Anti-bat Morning Tales
It is early, 5:21 a.m. and the day is going light.
Morning tales: It is early, 5:21 am, and the day is going light
.
I'm in bed looking out my window. I have a new YouTube anti-bat video playing to see if I can drive the bats away, and this one seems to be working. I see them, spastic flight approaching, a bat army coming from the north and east, darting past the house, and then in front of me, rising up above the triple slider to where I know the little hole is that they crawl into, somewhere in the rafters above the foam insulation or in the cubbies in the concrete wall.
Cool air penetrates this room, 25x32 with a 15 ft tall ceiling ridge, exposed rafters soaring. It is somewhere up along the ridge they hide. They don't bother me, really, except for the bat guana that liters the deck below. But it is a contest I have with nature every summer, and this morning I am winning.
I estimate that 90% of them rose up, and then, annoyed by the noise, departed.
There's another now approaching, and this one is departing too. It must hurry! I don't know where they go when they leave the raftor space, but they must hurry because light will soon be upon them.
It is great entertainment, as I stretch my legs and eat a pain pill, waiting for the opioid to kick in… So, I may rise and make it downstairs to coffee.
Bat Patrol: I watch more now, rise up above where I can no longer see them, and then a moment later, the spastic flight, tearing away from the house. Yes, I believe, this morning I'am succeeding. You've got to change these YouTube anti-bat and anti-rodent videos, from one day to the next. The bats are relentless in their inhabitance, and they get used to the different noises. Smart bats, dumb me, I suspect.
After all, you can't fight mother nature, as climate change is showing us. I can smell the fires from Canada in the air, as I'm speaking into my phone. So please excuse any mistakes here, technology is not perfect, nor is my speech.
Update: Eventually the bats get used to one antibat YouTube video. Solution, play multiple videos at once.Antibat update.
July 29th, okay call me slow. Eventually the bats get used to the frequency and you have to find some different ones. Plus who wants to listen to all this noise at 5:00 in the morning in the dark as they're returning. It dawned on me bats don't like light. That is why they're fleeing it.
The bat's nest at the top of the Gable of my West Southwest facing window, which is a triple slider. My bed faces this slider. And so in true sloth fashion I have a hundred inch screen that drops down in front of the slider blocking the window where I view movies and TV and my computer, reclined in bed.
Tada, Big idea! Open the window and do not roll down the screen and let the bright bright projector light project out in the space and the trees beyond the window. NO MORE BATS NESTING IN THE GABLE SOFFIT!
Added, Sep 6th, 2023… Continue reading the post for Bats in the Belfry, a poem by Conrad Wainwright III. Some of you, and I doubt if there are many, may have read portions of my 2nd novel, A Builder's Tale, now almost finished with seven chapters to go, as I post the chapters, serialized, on substack. The toughest thing about a novel is the beginning and the end... And if it is big and complicated with many characters, as this one is, there are a lot of strings to tie up. So, I work on, and it may be a couple months yet, before I get the final chapters right. That said.. my point... ramble, ramble. Some of you may know Conrad Wainright. The Poet Laureate of Beauville. I found this in my notes...
Bats In The Belfry
If I were Batty
I would fly,
Disjointed, spastic,
at the sky,
If I were Batty
I would explore at night,
And gobble insects
With my poor eyesight.
If I were Batty
I would shit,
Everywhere I traveled,
Everywhere I went.
Constant
Often
And frequent.
I would saturate,
Your world, with shit
Later that evening, rumors have it, that at dusk as the bats were departing Deer Haven's eves, and after an afternoon of finishing off an entire Bottle of Old Draper... Wainright went a blasting with his shotgun. Causing little harm to the bats but installing a few new ingress egress holes in his house.
Tada, Big idea! Open the window and do not roll down the screen and let the bright bright projector light project out in the space and the trees beyond the window. NO MORE BATS NESTING IN THE GABLE SOFFIT!