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.
Even more bats
Last night I think I would have slept. . . .
I went to bed comparatively early, as bed-going goes with me. And I literally had my hand out to turn the reading light off and . . . a bat HURLED herself through the bedroom door, aiming straight at me, or the wall—um, why?—or the canopy, or whatever. It was another of those occasions when I felt something—I assume a wing—graze me as she did a boomerang turn past me* and shot back out the door again. GAAAAAAAAAAH. There goes the old adrenaline, thanks so much. Someone on Facebook posted to last night’s entry on the subject of bats ‘yes, and they’re bigger indoors.’ Yes. Funny thing about that. And they’re really amazingly gigantic when they’re flying at you while you’re lying supine in your bed.
I lay there gasping a minute. I could hear her caroming around elsewhere. This ludicrous Besieged by Bats situation makes me glad that my poor hellhounds are digestively challenged, which means that I’m still crating them every night—they are very clean, and I think they would cry to go out anyway, if they’re in trouble. But crating them reinforces this—in my mind anyway, and I have enough trouble sleeping. Had enough trouble before there were bats. Anyway—at least I don’t have to worry about hellhounds giving chase to low-darting bats in the middle of the night.
I got up—grimly—went across the hall into the bathroom and regretfully unvelcroed and bent back a corner of the lovely, bug-resistant screen in the window, and propped it open with my toothbrush mug. Which has a plastic bag over it these days, since I have a peculiar aversion to the idea of bats among my toothbrushes. It’s been really nice not hosting a house party for every bug in this end of New Arcadia plus its friends and relations, but letting bats out, unfortunately, takes precedence over not letting bugs in. The attic window has been open for a while, of course, but bugs seem to like heights: if they come in the attic, mostly they stay up there. Mostly.
Then I went back to bed and listened to the caroming some more. I pulled the sheet over my head and dragged a pillow over that—stopping just short of making breathing challenging—but sleep? Noisy little beggars, bats. Although possibly the racket of the beating wings is less when they’re not in the bedroom with you. This one seemed to figure out the canopy better than the one a while ago, but she really liked my dream catcher and kept flying through it. Tinkletinkletinkle. Tinkletinkletinkle. TinkletinkleAAAAAAAUGH.** If this was Hermione, she is definitely in the annoying adolescent phase.
Then she’d go take a loop or two around the rest of the first floor***. And come back. Tinkletinkletinkle. Tinkletinkletinkle. Flapflapflapflappityflappityflappityflapflap
Bats know when there’s an open window. Yes. And I’m Deborah Voigt.†
Anyway. Not a lot of sleep was had last night. This on top of not-a-lot-of-sleep the night before, and we’re now into Zombie McKinley territory. I’ve always hallucinated a bit when I get really tired, and this propensity has intensified since the ME. And I’ve already noticed an increasing tendency to identify all small dark blobs as collapsed bats—and any sudden zinging motions, especially in peripheral vision, as flying bats—probably coming to get me. There have been a lot of bats in my life today. Some of them even real.
Including three dead ones. I am a bat-killer! I am a bad hellgoddess! Yes but—but—bats aren’t supposed to live in the human side of houses! They’re supposed to stay up under the roof, in the structural gaps! The window was open! Bats are supposed to find the open window! I’ve found one dead one before, but I’ve been uneasy right along about the ones that don’t collapse in plain sight, and today I went looking. One had got itself caught in a moth trap—pipistrelles are little, but moths are a lot littler, and it never occurred to me that the glue on the moth trap would catch a bat. I have now thrown out the moth traps. Another one was dead at the bottom of a vase. I found one in the bottom of a vase once before—that one was still alive—and assumed it was some kind of bizarre one-off. I’ve now turned all the empty vases mouth down—and let me tell you how silly that looks. The third one was just collapsed and past resuscitating, as the first dead one was a week or so ago.
I also found one barely alive at the foot of the stairs at around noon. Why are the little frellers wandering around in the middle of the day. Usually at least I find them late afternoon. I put her out under the honeysuckle with the now de rigueur tiny saucer of water, but I was pretty sure she was on to become an ex-bat very soon: as I keep saying I worry about the metabolisms of little tiny things, and it was about ten hours till sunset and bat-suppertime. I couldn’t believe she’d last that long.
I rang the Bat Lady. The Bat Lady said, don’t leave her under the honeysuckle, put her in a box and keep her indoors—you’d be surprised at the number of predators around. Magpies. Rats. —Rats. Ewwwwww. Rats are one of those things you know are there even if you don’t see them. (If you see them you call the exterminator.) So I got a box and punched some holes in the lid, feeling like a kid doing a school project, and then I went out to catch her. . . . A drink and some cool shade had cheered her up a lot, and she didn’t want to be caught. You know the wingspan on a common pipistrelle is about eight inches: that’s actually a lot when you’re trying to grab it, or it’s flying at you as you’re lying in bed.
I caught her. I put her in her box. There were tiny aggrieved scrabbling noises, which I ignored. The Bat Lady had made some suggestions about trying to feed her, but if she was feeling that lively she could last till 6 pm when she would become the Bat Lady’s problem. I had a cup of tea with Oisin††—there was no way I was going to try to sing anything today—who suggested that I should start a rumour that Ground Bat Bones are an aphrodisiac. This would probably solve my problem. Sigh. On a day this ghastly it’s almost tempting.
The Bat Lady came. I said, I’m sure they’re getting in downstairs—and I showed her the awful channel cut in the ceiling behind the beam in my kitchen where the wiring now runs. I also showed her the splinters and crumbs of plaster I’d found on the hellhound crate this morning. And I showed her my linen cupboard†††. My linen cupboard is full of pipes, and the holes cut in the walls for the pipes to run out are big enough for a crack [sic] troop of pipistrelles to come through all together. The Bat Lady is coming back tomorrow—her own self—with polyfilla and a stepladder. Golly.
She also took Giselle out of her box and had a brisk, businesslike look at her. Claning—I think it was Claning—posted a while back that tiny bats can’t actually open their mouths wide enough to bite you, nor are their jaws strong enough.‡ That would be the case here. Tiny. Bat Lady also turned her over, tummy up: not that I know bat anatomy from Newton’s Third Law, but knowing that Giselle is likely to be a pregnant female, it was extremely easy to identify that swell in her belly. Awwwwwww. She seemed surprisingly unweirded out by human handling. Cute. I do not like them flying and caroming indoors but . . . cute. The Bat Lady took her home for remedial feeding.
And I went to . . . bell practise. Gods. I was at least half-planning to give it a miss, because I am so . . . negligible. And it looked like we were going to manage to cancel: by five to eight there were only three of us. I was delighted. And then they started trickling in. My heart sank. I had only come at all because when I had cravenly emailed Niall that I might not he emailed back bracingly that I had to come because we knew we were going to be short. Frell. Yes, we did. But then we weren’t. I almost crept back out again when the sixth person arrived . . . only Niall got in the way and called for Cambridge. This is not a good idea, I said. Sure it is, said Niall. Cambridge. And—gods help me—I was dragged through a plain course of Cambridge by the hair, more or less. The thing is that even with No Brain after all this frelling handbell stuff, I know the blue line extremely well, so when my brain has turned to mush and my ropesight is inventing bats, when someone shouts at me, double-dodge and become fifth place bell!, unfortunately I know what he means. So I do. I’m glad I went to practise but I did wish I’d had a brain.
Now I have to go back to the cottage and see . . .
* * *
* If larger things are described as able to turn on a dime—or, over here, a five-pence piece, which are the littlest in common use—what is a pipistrelle described as turning on? The tip of a hypodermic needle? The first ‘a’ in the Lord’s Prayer written on the head of a pin?
** blondviolinist wrote: These bat posts are highly entertaining in the abstract, but I’m starting to worry for you a bit, Robin! (Well, for your house at any rate.)
Never mind the house! Worry about me!
*** Second floor in American.
† http://www.deborahvoigt.com/
†† Who is now saying next week he’ll write a guest blog. I said that last week, didn’t I? he said. Yes, I said. And the week before that.
††† Please don’t laugh, I said. We moved out of a house with nine bedrooms and . . .
‡ Claning also posted last night:
Although if they eat bugs on the wing, why do they need all those TINY NEEDLE-LIKE TEETH? It’s enough to give you the wrong idea. Birds that swoop after flying bugs in a fairly bat-like fashion make do just fine with beaks.
But bats are much smaller in relation to their prey. And they eat moths and other things that are slippery, and they do so in mid-air, so they only get one chance to grab them firmly — no shifting one’s grip and trying again. This feeding on the wing business does have its drawbacks.
Bats, Inc
The Bat Lady is coming again tomorrow.
I am very tired. I’m very tired because I’m not sleeping, but it’s also true that the not sleeping—which I’m reasonably sure would be happening anyway—is aggravated by the fact that I’m now jerking awake every time I hear small fluttery and/or whanging/blundering noises. Yes, pipistrelles are ridiculously cute*—as several people have commented in response to last night’s photojournalism—even their infinitesimal faces are cute. Some bats have pretty bizarre noses and ears and things from the whole echolocation apparatus. Pipistrelles look how tiny flying mammals with big ears ought to look.** NOW ASK ME WHY I’M SO SURE THEIR FACES ARE CUTE.
Because they’ve started looking back at me. I noticed this last night with Hermione—she was remarkably unfazed by the presence of a Very Large Moving Thing (with a small device that kept blinking a tiny red eye at her) in the same room with her. This afternoon’s bat*** was snuggled up in a corner of hellhound blanket that had fallen outside the crate. Hellbat indeed: staking her territory. She was waiting for us. At, it seems to me, considerable risk to life and limb, since the first creatures through the front door are usually the hellhounds. And indeed Darkness was on her at once, but all he did was point his nose at her and wag his tail and when I, fearing the worst, went to drag him off what I could guess was a bat, there she was looking perfectly serene.
The thing that is bothering me is that they’re acclimating. First few I found downstairs were either frantic or collapsed—you didn’t know for sure if they were alive or dead till it—she—feebly tried either to fend you off or to grab onto the dustcloth for support. Today, having stared down a hellhound several gazillion [insert weight measurement system of choice here] times bigger than she is†, when I knelt down beside her—hellhounds firmly on sit behind me†† she turned her face up and looked at me. Tell me I’m anthropomorphising. Go on, I dare you. The ones from a week or a fortnight ago were either comatose or trying to crawl under the nearest wall, bathtub, tea caddy, whatever. They did not want to know, and they were not having a good time. Today when I picked her up she made a tiny huffing noise—not at all like the aggrieved hiss of the first one, so long ago, before I knew what I was involuntarily getting into, and when I put her down under the honeysuckle she looked up at me again. Little bright eyes. Furry face. Enormous laid-back ears. And that odd, sort of shovel-shaped line of mouth.††† AND JUST BY THE WAY, BAT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WANDERING ALERTLY AROUND THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON????? YOU’RE A BAT. GO ROOST SOMEWHERE—but not in my house.
When I went outdoors again two minutes later with a fresh saucer of water she was already gone. Not miserable and exhausted.
Okay, maybe this one is Hermione. Maybe Hermione is EMoon’s original rebellious adolescent bat with a crush on the hellgoddess gig. I do find it a little ominous that she chose to land on the Mc shelf‡ even if the McKinleys are off on their own—unappealingly down at floor level—and then there was the bedding down on my All Stars incident. And the hellhound blanket? Doesn’t it smell like LARGE PREDATOR for pity’s sake? I know that bats are themselves predators, but—for example—sparrows and robins run away from peregrines. Adolescents with crushes do, of course, often behave like loonies.
Maybe there’s only really one acclimating bat.
AJLR wrote:
She was on this beam several minutes. She’d stroll along for a while, and then she’d groom for a while, and then she’d stroll some more.
Uh oh! I hope she wasn’t crawling along on a recce and muttering in her little bat voice ‘this crevice looks just right for Ermintrude, and that one there could be for Esmerelda, and the one over there could have been tailor-made for Eadgyth and her group’!
Yes. This is exactly what I’m worrying about. The Aga means it’s nice and warm in the cottage.‡‡ You know the reason the bat mums congregate in nurseries? Because the babies are born naked, and the crèche needs to be pretty large to have enough 50p-piece-size-naked-baby bodymass to keep them all warm while the mums are out hunting.
Anyway. Where I began: Yes, pipistrelles are ridiculously cute, and I may have to find out how to print out copies of the literary bat and the chandelier bat. BUT I STILL DON’T WANT THEM IN THE HOUSE.
AND IT’S JUNE. THE BABIES ARE STARTING TO BE BORN ANY MINUTE.
Handbells were a disaster today. I couldn’t keep my mind on the business somehow.
* * *
* Although if they eat bugs on the wing, why do they need all those TINY NEEDLE-LIKE TEETH? It’s enough to give you the wrong idea. Birds that swoop after flying bugs in a fairly bat-like fashion make do just fine with beaks.
** And lots of needle-like teeth.
*** Siiiiiiiiiigh
† Possibly four thousand times. Five gram bat. Forty pound hellhound. Somebody else can do the maths, including all that conversion stuff.
†† There was a certain amount of semi-suppressed mmmmmmmmmOOOoooh back there, and some hot breath down my neck. But the basic fact of surviving hellhounds is Don’t Run, so in the absence of something to chase they were reasonably willing to be (reasonably) obedient.
††† She didn’t open her mouth and display her teeth. Tactful of her. She didn’t want to scare me.
‡ I think I’ve got everything Vonda’s ever written. I may have missed one or two of Pat’s books. I keep meaning to check this: I don’t want any omissions. But order—feh. My bookshelves are in better shape since Fiona took me in hand, but I’m really not trustworthy.
Also I think the books hold square dances on book-solstices, and I don’t think they always reshelve themselves very soberly after these occasions.
‡‡ It is comparatively nice and warm under the roof, but it is warmer indoors on the other side of the house from the nursery, where the Aga is. Today’s been pretty much our first warm day—it’s been a cold as well as a dry spring, and I’m sure responsible bat mums are worrying about this. Also, there are now saucers of water all over the frelling house for thirsty bats, since I’m assuming dehydration is a significant contributing factor to bat collapse. —Oh, frell, that’s why the recent rescuees are so sodding alert and frisky. The point is, Esmerelda, Ermintrude and Eadgyth are probably now in high-level consultation about how to convince a cranky hellgoddess to put a nice cardboard box with a folded-up towel inside on the counter next to the Aga. GAAAAAAAH.
A Day. With Bats.
Yes. I still have bats.
I believe there has been a certain cynical murmuring about my bats. Photos! so goes this murmur. We believe nothing we have not seen with our own eyes! You’re a storyteller! You could be making it all up (because you lead such a boring life, with all the hellhounds, bells, roses, singing, chocolate, and other people’s books! BORING! Not a single dragon! Not even a book tour*)!
I could be. But I’m not.
Nothing like Bela Lugosi.
Okay, maybe a little like Bela Lugosi.
About two-thirds along the beam, on the far side. She's waving.
She was on this beam several minutes. She'd stroll along for a while, and then she'd groom for a while, and then she'd stroll some more.
Here's looking at you, kid.
Two for the price of one. No, no, it's just the table-lamp shadow.
Literary bat.
HOW COOL IS IT TO HAVE A BAT CLIMBING ON YOUR CHANDELIER??? HOW TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY FRELLING COOL? You're all jealous. You know you are.
I’m just really, really, really, really, really glad that a few of the fifty or so photos I took are usable.** Someone who knew what they were doing could doubtless have got better photos out of my fancy, over-eager-to-please*** camera—but despite me it managed to cope with a small dark furry thing with a penchant for walking along dark tenebrous beams or flying at hellhound speeds with superfluous swooping—at twilight. And all without flash. Well, I didn’t want to upset my bat. The weird shadows are because the only light was a table lamp.
So I may have fewer bats. But I still have bats.
I had closed the attic window last night when hellhounds and I got back to the cottage well after bat-launch for bat suppertime. Just in case there were any carelessly roosting in my attic. That should have been the end of it. Because Atlas had SEALED ALL THE CRACKS IN THE ATTIC YESTERDAY.
I really am too dumb to live. Yes, reader, I left the attic hatch open. But whenever it was that I got home to a bat-blizzard last week . . . eh, it was Wednesday again . . . I had stood at the bottom of the attic stairs staring in disbelief at the aerial careering going on overhead. But they stayed IN the attic. So, fool that I am, today I thought that supposing, just supposing, there were still a few teleporting bats in my attic tonight, they would at least stay up there and wait for me to get back and open the frelling window for them. Bats as small flying hellhounds. But the teleporting ones are the adventurers. I should have realised I was in trouble when I came in from an extended stint of gardening this evening and found a bat . . . lying on my All Stars. No, really. I was going to take hellhounds out and . . . there was a small furry thing ON THE ALL STARS I AM WEARING TODAY. (Note that I garden in beat-up leather clogs.) Geep. Yah. Dustcloth, I said. I rolled her up (gently) in a dustcloth†, put her under the honeysuckle and, since she was showing signs of holding on, I let her keep the dustcloth. When I went back two minutes later with a mini-plant-saucer of water for her, she was already gone. I said to myself, either this was a single bizarre one-off like anyone could find a bat lying on their All Stars—anyone!—or it’s already too late. So fatalistically we went out for our hurtle.
Afterward I bundled hellhounds into the car and went into the cottage. And was not really surprised to hear faint skittery noises. I went upstairs and found a bat—this bat—trying to peel the screen off a corner of the bathroom window. Sigh. Mostly those screens are a good thing. She flew out and into my office . . . so I hastily opened an unscreened window. Bats know when there is an open window. Sure they do. Teleporting bats are the adventurers, as I said. She was in no hurry. She liked the beams, the books, the chandelier. Gah. I went (more) upstairs to open the attic window again and found a bat already there, patting the window glass impatiently. I’m coming, I’m coming, keep your hair on, I said. I opened the window. I came back down to office level. Hermione was still exploring the bookshelves and ignoring the open window. There was a crash behind me as another small furry flying thing engaged with the bamboo screen over the (closed) hall window. That’s four.
I can only vouch for four. Which would be fewer than the bat-blizzard a week ago. Still . . . bats. Indoors. I watched Hermione for a minute or two longer—I was not going to leave my office window open: if she didn’t find it now I was going to close it when I left for the mews and she could figure out the attic one again when she was tired of reading—which is when I finally bethought me of my camera. . . .
* * *
* I have, however, been failing to tell you that I’m doing a signing at the Forbidden Planet in London on 7 July. Details to follow. I keep forgetting. Duh. It’s true, I’m hopeless.
** And—trust me—I would have no idea how to make up photos.
*** What do you want me to do! I can do this and this! I can do this and this and this and this and this and this and this! And this! And thisthisthisthisthisthisthisandthis!!!!! All you have to do is choose! —And then, of course, press the right frelling buttons.
† Sigh. This is not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to do the cardboard-and-shoebox thing, like the large, mammalian version of the glass and the piece of cardboard you use for getting bugs outdoors where they belong.^
^ Note that I was bitten by a ladybird today. Ahem. Stop that. I’m afraid this is probably the drought—they only bite people when they can’t get anything better. Hellhounds and I were out hurtling, and I was mid-smash, assuming what was biting me was a deerfly, only it was a ladybird. We need our ladybirds. So I halted the violent downward progress of my hand and merely knocked the little freller off my arm. But it’s clearly been a day for interactions with wildlife. Feh.
Invasion
I was in the garden for a long spell this afternoon, a topic not without interest (to me, anyway, which means blog), and then tonight was one of Wild Robert’s occasional next-step-up ringing seminars—I hesitate to call them upper level, although they’re upper level to the likes of me, who wasn’t originally planning to get even this far—and I actually made it to this one. There are gremlins between me and Wild Robert’s seminars but we FOILED THEM AT LAST tonight and I went and it was brilliant and I was going to tell you all about it.
So I went back to the cottage on a high of Kent, Cambridge, Stedman and Little Bob, brain dead, but who cares? It was worth it.*
I went back to the cottage because Peter was playing bridge tonight, and I don’t leave hellhounds to their own devices at the mews. If there’s going to be a nasty accident, I’d rather it happened at my house. At a little after nine, leaving the tower, it was still daylight; twilight was finally arriving as I got home. I turned the hall light on as I went upstairs. I pulled curtains closed. I was thinking about bells, and the amazing, the fabulous excellence of Wild Robert, who can haul me through Cambridge.
There was a funny noise.
It seemed to be coming from the attic.
It was a sort of whirring noise.
I had opened the attic hatch this morning, you know.** And closed the window. Just to be, you know, sure. Sure that Atlas’ bat-blocking manoeuvres had been successful.
I stood at the foot of the ladder and looked up. There was enough twilight coming in through the big Velux roof window to see . . . little flying things. Lots of little flying things. Lots and lots of little flying things. Zapping back and forth. With, I might add, every evidence of enjoyment. These were not the poor lost solitary things I’ve had downstairs, bouncing off my geraniums and getting mixed up in the bed canopy. These were bats doing what bats do, which is whizz around. Hilariously. While this does, unfortunately, put paid to EMoon’s attractive theory that my one-at-a-time visitors heretofore have all been only a single hero-worshipping adolescent bat dazzled by the hellgoddess schtick, I would have no trouble believing that these were the original adolescent rebel and her eighty-four closest friends. There were high jinks being expressed in my attic. There were aerial acrobatics of a majestic order. There was also some semaphoring of frustration: bats kept landing—with tiny pattery whups—on the window and creeping briskly along the sill as if to say, where’s the frelling exit? I know there was one here yesterday. . . .
Lots. And lots. And lots. And lots of little flying things. Quite amazing numbers of little flying things. There were four hundred and ten of them last year. And let us not forget—I have not forgotten—that the returnees are all pregnant.
And I was going to have to go up there. And open the window. And CLOSE THE HATCH.
Different people have different breaking points, of course. I could have simply grabbed the hellhounds and shot out the front door, never to return, at least not until morning. Not as if I don’t have two other houses to choose from. Or I could have (maybe) found something to hook round the handle of the hatch and slammed it shut from floor level. But . . . that’s my house. That’s where my bed is, not to mention the hellhound crate: sleeping anywhere else is going to be a large frelling nuisance, and will probably involve the stealthy self-insertion of hellhounds at some untoward hour. And—speaking of breaking points—there is no way I’m going to close the hatch on (apparently) ever-increasing numbers of bats in my attic with my All Stars and my cashmere sweaters with no exit. I mean, yes, the bats could turn around and go back the way they came, but they clearly aren’t going to: on the contrary, there are more and more of them coming in.
Do it before you have the chance to think about it too much. I climbed the ladder. I crouched at the top. Given the aerobatic fantasies this lot are performing their echolocation whatsit is working fine and they can just avoid me. I’m sure they could.
They didn’t.
You know that hoary old urban myth about how low-flying bats can get tangled in your hair? Well, keep your hair combed. They won’t get tangled in it, they’ll just fly through it. I HAD BATS ON ME. None of them stayed longer than a wingbeat, but they touched me as they brushed past, and when I finally forced myself to stand up to open the window—and, just by the way, I have to stand on tiptoe, reach up as far as my gorilla-length arms will reach, and yank repeatedly on a horrible stupid bar to get that ungleblarging window*** open—THIS IS NOT A COMFORTABLE POSTURE WHEN YOU’RE BEING DIVEBOMBED BY HUNDREDS OF BATS—when the beastly bar finally unlocked and I could push the bottom out, I had several bats patter swiftly over my hands . . .
I don’t know about bats. I don’t know what they thought they were doing. I didn’t feel assaulted or attacked. I felt totally freaked out, but that’s a different issue. What I felt like was the new vaulting horse for the third-grade gymnastics class. Ooooooh, look at this one—I bet I can do a triple somersault and a back flip. . . .
I also don’t know how many bats were in my attic tonight. A dozen? Twenty? Seventy-six thousand and twelve? But even with several of them on each of the two windows—the smaller, end window is the other side of the attic and I wasn’t even going to try to get over there and open it—there were still enough of them to be simultaneously scorching around the attic and parting my hair.
Lots.
I went back down the ladder and closed the hatch, and please, Kindly Bat God, the nice one responsible for pregnant adolescent bats having a really good time, let none of them be downstairs exploring further when the hellhounds and I return to the cottage†. Yes, I rang Atlas, and he’s coming back tomorrow, bless him. And tomorrow I am so ringing the national bat people. Block Visible Holes indeed. Because the thing that is worrying me most is my sense, tonight, that the reason they were so jolly is because they’re colonising up there. My attic is now part of the bat nursery. Because I’m almost sure I saw a few bats fly in the opened window as well as out. . . . ††
* * *
* And while I still want to sing tonight, I haven’t yet learnt to engage my brain with the process, so I won’t miss it.
** Anyone who follows me on Twitter does know.
*** It’s on the list for replacement. It’s been a ratbag since I moved in. But I hadn’t realised how crucial its ratbaggery was going to be.
† After I finish this very large bar of chocolate.
†† A good half dozen came steaming around the corner of the house and sped up the cul de sac as I was locking the front door. Hellhounds looked at them interestedly. I may have whined a little.