Day 487

This is becoming my log of bats. About 2:00 a.m. I wasn't completely sleeping. Then Merlin jumped off of the bed loudly, which woke me up even more. So I got up to get a drink. When I came back to bed, Merlin was laying up by my pillow. As I laid down, he jumped down again. He stayed on the rug beside my bed in what I felt was an attack position. Now the cat and I have issues...Merlin has decided the best way to get us to do something or maybe just when he feels like it, he will attack us. Sometimes it is playful and sometimes he actually bites. So I rolled over a bit away from the edge of the bed to give him less of a target. (If he can see my hands, legs, ect. he is more likely to attack.) But even with my move it was just moments before he jumped back up on the bed. But instead of stopped there on me, he ran right across me and over Jonathan. Now I am laying on my back and fully awake. And what should I see above me, but a black shadow circling the room. Bat... Merlin hadn't been attacking me, but the bat. So up again. We closed the bat in our room. Got the girls out of bed and in the dining area. And closed off their room and the tower room. Jonathan feels it is easier to get the bats in the bigger room. (and he would know...he had gotten bats in all the rooms here on 2nd floor except the bathroom.) He was hoping to get it out of our bedroom and into the big room. But it didn't turn out that way, they stayed in our room. Jonathan says that Merlin was actually a big help in catching this bat. He knocked him out of the air a couple of times. One more dead bat, one hole in the plaster wall, two tired people.

Day 484

Bat,

Bat,

Oh, Bat

Where do you live?

Why do you fly over my bed at night?

Stay outdoors.

Hunt for bugs around my home.

And as I stand out on my porch,

I will be happy to see you.

We put the kids to bed, and went to our own room to watch a little TV. When we turned it off and were ready to sleep. Jonathan says, "Bat." I was almost asleep. But when I heard that word, I rolled over and saw the bat flying in circles above our bed. It then flew into the tower room. (which is open to the girls' room there is no door there right now.) So we closed our bedroom door and went to get the girls. I got them in our bed and there door closed. So now the bat was shut in those two rooms with Jonathan. He took care of the bat, and I got the girls back in bed. Ella (after walking to our room, getting lost and me having to go back to her room to get her) was really only awake for the last walk back to her bed. Melinda slept through the whole thing. She didn't know that I had carried her from her bed to mine and then back to hers again. We need the clock to stop and let us work for about 2 weeks. Then we would be able to seal up some of the bat entry points and get started on reconstructing the interior walls. The third floor is almost ready for us to wire and put in insulation. Once we get that done we would be able to put up the drywall. Then I don't think we would have these night-time visitors.

Day 482 - 483

We worked up on the third floor again this weekend. We got the rest of the studs down in between the girls' rooms and the bathroom. Then we started working on getting all of the nails out of the boards. Some of them we will be putting back up to form the wall. The rest of them will be cut up to use as fire wood this winter. We also removed the lathe nails from the ceiling and walls in the landing room and Zeb's room. We are planning on getting another dumpster this weekend so that we can get everything cleaned up and start the 'fun' work. When it got to hot Sunday afternoon/evening Jonathan and I went down the the first floor kitchen. We removed the nails from a large pile of lathe. Then we started to cut them into pieces that would fit into our wood stove. These pieces of old wood make starting the stove very easy. After the pieces were cut to the right size we tied them in bundles with twine. We still have a lot of them to do. But we will be very happy for all of these cut and bundled lathe firestarters once winter is here. Saturday afternoon (when it was hotter then we wanted to work) we took a trip into Lincoln. We found a couple of lanterns at Goodwill that we are going to use as the light fixtures in Zeb's room. And we checked out the attic fans at Home Depot. We will be putting one of those in very soon now.

Day 478

Bat, bat

Flying over sleepy girls.

We all headed off to bed tonight. But it wasn't long before Melinda comes running into our room. "There's a bat flying around our room." Soon, Ella was in bed with Melinda and I. And Jonathan was working on getting that bat out of there. Now we would really rather not kill them, if they would just stay out of our house. In the end Jonathan got the bat, but the light fixture got broken. There was glass everywhere. We had the girls sleep on the futon. I spent most of the next day picking glass out of their room, toy tubs, rugs, everywhere.

Looking forward to the day, that all of the wholes have been found and sealed, and our only visitors are ones who come through the door.