Three on Thursday – epic battles

Three types of animals we have epic battle stories to tell about. Well, maybe epic is a bit exaggerated, but I do like a good story.

– bats. Oh, the bats in our new house! Goodness. I already told you about the droppings and my cleaning them off the walls and floors is also becoming an epic battle. I’m really inching my way around the house these days. But I’m getting there.
When we started working in the house we removed all the wood panels that were blocking the missing windows (bars were still there, so it was safe to do that). The bats didn’t like their cave (they resided mostly in the entry room) so light and we thought they’d left.
Well, they didn’t. They just relocated to the darkest room in the house. The attic. We tried opening those doors, but that didn’t get enough light in (there’s just a tiny window in there). T. tried to smoke them out with those coils that should (but don’t really) work against mosquito’s. Didn’t work.
I did a bit of a search on the internet and found this list of things that might work (can’t find the exact website right now, but there are several to be found if you google ‘how to get rid of bats’, like this one).
At the end of that list was cinnamon. That website stated they hate cinnamon. So we bought five packages of cinnamon and sprinkled the powder on the beams they were hanging from. And hey presto, before we finished sprinkling (well, actually T. did, I really don’t want to get near them) they were gone.
They came back once, but they didn’t stay. To make sure they won’t return I also hung aluminum foil where they enter (they don’t like the light flashes and the sounds that makes).
The picture above actually has a bat in it. See that vague black spot on the right? It’s a bat, not going to enter our house. And no, I wasn’t planning on taking pictures when they were actually in the house. I’d have to get way to close to do that.

– lizards.
Inside we just get the small ones, luckily, but when you see them moving around from the corner of your eye it sometimes gets you. Most of them are the size of a cockroach, so mostly I’m relieved that they aren’t. They’re also very stubborn. When I’m sweeping the floor, they only move an inch away when I hit them. Each time I hit them that is. And waiting for them to leave doesn’t work.
We also have a lizard living in the outside toilet. This one is slightly bigger, the size of a rat and he refuses to move. So each time I use the toilet I tell him to avert his eyes and to stay put (don’t want him to jump on my head). So far we seem to have reached an agreement.

–  ants.
We sort of noticed that there were always ants in the car when we rode back from the house. But last Thursday we realized we had been parking on a nest. And that the nest was transferring itself to the car. When we started the motor and the fans started blowing, they started to spit out ants. And it kept spitting them out until there were at least hundred of them running around. Like a horror movie.
I felt like a massacre murderer, but there was nothing we could do but trying to smash them. We should have gone back to get the insecticide we keep at the new house, but that didn’t occur to us until we were about halfway, so we just kept driving. The road home never felt that long…

Linking up with Carole Knits’ Three on Thursday