My Life with Bats
- Rosetta Mandisa
- Jul 2, 2020
- 3 min read
Photo by Gotta Be Worth It on Pexels.com
Just last week, we celebrated three years in our home. Achieving this accomplishment was something we’d dreamed about, talked about, prayed about and hoped for, for years. It took us a year to find the perfect home. From the first moment we walked in we just knew this was our dream home. This is where we would live out the rest of our lives!
We’ve had some minor issues along the way. We had a leak in the wall in our bathroom, a leak in the garage from the AC unit. We had a tree fall in our neighbor’s yard when there wasn’t even a storm. A good portion of our fence blew down during a light storm. The garage door was broken twice. We’ve had two large trees, one in the front yard and one in the back yard, removed. The removal of the one in the backyard was really cool to see because they had to bring it up over the house to get it out. By far, all of those experiences have minor compared to the recent discovery of our bats.
Earlier this Spring, I noticed a noise coming from a pillar on my front porch. I thought it was a squirrel or maybe a few geckos playing in there. One day in late May my beautiful friend, Rosie stopped by. As we stood on my front porch talking, my dear friend said, “you have bats in there!” I laughed and replied, “no way, is that what I’ve been hearing in there?” My friend urged me to call pest control, which I did the very next day. Michael from Florida Pest Control came out and confirmed what my dear friend, Rosie said… we had BATS! And apparently, there are more than twenty in my pillar.
As with all of the other home repairs we’d taken care of in the past, I figured we’d schedule an appointment and Michael would have those things out in no time at all. Let me just stop here and say that I love living in Florida! I love the weather (most days), I LOVE the beaches, I love finding all of the hidden small towns and I love the amusement parks! What I don’t love is all of the wildlife and nature protections the state of Florida has on their books. Seriously, you need a permit for EVERYTHING! What I learned from Michael that day was that our bats are protected until August 15th. So they have the right to live on our porch until that day. This year August 15th lands on a Saturday. I scheduled my appointment with Michael for August 17th!
So until then, we were urged to:
Use our side door by the garage to enter and exit our house. Apparently, it is not safe to breathe the toxic smell from bats as it could cause lifelong respiratory issues.
Wash our cars regularly as they will be covered in bat “stuff” each day.
Be extremely careful coming and going at dusk.
Are we inconvenienced? Yes! Is it annoying? Yes! Does our front porch smell like something has died three times over? Yes! Are we blessed, absolutely! While we are not fond of the fact that we have to route our guests to the side of our house and through the garage, however, we are grateful that at this very difficult time in our country, we are able to pay our mortgage, put food on the table and keep the lights on. We grateful for our health and the health of our families and friends. We will live with our bats for about twenty-eight more days and then, with Michael’s help we will wish them well on their journey out of our pillar!
Living life on full so we can die on empty…:)
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