Polar Mosquitoes and Killer Flying Squirrels

Reader Contribution by Cam Mather
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When you live in a house that was built in 1888, it’s best to lower your expectations in terms of anything being perfect. A cat toy ball left anywhere in our living room will roll quickly down to the middle of the floor in front of the fireplace. When I sit on the couch in the living room I can see through to the back door and I’m in awe that it can open at all when I see the angle it’s on relative to the frame. Not surprisingly our house is not exactly airtight and so small creatures can get it. Every fall there is a mass migration of mice into the house. Sometimes the cats are able to hunt them down, but it’s mostly traps and me. Even though Michelle is an animal lover she allows me to take out the mice. As long as I use traps that kill them instantly, they are open territory when they come into the house and attempt to get into our food.

Right now, in January, we have a few mosquitoes in the house. It’s very weird. I always thought mosquito larvae needed water to hatch in. We have no standing water in the house so I don’t know where they come from. I used to think maybe they were breeding in the septic tank then flying back up the drains into the bathroom, where they are most prevalent, but they’d have to get through the trap in the drain that is filled with water. So what, are my polar mosquitoes also amphibious? I’ve given up worrying about it. They seem sort of dozy and don’t bite in the winter, so I ignore them.

For years we had bats living in our roof. We’d hear them scurrying around between the metal roof shingles and the wooden roof. They moved out when we had the siding on our house redone. Luckily the new siding plugged up the holes in the soffit, which is where they used to get through. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to lie in bed listening to bats scratching the drywall just above my head, I’d be a rich man.

Our guesthouse built by the previous owners of this house is “board and batten.” This is a building style that should be called “Board and (let the) Bats In” because small animals are drawn to it. The board and batten technique uses wide boards spaced about an inch apart with a smaller board screwed over the spaces. It looks very rustic but it’s not very practical. Wood isn’t perfect and the wood used in our guesthouse is rough-cut pine with lots of knotholes and other imperfections. Also, as the wood has aged it has shrunk in spots, creating large gaps. There are an infinite number of small spaces for creatures to squish themselves through. One wildlife expert told us that if you can fit a butter knife into a slot, then a bat could get in to it too.

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