Squirrels

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Along with bats, another critter made its home in the house. Tearing out the bottom of the base boards in the office room quite a bit of stuff had fallen down from the inside ceiling up in the attic. Most of the stuff was from squirels making nests over the years.

Found this body of a squirell in the wall. Talk about a mummy!

In the back part of the house is where the kitchen was and will be when the home is restored. In this room is an exhaust chimney to allow heat to rise out of the room. Upon seeing a squirel go down this chimney, the decision was made to see if the chimney was plugged by the squirrels. So a ladder was placed under the chimney exhaust and previously this was covered by a square piece of tin. Upon removing the tin cover you guessed it.......a ton of stuff came poring down....

As the hole was prodded more and more debris came raining down.

Upon clearing out the hole all of the sudden a big crash of debris came raining down...more on that below...as you can see the chimney is now open...



So much to our surprise a squirriel's nest is what came crashing down and Max the Doberman was all at attention. Crawling on the ground was a baby squirrel who's eyes were still not open even this late in the year October 2009.

It was a boy squirrel .........

So what do you do with a baby squrriel? We put him in a box and kept him warm.

This story has a happy ending. The local wild life specialist took the squrriel and we wished him God Speed!

BATS!

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Brown Bats can be a real pest when you have a home. Especially when there are hundreds. In the attic they had made a home due to years of no one living in the home. Upon first going to the attic there was a lot of noise and few showed up in the light.

Taking a camera view before cutting through one of the window dormers imagine the shock of seeing this!

Like the movie Ben which was a movie about a boy with Rats, these critters were crawling all over the attic.

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So what does it look like when so many bats have made a home in a house? Click the video below.

What is worse than having bats in your house? The bat poop! This stuff is deadly and besides the threat of rabies the bateria in thier droppings can kill you. The stuff was several inches thick in four of the window dormer areas.

Here is a shot of one of the window dormer areas.

So how do you clean up bat poop? You get head to toe with a mask to protect yourself. This was one of the hardest jobs in working to restore the home. Hot and sweaty and bats sticking thier heads out to check out what you are doing.

After the job is done the results are shown below.

So how many pounds of bat poop came out of the Hardy Smith House? Would you believe over 200 pounds? That's right and there are over 200 pounds of the finest fertilizer you can have bagged and ready to be put in the yard when new grass is to be planted. See below for the final step of dealing with our little friends.

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Now what could possibly be the rest of the story? How did the bats leave the House? Well, the only thing that will get rid of bats is to plug the holes. Bats can squezz through the smallest of spaces.

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You can try moth balls....they love the smell.....Ammonia...they just wait for the disappation of the fumes......even spray that gets rid of rodents.....are you kidding..... don't waste your money plug the holes.

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Spray foam is what finally did it....blocked the holes....bye bye bats :)

A perfectly preserved bat was found in the bat poop. Every detail down to little bones in the feet can be seen.

Now what about all the bat poop? Best fertilizer in the world going for $3 lb on ebay. Approx. 225 pounds of Hardy Smith Bat poop went into the yard!