Arggh...

Arggh...

I was going through my bed-time preparations last night when a brown visitor flapped into the bath room.

"Hey - It's occupied!"

Actually that's not what I said.

So the dryer vent is not the source.

My pastor (I went over to Burkina Faso to get some chicken shit to enrich my compost pile) suggested I look again at the chimney. I looked all over and under the fireplace chimney and the hot water heater vent and the furnace exhaust.

My house has a new high efficiency furnace the vents out the side wall - but it has a grate over it, as does the hot water heater. And the fireplace has tight edges, and no sign of bat crap.

So I did a slow walk again around the perimeter of the basement with a flashlight.

On the south wall there is an old chimney that used to serve the original furnace. It runs from the basement to the attic. It used to go through the roof, but when they replaced the roof - evidently after they put the new furnace in - they just knocked the top off so it vents into the attic.

This old chimney has a couple of gaps in the basement where a bat could get out - and from there there are a couple of ways it could get into the rest of the house.

So my current theory has the bats somehow getting into the attic, down the old chimney and then into my ire. So I'm waiting for the sun to get off the roof so the heat isn't so intense and I can crawl up into the attic to put a screen over the top of the old chimney. Of course the question is what time to I have to up to make sure the chimney is empty?