bats

So I've been thinking for a while now, the bats have to go. Either they go or I go. Repeatedly over the years I've requested my landlord deal with the situation, which has only gotten worse. I have pictures! You don't want to see them. I took pictures in the attic because I thought the camera could pick up where the holes were in the roof and eaves. The camera technically should be able to see the cracks of light shining through, if I take a long enough exposure. But what happened was, I wasn't happy with those results and instead began snapping flash photos of the inside of the attic, because I couldn't see very well up there and I wanted to know if there were bats hanging over my head actually at that moment. This picture taking expedition was before this past Friday when the guy came to look at the attic.

This guy is a trained professional. He has a company which specializes in bat extraction and guano cleanup. For his company to come in to homes and churches and remove the poop and seal up all the cracks and be sure the bats are gone, he makes thousands of dollars. He took one sniff at the base of the stairs and wouldn't even go up there without a respirator. He told me flat out, you gotta get out of here. So now I realize, yeah, gotta get outta here.

Last Fall I asked my landlord to come get the dead carcasses out of the attic. He told me he would come when it was very very cold. He had to wait (why?) till it had frozen and been frozen for a while. In the spring, I asked my landlord what he planned to do with the carcasses, would he come take care of this? He sent a pest control guy. The guy didn't have any idea why he was there, and ended up taking the traps down, which was horrible. J. was here visiting, and went up there with him to help, because J.'s nice like that. And he came down really upset and decided I gotta get outta here.

What traps you ask? What carcasses, you ask? In 2005 the landlord had a pest control company put sticky traps up. This is not even legal, but hey, I can't reason with that man. I have another old blog, which I'm glad I still have, because it documents all the crazy stuff my landlord has done over the years, for example:

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 You will never guess what happened today, never in a million years. Already today! Like, almost all of this happened before ten. So I will tell you. This morning at seven the alarm went off and, well, it was seven and I didn't feel like getting up yet. Then at seven thirty the pest control men knocked on the door. I forgot they were coming about the bats. So I put on a bra and let them in and announced I had forgotten. Luckily the house looks great. Except now they've tracked insulation through the house and down my stairs from the attic to the outside. They gave me their card and I showed them how to move the refrigerator to get to the attic door and stairs. Do you know what their "treatment for bats" was? Glue traps. They stapled glue traps all over the attic. I could hear them stapling all over the attic while I was in the shower. But they did say that bats had been there and also one was flying around up there while they worked. I wonder, if my landlord would put bat roosting houses up on the sides of the building, would they go in there instead of climbing into the attic? I don't mind bats in and of themselves, but I do think the guano is probably pretty heavy eventually, to have sitting on the top of the ceiling. If they wanted to live on the outsides of the building, I'd be fine with that, they eat bugs. As they left, they gave me more business cards and an extra glue trap to smoosh on a bat if one ever gets into the household some night. Well. Okay then. Yuck. They said that way I'd know where it was all night instead of under a blanket or something. Well, honestly, if there was a bat in my house, I'd catch it with a towel and set it free outside. Instead of having some bat squeaking, stuck to my wall with a glue trap. Can you imagine?

AAAHHHH I was so young then. I was, um, 33. Why did I care if the house looked great for the bat killers? Here's the thing. Since 2005 he has done nothing to remedy the situation other than pretend like he's going to do something soon. Except that time he went up in the attic in some sort of white space suit, and a mask, with a sprayer full of mystery solution and a can of spray foam insulation.

He's an idiot. So meanwhile, in June of this year I was having trouble with the circuit breakers and fuses when I used the AC. It got so bad I was making several trips a day and complaining bitterly about it, to the creepy spider basement, battling thru the barricades put up by the ever-strange basement neighbors.

I've noticed a correlation between strangeness and people who will live in a basement. True, sometimes it is economic necessity. But these people have a nice car! They're a couple with one daughter and seriously they have three of the large size garbage totes which they fill up regularly to overflowing. Large amounts of garbage with a lack of recycling indicates conspicuous consumption, which equates to strangeness. Even the hillbilly neighbors across the street don't make that much garbage.

Where was I?

On July 8 I requested something be done about the problem with the AC and the bats.

On July 24 I emailed and reminded him about the problems. I’m now very worried health-wise about the large amounts of guano building up near my air conditioner intake duct work, and how guano affects respiratory health, plus it often smells bad, especially in the pantry under the attic stairs. I am also worried about a bat-bug infestation in the house, as they are becoming more common in this area. Could the bat crap be why my sinuses bleed all the time?

That evening he called and said in a snappish angry way he'll have me know he didn't appreciate that I doubted him about whether he had taken care of the problem. This started the slide downhill into anxiety mode for me over the past several days. I got instantly shaky and told him I didn't know what he was talking about! He went on to say he replaced some such thing (?) in the circuit breaker box. I replied that since he hadn't gotten back with me, there was no way for me to know that. We got off the phone and I seriously could feel my blood pressure about to pop out of the sides of my cheeks. But I didn't cry! I did however notice he completely ignored my plea to have something done about the guano and bat bugs. He then sent an email reiterating his disappointment that I doubted him (huh?) that he had replaced the button thingy in the circuit breaker box relating to the AC, and stating he'd have someone come look at the outdoor AC unit. Also, he spoke with some insulation company about sealing out the bats.

On July 26 The AC guy said it was an electrical problem. Great. Electrical problem, that's so reassuring. I got an email from the landlord saying it is electrical, the button thingy had been replaced, and I should let him know how it works out. Also he's called My reply on

July 26: "Well tonight the AC stayed on and it was the top "#1" button fuse thingy that blew & the kitchen plugs didn't work. So if the people living in the basement are wondering about the shrieking, in their laundry room, that was me while the pterodactyl circled my head. I wish I was kidding. I let it out for them. That's the first time I've encountered a bat in the basement, which is saying something considering I'm on first name basis with the spiders in that stairwell. Maybe the kitchen plug one should have a heavy duty one like the AC?"

 July 27: I got an email forward telling an electrical company he was accepting their bid for replacing the entire circuit breakers for all three apartments & "Please maximize the breaker size to meet the wiring size and city code." (!) ((I'm wondering, they weren't already?))

July 31: Around 6:30 PM I emailed and thanked him for having the breaker boxes fixed or whatever and I suggested he call a company which is actually trained in bat extraction and guano cleanup. They are a roofing company too so they can truly bat proof versus just weather proofing/sealing some holes, but they are not set up for the spraying of the bat bugs after cleanup. They do all the big churches in town and are certified in surrounding areas for the extraction as well as the hazardous material cleanup of the bat guano.

Jul 31, 2012 at 7:23 PM he sent an email requesting I meet with him the next day in the evening to sign a new lease, raising the rent and requiring I take responsibility for cleaning the furnace (which is in the attic with the bat poop, which nobody in their right mind will go up there) This freaked me out too.

It felt retaliatory. Why would he choose the same day I asked for him to do something to clean up his property to raise my rent and make demands that I'm responsible to maintain his property which in the 8 years I've lived here has never once been serviced? It took me a few days to think of how to respond to this. I talked to a lot of people and they all figured I was hoping to move anyway, I may as well give him my notice and make it official.

PLUS, get this people! I had cataracts removed years ago, right? Well I also went to the same surgeon complaining of strange glowy grey spots in my vision, similar to when you sort of look into the sun, just all the time, not only when I looked into the sun? So the surgeon decided it was perhaps ocular migraines, for lack of a better diagnosis.  I was just searching to see whether histoplasmosis happens to cause bleeding sinuses, which I dunno yet I didn't get that far, but it does happen to cause strange glowy blind spots. My left eye which should have 20/20 vision has progressively gotten weirder and weirder as the years have gone by! What if this is why my eyes are so strange????