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| Re: Yet More About Bats [message #42235 is a reply to message #42233 ] |
Fri, 20 May 2011 21:01   |
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I wish I had bats instead of june-bugs. I get really tired of june-bugs. On the other hand, I don't mind if the cats crunch up the bugs, and I'd hate them to do that to little bats.
Better than duct tape for some types of holes, especially plumbing-through-the-wall type holes, is Great Stuff. It takes some practice to use it, since it is an expanding foam. If you spray in too much, it inexorably keeps expanding and oozing out the hole onto the surface of the wall. But it can do a great job.
e.t.a. Great job on the bells!
[Updated on: Fri, 20 May 2011 21:02]
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| Re: Yet More About Bats [message #42236 is a reply to message #42233 ] |
Fri, 20 May 2011 21:51 |
 Gomoto
Messages: 42
Registered: December 2010
Location: Central New York |
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I too have bats in my attic and one does occasionally find its way indoors. I still have no idea how, but they can squeeze through amazingly small spaces. It's my understanding that they do not have the strength to launch themselves into flight once grounded, so once they are on the ground (exhausted), they are likely to stay there.
Your Dracula mention reminded me of a night over 30 years ago during a performance of Dracula on Broadway. Once or twice during the play, a mechanical bat (Dracula) would fly in the window, circle the room a few times, and then fly out.
On one fly-by, the mechanical part went awry, and the bat came crashing to the floor with a metallic clang. The problem here (besides the broken bat) was that Frank Langella was waiting in the wings to make his entrance as Dracula in human form, but his bat form was already in the room in a crumpled pile on the floor.
Thinking quickly, the actor playing the butler exclaimed "That's disgusting!" took off his jacket, scooped up the bat and threw it out the window (loud metallic clang offstage), allowing Langella to make his entrance.
(I was also at Sweeney Todd the night the bridge fell, but that's another story!)
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| Re: Yet More About Bats [message #42237 is a reply to message #42233 ] |
Fri, 20 May 2011 22:42 |
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Ford of Rivendell
Messages: 20
Registered: May 2010
Location: Family Farm Country |
Junior Member |
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My dad* says you need to get insulation to tuck into the holes where the plumbing and wires are or go down or simply where an open stud section goes down to the rest of the house..in the attic, tuck in fiber glass insulation. It may help. However, first and foremost you should put some sort of material under the attic door itself because most likely they are coming out of the attic under that door into the rest of the house. Hence the reason why you are finding them on the floor. This was a same experience he had as a kid and we still have occasionally.
If you have a light in the attic try leaving it on before night and during the night so that they will go out instead of coming in. It can't hurt and very cheap in comparison to major fixes. Obviously do not leave the window open on those nights or else you will attract moths and bugs and they will attract the bats.
If you have any windows that have screens that do not cover up the whole window, like we do, they may be coming in through that.
Every year we get our Little Brown Bats coming in between the window panes or even those metal/wood slider screens we have to put in our old wood windows.
We've had bats living in the roof and getting in the farm house where my Dad was raised that is over 150 years old. That would also be the one I teased you about on Twitter where a Flying Squirrel got into the living room. Our house that we live in now across the fields is also over 150 years old with bats in the eaves...so we speak from experience.
They more than likely all got into the rest of the house under your attic door to go visit you...how "pleasant" that they are being so neighborly.
On another note, is one of your next stories gonna be about sort of bat-tamer?**
*My Dad who is a farmer, and a half a century old, and has lots of experience with nature and catching^ various critters in our old house...ranging from bats to mice,^^ moles to starlings, and even a wood duck in the basement.
**I have fully read Dad several of your blogs, with footnotes. I did so about your bat tale and after he gave me instructions of what to send you made several jokes about various footnotes to include...which I did. :0) Much to both his chagrin and laughter.
Can I help it if he is computer illiterate? THis gives me leave to add all that doesn't it?!
^He's also trapped a variety of critters, every sort we have round here, except a bear...which personally I have grinned down like Davy Crockett but he has not. He also caught one of our fledgling kestrels who had a wipeout on his first long distance flight with mama over to my grandma's house. Then I drove as he held him, and we took him home to their tree and now he likes to fly pretty close when we are outside.
^^Dad found a cute deer mouse when he was a little kid, named Squeaky, who used to sit on his toy tractors and play with him...until Grandma actually saw his little friend Squeaky...and she later on br
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| Re: Yet More About Bats [message #42239 is a reply to message #42233 ] |
Sat, 21 May 2011 00:02 |
EMoon
Messages: 664
Registered: March 2009 |
Senior Member |
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I'm not fond of things fluttering around the room in the dark. Here it's usually giant cockroaches--they make a strange whirr and then smack into things and then scrabble-scrabble over the mess on the floor. (Of course there shouldn't be a mess on the floor, but I'm a writer.) Or click beetles...they buzz-whirr across the room and smack into things, then click...click...click....until they finally get themselves right side up and can buzz-whirr around again. They sound too much like a wasp for my nerves.
A bat on top of that would be too much.
E
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| Re: Yet More About Bats [message #42251 is a reply to message #42233 ] |
Sun, 22 May 2011 10:32 |
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AJLR
Messages: 2564
Registered: September 2008
Location: England, UK |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
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Pipistrelles are dear little things, and I applaud their appetite, but I can quite imagine how trying it must be to have them (I assume it's not the same intrepid explorer each time) coming into the house so frequently. I was looking here, just now - the same page I assume your quote in blue came from - and wondered whether their point about the normal exit hole for the colony becoming blocked in some way (a rampant rose?) might be something to bear in mind? Does the colony take longer to come out in the evening these days, or do they still all stream out reasonably quickly?
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We had a confused pipistrelle bombing around the ringing chamber some time last winter while we were trying to ring, which is not a good thing. Every time we pulled off it would fly frantically round and round. Every time we stood our bells it would go attach itself, panting no doubt, to a bit of wall. EVENTUALLY it crawled up through the hatch and we closed the door behind it.
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We had a squirrel in the church, back in February, generally carrying on and munching on the flower arrangements. Unfortunately, although everyone thought it had been shushed out, it found its way inside a small roll of carpet that was on stored on the roof of the cupboard in the ringing chamber, and there died, sadly. Its presence made itself known a couple of weeks later to the ringers of the treble and the two, who stand closest to the cupboard when ringing...
"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."
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