The bats are back

Yesterday evening I heard the s.o.'s voice calling out from the foyer. "BAT IN THE HOUSE!"

We have a routine for this. We put the dogs in the bedroom and shut the door. We prop the front door open. For a while we wait for the bat to find the door on its own, but it never does. There is a lot of ducking and screaming. Eventually I get a broom and I try to intercept the bat in midair and gently but firmly whack it out the door. My little joke is that that's why they're called "bats." Although if you follow my logic, I suppose they should really be called "balls."

Anyhow. BAT IN THE HOUSE means that they are getting in somewhere, and that somewhere is probably in the attic. And sure enough, as I attempted to fall asleep last night, I heard eeking and scratching in the wall. Why do they like the wall right behind where my head rests when I sleep?!

Time to put the Bat Exclusion Plan into action again. We like them and we want them to stay, but we would prefer they nest in a bat house rather than in our wall. Guano stinks.

In other news, I made a cassoulet on Monday for Slow Cooking Day. But the process is somehow more cumbersome to explain than to do, and I haven't managed to blog about it yet. I will, I promise.