Did you ever have bats in your house? The nearest to it was a relative who moved with his wife to a nice, secluded place in Wicklow. He did have hens, turkeys and a couple of pigs. Likewise two cows. This because they not only had family coming and going all the time, but having lived abroad for long, liked the idea of doing something for themselves and the visiting children. All this in the relaxed way of retired couples. One hired man only was required. The outbuildings were spacious and not all needed. On the upper floor of one fine stone building, a family member noted what looked like rags hanging along one side. He went closer and realised they were bats, sleeping by day. The owner wanted them to stay. He wished them well and told everyone they were not to be disturbed. But suddenly they were gone. Every one of them. There were big trees all around, so probably they went to lodge in some hollow in a trunk. But gone they were, to his regret.
He might have had a different attitude if the bats had been in the house itself. And that brought to mind an article in a very old number of The Countryman, where a man had his house invaded by pipisterle bats. He knew how they got in through a narrow hole in the roof at the foot of the chimney, and they gathered in a suitable roost area between tiles and roofing felt, crowding together in "a compact dormitory". This was warmth by proximity, but for the householder it was unbearable because of the unpleasant smell. So he noted their nightly exit. They climbed over the gutter, dropped vertically a few feet and then were airborne. He counted them carefully. Two hundred and six. To defeat them he had to take into account that they would land back, locating their home by aural radar, not by sight. He devised a system of a few long bamboos with green plastic netting, thus making the echo from the roof sound confusing. He took the apparatus down by day to count those going out at night. Of the previous 206, there were soon only 56. After a fortnight there were none. He had the hole fixed. Under new legislation he couldn't do it that way, and the same applies here, without permission and advice. Next week more details. Y