Even more bats. No, I'm not joking.

Last night there were two bats in my room. This time, being about 3am, I woke up when I heard the fluttering sounds. I thought I had been dreaming about bats until I saw a dark shape fly across my ceiling. I turned on my light, and there was indeed a bat in my room. Again. So, I opened the screens in my windows, grabbed my pillow and blanket and made for the doorway. I paused in the doorway for a minute hoping that it would just fly out the window, but no luck. Just as I was trying to time my exit so that the bat wouldn't follow me out, a second bat appeared. It must have flown in through the window, but it seemed to come out of nowhere. Now I was really freaked out. For one, the chances of a bat following me downstairs had doubled. Secondly, if there were two bats, there were probably more. So, using my pillow to protect my head, I dashed back to my nightstand to grab my phone and then quickly ran out the door. I'm pretty sure I smacked one of the bats with the pillow on my way out, but oddly feel no remorse whatsoever. I also stuffed a towel under the doorway.

When I got out into the hallway the first thing I noticed was that there were no bats with me. Good. The second thing I noticed was that there was a light coming from under Robert's door. I knocked, loudly. He answered, I told him there were bats in my room, and we looked up animal control on his laptop. When I called them they said that bats are treated just like mice and rats, meaning that I had to call a pest control company and the county wasn't going to do anything about it. After some deliberation, I checked the phone book for a 24hr pest control. I found one, and the guy said he could be there in an hour and a half. Ugh.

At this point, Robert wanted to get to bed, but was kind enough to loan me his laptop so I could sit downstairs, with all the lights on, trying not to panic, and watch episodes of Family Guy until the official bat remover showed up. He showed up exactly on time, for which I was grateful, and when we opened the door to my room the bats were gone. No surprise, since the screens had been open the entire time. He did do a thorough check of the entire room making sure that there was no way bats could get in and that there were no remaining bats lurking anywhere.

At this point it was already becoming daylight so we went outside to see if he could spot how the bats were getting in. Turns out there's no cap on our chimney and there are cracks and holes all along the eaves of the house. Delightful. So, with this new knowledge, we went into the attic, which is also Jon's bedroom. Up there he found bat droppings around the chimney, a window that had a 1 inch opening, and lots of holes and cracks that bats could squeeze through. Luckily the only thing he didn't find was more bats.

He offered to do some temporary sealing up of the attic in order to keep bats out until I can contact Jon regarding bat-proofing the house. I jumped at the offer, and he filled in all the little holes and cracks with a foam stuff. He also duct-taped around the doors to the attic and duct-taped a plastic bag over the heating vent in my room, just in case. So now, if a bat does manage to get in, it should at least be contained in the attic. If Jon comes home to find that bats have trashed his room, I really couldn't care less.

So, the grand total for about one hour of work, done from 5-6am, was $160. He estimates the cost of a full bat-proofing at about $3000. There's no way Jon is going to pay that. Especially since he already paid $500 to a different company to supposedly bat-proof the house back in January (He left the receipt on the bookcase downstairs). The guy that I had called in said that Jon got completely ripped off. But there's a one year guarantee on that receipt, so maybe they'll come back and actually fix things. I'm mostly concerned about what will happen if the bat problem continues when I sublet this room. So I'm planning to call Jon this afternoon and at least get reimbursed for the cost of the one pest control visit and see what else he can do about the whole problem.

So, I had about another night of about 2-3 hours of sleep, managed to drag myself back out of bed to get to lab at 8am, and then found a flat tire on my bike. This was not a good morning. I changed the tire, and showed up for lab about 30 minutes late and started crying as soon as someone asked me if I was okay. I managed to get under control for the duration of lab, until a few friends came over to hug me and I lost it again. One of those friends insisted on buying me coffee and a muffin, which helped a lot. And now I have to go take an online exam. I'll update more as the situation progresses.