BAT(s)?

Well this post was going to be brief and be called Week 1 Day 1 as yes - you guessed it....

I'm starting the 100 Day Push up challenge again!! :o) Having had partial success last week (which was the original W1) I realised i had got to Week 2 without having complete my three sessions.... so not needing much more of an excuse to miss workout 3 I decided to start again... at least I can report that W1D1 mark 2 was easier!!

Before I go on let me tell you of my "blond" moment of the day.... yes travelling 100miles (each way) to a meeting can be a drag but particularly when you miss your exit (how!?) and end up on the M42 (notorious nasty piece of work motorway near Birmingham) at 0830 instead of being in the office...

To make matters work, despite my error TomTom assured me I was only 15mins from the office... HA! little did he know they were doing roadworks on the A45 and my 15mins ended up being an extra 1hr30 of jam... Moral of this story... pay attention at all times when you are driving!! DOH!

Still.. yes.. yes the subject of the blog....

OK so I got home (without missing my motorway exit - phew), and went straight to the gym for a spin class... and then decided in my enthusiasm that that wasn't enough and I'd try the circuit class too!!

[Yes great one Karen, let's do 45min spin having been up since before the crack of dawn and the go do a 1 hour circuit class...... humm]

... so I staggered out of the circuits and made my way home. Awaiting my return was one of my very nice and friendly neighbours to tell me my roof overflow had been dripping all day

(NOTE: I had a water meter fitted not even a week ago - what perfect timing for Thames Water to get extra spondulies from me)..

..anyhow... yes.. Paul came and told me about the dripping he kindly said he'd come in and help me sort. A quick look outside and a flush of the loo confirmed indeed the tank in the roof was overfilling! Damn!

So we headed to the loft, ladder and lantern in hand.... and that's when I found ..."it"....

yes I opened up the hatch to find "it" everywhere.....
what is "it" I hear you cry....
"doodo's" is what....
it was over the hatch a bit like dust but a bit more then that ... and then when I popped my head up to see it was just everywhere on one side of the opening. I could do nothing but yell

"Errrr Mouse CRAP!" at Paul (who did look a bit startled)....

anyway to the task in hand.. the tank...ignoring the stuff I moved over to the tank. So I looked at the inlet valve, it was covered in loads of chalk etc which explained why the valve wasn't closing off properly. A quick flush through of some water (suggested by Paul) has temporarily done the trick....

so on to the second matter...

The amount of crap covering some of the loft space...

By this time Paul had popped his head up to take a look (or more like say "EUGH!")..... more light reveiled that the crap was over smallish area only, covering my kit bag completely and some of my Christmas decorations... It was a this point Paul figured it out...

BATS!.... Makes sense... For a start there'd have to be a family of 1000 mice for that much mouse crap!... and Bats are known to roost in lofts in the area if they can. I have yet to do the test though (which does involve touching and squishing the stuff in your fingers... eugh... may skip that!)

I've done some research and they are protected so not much I can do but they should move out around September time so it could be they've already flown the nest (ok roost) as it were.

Given the examples of bat crap (sorry droppings - much better word) I've found, it would appear I'm likely to have/ had the Pipistrelle or possibly the Long Eared variety as these particularly like woodland and guess what is behind my house!?!?

May know some more tomorrow as Paul is venturing back in to the loft space to fix the tank issue!!

Maybe we'll see one of them!


The question is how can something so small create such a heap of dumppings!! Maybe there's more then one.... OMG!