"It's absolutely ridiculous," she said. "These bats seem to have more rights than I do." Ms Murray bought the flat in Johnston Gardens in January. But four months later, she became aware she had some unwanted guests. "I found the first pipistrelle in my kitchen and I thought at first it was a one-off," she said. "But after I found bat number four I realised there was a problem. I found them sleeping in the plug hole in the kitchen sink and flying about the living room. And I could hardly sleep at night because they are in the roof space right above my bed, and they were making a constant high-pitched noise.
"But I had to move out when I found one crawling over me after I'd had a shower. I had put the towel around me when I walked through to my bedroom. I felt something move under the towel and looked in the mirror to see a bat crawling out. I just screamed and decided right then I couldn't live here any more. I moved back to live with Mum and Dad in Inverurie - much to their delight." After being forced to flee her home, Ms Murray contacted the Bat Conservation Trust, which sent members to offer advice. "They went outside and counted the bats," she said. "They just kept flying out and out and out. They counted 500 bats and told me there would be another 500 babies in the roof space.
"It's a complete nightmare. I have had to go back to the flat to get mail or clothes and I just run in and run out. After having one crawling over me, I have developed a fear of bats. They are horrible. I hate them." She has applied for a licence from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) to enable her to arrange for the holes in the roof the bats use to be closed up once they have stopped using the roost, but that could take months. Ms Murray said: "I'm just annoyed that you can't do anything to stop them. It might be the end of September or the start of October before the bats leave. But I don't think I'll ever feel fully comfortable in this flat again."
10 comments:
Whilst 1000 bats may be a bit much, pipistrelles are tiny (~3" long?) Their jaws are so tiny they can't even open wide enough to bite a human. The best bet would probably be to plug up all the holes from the attic into her flat, install a movable partition and come the summer keep making the room smaller and smaller until they don't want to stay there anymore.
Ratz: I like that solution. So clever and reasonable!
On the one hand, I am inclined to side with the conservationists.
On the other, having lived in places infested by ants and cockroaches, I know that all the knowledge and reasonableness in the world (I consider ants kind of noble and very interesting; cockroaches, not so much, but I know they're not the health risk they're often perceived as) kind of goes out the window when there are THINGS living in your HOME and crawling around on your STUFF (I almost vomited one morning when I found two cockroaches mating on my toothbrush).
I hope someday, once she's put enough distance between herself and this infestation, this woman will consider herself lucky to have been able to shelter these bats for a season.
that chick looks like the bat
Cath: Urgh. Cockroach porn on my toothbrush wasn't something I'd ever considered, thanks for leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. I hope they didn't leave a bad taste in yours!
One thing to consider is that in the UK bats are protected species, it'd be like stamping on pandas because they're eating your zen ornamental garden.
Ratz: I almost lost my mind... and my breakfast. I didn't use that toothbrush again; I threw it out and bought another, along with a travel case to keep it in. But I couldn't help thinking that wasn't the first time they'd done the nasty there, just the first time they'd got caught. And, yeah, brushing my teeth was discomforting for a while.
On the bright side, I got a really disgusting story out of it, in which no one was actually harmed.
Cath: No one was actually harmed? What about my mind? That's the kind of story that can only be tempered by infecting another poor innocent bystander's mind with! (hrkkk.. goes to shave tongue)
I keep my toothbrush in a small milk bottle half filled with water (which gets changed everyday) AND I keep it in the kitchen because I saw a tv programme once about airborne fecal matter from flushing the toilet. Sorry if that makes you change your bathroom habits, but....maybe its a good thing if you do.
I close the lid before I flush.
WilliamRocket: There was a mythbusters episode about that. They found that fecal coliforms bacteria can grow in toothbrush bristles and that they grew on all of them, even the control ones (IIRC) which weren't kept in the bathroom.
Oops, that last comment was from Ratz (who forgot to fill in all the comment boxes)
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