Go Siame Bats....

As a few of you know, I have had a bat infestation the entire time I have been in Lehututu. Not only are bats bad for your health (lung disease, rabies, ebola to name a few) they are very loud! They lived in my bedroom in the rafters by my tin roof. Every once in a while, I would climb dangerously on to a chair that I put on my bed and doom them--in the vain attempts to kill them. While dooming I would usually scream profanities at them--not that it help, but I sure felt better. Every once in a while, a poor bat would venture down and I would pounce! Half the time I never caught the bat and ended up running around my house with a broom and a can of doom...every once in a while I was lucky! And that poor bat, well, I beat the crap out of it and then pretend I am the Incredible Hulk... Which is shocking, since I am not a violent person at all. Needless to say, my neighbors must think I am very strange with occasional outburst of profanity and Incredible Hulk like grrrring/waving of the arms.  

On Saturday morning a man shows up at my house with a ladder and a bucket of plaster to fill the holes between my tin roof and walls (how the bats enter). Which A-I am very please about but B-the bats are still there and I am damned to let a man seal the bats inside my house. After thinking for a bit, the man decides that my roof needs to come off and he will manually remove said bats. The man tells me that he will be back. About a half hour later he shows up with two men in tow, some beers and a box of chibuka (traditional beer). He proceeds to climb up a very rickety ladder onto my roof and removes a part of the tin. I was asked to climb up and bear witness to the bats nesting peacefully away in my rafters....

The two other men are on bat killing duty inside by bedroom. Which was quite an eventful experience--every once in a while, a bat would escape and the men would run around my tiny room chasing it with sticks....The idea of this is funny, but in reality, it was more funny--partly because these men were already intoxicated and pretending that they too were the Incredible Hulk. 

And I am bat free. (We hope) And my roof is back on! 

I tend to think that bats are smarter than we give them credit for--that night I could hear other bats flying straight into my new patched holes trying to enter the bat cave! Alas, I have foiled their plans of a blissful slumber....muah hahahah (take that!)

9 bats later (yes, there are only 7 in the picture but two are outside)