girlshawnie

About 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave for Seattle on Wednesday, I was heading back in from the back yard and made a horrible discovery. There was a bat stuck to the flypaper we had hanging next to the door. Somehow flies always end up hanging around the back door as well as the one upstairs leading to the deck, and a strip of flypaper hanging next to each always seemed like a smart solution. But it's one I should have stopped using even sooner afer finding a few feathers stuck in the same one that then had a bat writhing around on it. I wasn't confident it could be unstuck without major injuries even if we could find a place that would try it in a timely manner, so I did what felt like the next best thing and took it out of its misery rather than let it starve in place.

I felt horrible about it and still do. But now that I know there are bats around here I decided to welcome them with a safe place for them to roost. A very cool goth-looking bat box is on its way and will go up somewhere on our property soon. I hope the box ends up being a popular spot for them, and if that happens, I'm guessing they'll provide even better insect control than fly paper ever could. In the meantime, I've thrown away the box of fly papers we had and the product is banned from my home forever.