cookies. It actually wasn’t that long after we got there that the first bat was spotted.
Being an older building it has its issues. The occasional leaks and creaks but I couldn’t believe it when our church turned into Dracula’s cave! Two of our Scouts were walking down the aisle when they called out to me, but my hands were full so I simply asked what was wrong instead of going to investigate. They told me a bat fell from the ceiling and was wriggling on the floor. I dropped what I was doing and ran to their side, bats can be dangerous and there are no limits to what parents would do if I let one of their daughters get a bat bite!
Since I’m not an expert in trapping animals I just set a box over the injured bat and started calling around for help. I had to call in a local animal control to take care of the one bat on the floor, but they informed me that there were definitely more bats on the ceiling and asked me to call someone else to take care of those. Well that is not my job! I help Girl Scouts, not vampires! I called the pastor and told him what was happening and I assume he’s the one who called the trappers that came in. They say that the bats are gone, but I’ll definitely be on my toes during mass on Sunday!

I started working at a movie theatre for one reason: girls; not to deal with bats in the theatre.  In Drake and Josh, Drake was constantly picking up girls at the movies, so I figured why not make money and get lots of phone numbers; it seemed perfect until I realized that girls go to the movies only in three cases.  With her family, with her friends, and with her date.  None of which are times when I feel comfortable approaching them, so I left it to them to approach me.  BAD IDEA.  I guess in a way the bats in the theatre helped my game, because until then girls didn’t look twice at me unless it was for extra butter or a refill.

It was a gloomy Tuesday, no sun and no luck with a single female (no surprise), I was on the lowly duty of sweeping up popcorn and collecting garbage, yippee!  When I had that job, credit watchers were my worst enemy; they stayed until the screen went black and there’s really nothing left to see, and man is it awkward.  That night, however, it was a group of teenagers (mostly girls) and they were doing more talking then watching so I just swept around them, and then it happened.  The bats flew down from the ceiling and you’d have thought someone fired a gun they moved so quickly for cover, to my surprise, one girl screamed and jumped into my arms.  I stumbled but held onto her. As the bat made a sudden turn our way I lifted my broom and smacked it.  I felt like Prince Charming, I had just defeated the dragon and now to rescue the princess.  I led the shivering girl to the hall where she whimpered and thanked me, then promptly left.  No score for the good guy.

Unfortunately my good deed held no “true loves first kiss” and I was left to deal with the mess.  Now not only did I have to go back in the bat room to finish cleaning, but I had to call the manager and, from there on out, contact all the Wildlife Removal companies.  Shortly thereafter I handed in my two weeks and got out of that bat cave.  Surely there have to be easier ways to get a date than saving someone from the bats in the Ttheatre, because this was not my forte.

I never knew I’d be living with bats in the attic when I chose my new house. I thought that the Johnson’s were a normal family when I moved into the typical suburban neighborhood, I picked it for the wonderful view of the mountains from the kitchen corner, right above the fridge. I’ve always loved entertaining the thought of moving into a cozy cabin in the woods with a good family that left lots of dust and wasn’t too bothered by my webs. Anyway, in this house, I had my pick of the litter in setting up spots to spin my homes, and unfortunately I made one in the attic, right where the crazy animals were nesting.
To tell the truth, the bats didn’t bother me very much when they couldn’t see me, they don’t usually like to snack on Wolf Spiders like me, but they definitely bothered old Mrs. Johnson and her son. They didn’t realized they had more unexpected house guests than just me and the occasional fly (which I took care of), but they soon discovered the bats in the attic. I was talking with a girl from across the street and apparently they’d been renting the house to some distant cousins or something and they let the winged crazies in, but it’s really none of my business to gossip. Once they found them however, oowee it was chaos. They chased them around trying to shoo them away, trapped one in a box once, and even smacked one with a broom; I noticed that they were careful not to kill the bats though.
I had no trouble living with two families instead of one, but after the bats started being rambunctious during the daytime, I think the Johnson’s had their fill. They started to be hyper-hygienic, scrubbing everything down and cleaning anything they could reach. They even destroyed almost all of my webs! It was a mad house, but since they were too afraid to go into the attic, they didn’t even bother the bats! Well, I packed up my things and got myself out of there, I never imagined that something as simple as bats in the attic would drive me from my home, but it sure did.