A Bat Upside The Head
Last night, the battle of Pool Harbor turned strange. The family went over to have dinner with our future daughter-in-law's family. It's been miserably hot here, so they had cooked everything outside so as to not further stress the AC unit. We had a lovely evening but wanted to get home before it turned dark since it was the night we needed to add chemicals to the pool.
My wife wanted me to show her what needed to be done, so when we got home we gathered up the requisite magic potions and headed to the pool. First the weekly treatment went in. My wife asked what it was, to which I had to honestly answer that I had no idea. The instructions say two capfuls per week, but shed no other light on the subject. It could be alchemy as far as I know. But I dutifully dump two capfuls in every week.
Then we dumped in the flocculant. That I at least understood. It's something to make the really fine particles clump together so the filter could grab them. A sort of a grunge glue, if you will. Meanwhile, we are also mixing up the weekly chlorine shock treatment. This is a couple of bags of nearly insoluble powder that gets mixed with water, then dumped into the pool. It takes a number of times filling the bucket to dissolve it all. Well, not really 'all' per se. Just until you get fed up with mixing it and toss the remains into the pool.
All this fun - in high heat and humidity - is going on as it is growing dark outside. Somewhere along about the third addition of water to try to dissolve the shock, my wife remarked that the bats were out. This year we've had a couple of bats that have begun hanging around the place. We don't know where they spend their off-hours, although I suspect the old tree that has a hollow spot in it. But at dusk, they are out speeding and swooping in their silent way.
So I am standing there while my wife pours the latest bucket of chemical in and all of a sudden, "Whap" something hits me right in the side of the head. It didn't hurt, just startled me. I realized that one of the bats had just literally hit me in the side of the head. I made a rather emphatic announcement of that fact, too. My wife helpfully informed me that she'd never even heard of a bat hitting someone like that. Truthfully, neither had I, but it sure had. And I was watching every which way at once for the rest of the time we were out there.
So, next time I go out at dusk, I plan on being prepared. I'm carrying a tennis racket. We'll see how the bat likes a little love tap from that!
The kicker to it all is that this morning, the pool was a cloudy brown mess again (although not real bad compared to where I started). It seems we have a bit of iron in our well water. So I was out vacuuming before it got hot and have been playing chemist all day. And we get to shock the pool again tonight since most of the chlorine from last night got bound up with the iron. That's where the racket comes in!
Personal Thoughts | Gaius Sunday, 30 July , 2006
By Norman Rogers, Sunday, 30 July , 2006 @ 5:21 pm
I hate to add to your worries — but read this:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/rabies/bats_&_rabies/bats&.htm
Some years ago in Greenwich we had an incident where an eighth grade girl died from rabies — determined at post mortem to be a strain only found in bats — with no apparant bite marks or memory of contact.
By Gaius, Sunday, 30 July , 2006 @ 5:46 pm
Egads. Well, it didn’t bite me or even leave a scratch. Just a quick thump and off on it’s way. I think I’m ok. Sure hope so - that’s a really ugly thing to get.
By Blackhawk, Sunday, 30 July , 2006 @ 7:24 pm
Hm…maybe a ‘warning’ after the pigeon debacle…
Maybe that isn’t ‘iron’ in the pool…maybe it’s a message. You know, like ‘this reddish-brown poo symbolizes the blood spilled by the two-legged non-hairy simian onslaught against our peace-loving, statue-personalizing pigeon brothers’, or something like that.
Haven’t seen any penguins around taking photos, marking off distances, or anything like that, have you?
Definitely have the tennis racket handy next time. I can personnaly attest to their effectiveness against bats.
By Gaius, Sunday, 30 July , 2006 @ 8:38 pm
No, and no stealth monkeys, either. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there - just that I haven’t caught them yet.
By old_dawg, Sunday, 30 July , 2006 @ 8:51 pm
I thought this only happened where I live. About 4 weeks ago, I went outside one morning to check on my livestock and discovered a bat flopping around in my swimming pool. I would say it was doing the “bat stroke,” but I’d probably be banned from your web site. Apparently, it had been attracted to the bugs which are attracted to the water and miscalculated the trajectory of the attack run.
In any case, I “rescued” it and threw it somewhere that my dogs couldn’t get to it, for the rabies problem noted in an earlier comment.
By Gaius, Sunday, 30 July , 2006 @ 8:59 pm
Oh, come on. I never ban people for bad puns!
I frankly don’t think I’d have rescued it exactly. Got it out, yes. Let it live, not so sure. Because of the risks of rabies.
By old_dawg, Monday, 31 July , 2006 @ 8:24 pm
Please note that “rescued” was in quotes. All I did was scoop it out of the pool with my leaf scoop and chucked it over the fence. It was on its own at that point. No way I was going to handle that critter with my hands. Rabies is absolutely rampant where I live.
Like you, I have an above-ground pool. Some of my friends with in-ground pools have found armadilloes, possums, and snakes in their pools.