Bats

Absurdly furry bat

The house is full of bats. Well, not full in the sense that there is no room for anything other than bats, but there ARE numerous bats. Bats in the kitchen, bats in my office, bats in the living room, bats in the bedroom, bats where I keep my clothes, bats IN my clothes. There are tiny bat babies, full grown mama bats, adolescent bats, live bats, dead bats. A dead leaf on the floor? Look closely; it’s a bat. Dark stain at the top of the curtains? Nope. It’s furry and it’s a bat, clinging onto the pleating and snoozing quite comfortably. Crazy rustlings in the wastepaper basket on my side of the bed, perhaps it’s a mouse? No, it’s another bat that can’t find a way out from under the used tissues and other discarded detritus. Found its way in ok though. Squeaky things flying in circles as I lie, hotly, under the duvet? Yep, more bats.

A bat on my sweatshirt, resting, as they do

Baby bat

Don’t get me wrong, I like bats, but what the hell are they doing in the house when there’s a whole farm out there to explore? There are numerous barns with countless crevices, perfect for the house-seeking bat. There are bat boxes in trees. I know because we put them there. On warm evenings – that’s now – the front door stays open until bed-time, creating a pleasing cooling draft, but the door and accompanying open sash windows means it is literally open season for bats, attracted in by the light, like moths, as they go on their nocturnal jaunts.

Homemade bat and bird boxes

Years ago the bat lady came to visit. A bit like cat-woman, but with a b. She hustled up into the attic and took away samples of bat shit and from that she determined the different species of bat we hosted. At night we’d stand outside and watch them creep out of the slit above one of the upper lintels and count them. Literally hundreds of bats were living in our loft. The heaps of batshit they left on the windowsill was testament to either their successful feeding habits and/or the size of roost keeping us company. For some reason (I suspect rats, wasps and hornets, all of which have made merry domesticity in the rafters), they have mostly transferred to the barns, but because of them I can differentiate between mouse shit and bat shit at a glance. Skillz.

Windowsill bat splat

Visitors don’t much like the bats, but there’s nothing we can do. Turn off your bedroom light we say, open the curtains and the window so it can fly out, and stick your head under the bedding if you’re freaked out.

I remember, decades ago, when I worked in Coventry and frequently had evening work things (theatre, gallery openings, festivals, meetings, stuff) to attend. At dusk I’d walk through streets with huge trees and listen to the bats squeaking in their thousands as they lifted off for a night of foraging. If you were none the wiser you’d think they were tiny birds, but I knew a bat from a bird, even though I was a city worker. They seemed particularly attracted to the catalpas and London planes.

But right here, right now, it’s a daily thing, collecting floundering bats and putting them outside. They keep the midges down, in theory, but the midge bites round my wrists, ankles and knees are testament to the fact we should have more bats, not fewer. Itch, itch itch I go, Anthisan at the ready. Doubt it will deflect or deter the bats.

Long-eared bat