Bat Remedies and Surprise Visits

There are bats that fly around my house at night. They poop and pee on my floor, and more ironically, on the closed lid of my toilet. Sigh. It’s nice to see that their hearts are in the right place at least.

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Every once in a while, right after sunset, I’ll be eating dinner or something and turn to stand up, and a bat will dart around a corner from nowhere, wind under my arm, and shoot away. I never feel or hear anything, since they’re almost completely silent and they never touch me, so I’m left trusting only my sense of sight. I would want to question their existence entirely if they didn’t empty their little bat bowels on nearly every flat surface in my house.

It’s important to understand that all houses in Nicaragua are built such that there is anywhere from a 3 to 10-centimeter gap between the tops of the walls and the roof, and my house is no exception. The roof is made of sheets of corrugated zinc, the roofing material of choice, and there are 3 or 4 mango trees whose branches touch and extend over the top of the house, making quite a racket when the wind blows.

I think the bats enter the house by way of these branches, although I suppose it could just be their advanced powers of flight and echolocation. I like to think there’s something I can do about it though, and thus I have settled upon the explanation of the trees. I have plans to chop down some branches to see if the bats go away.

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Now I know you’re probably thinking, “Why don’t you ask what everyone else does about bats, surely they have the same problems?”

Well, fictional concerned reader, I have asked multiple Santa Lucians about the bats (they’re called murciélagos in Spanish), and indeed it is a common occurrence to be paid a visit at night. But it seems that the common remedy for ridding a house of the winged rodents is to “put something red in there.”

Now as much as I want to believe that this could work, I’m forced to be a little skeptical since a significant portion of the walls in my house are actually painted red and the bats are very obviously undeterred, but maybe I’m not understanding the intricacies of the treatment.

Another common remedy I’ve heard from multiple sources is to hang a bunch of garlic in the house. I have a sneaking suspicion that this too, is not going to work. As far as I know, these bats are not vampires.

(As a corollary to vampires, I was thinking the other day that the high number of machetes per capita in Nicaragua is going to make for an interesting situation once we’re faced with the zombie apocalypse.)

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So I really don’t know what to do about the bats, but with my burgeoning language skills I’m learning that having conversations with neighbors and strangers alike is pretty fun and often times quite entertaining.

The other day I was visited by a neighbor, a woman who lives about a block away, who arrived on my doorstep asking for a cooking pot she had left with the last volunteer in Santa Lucia whose house I am living in, and which I still had in my kitchen. I invited her in and got the pot.

Then she handed me a strange sticky bottle. It smelled kind of like cheap fruity chapstick—like LipSmackers or something. The woman told me that she didn’t know what the bottle was, but that the previous volunteer, a female, had given it to her before she’d left. I took the bottle, gave it a tentative sniff, and read the label (in English, which the woman couldn’t read). The label boasted such qualities as “Never Sticky!” and “Tastes Great!” Turns out that the other volunteer had given this woman a bottle of raspberry-flavored lube as a parting gift, and had not explained what it was.

I couldn’t restrain myself and let out a short laugh at the absurdity of it all as the woman went on to explain that she thought it was some kind of skin-care treatment. I struggled to keep my composure and eventually worked up the self-control to tell her what lube is for.

“I’m pretty sure this is for having sex,” I said, handing the bottle back to her.

She didn’t seem all that affected by the news. She nodded her understanding and went on to request that I sell her my gas stove when I leave in two years.

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It didn’t really hit me until a few hours later how hilarious that encounter was, and I’m realizing now that some of the more mundane everyday experiences I’m having in Nicaragua ought to be shared. That is why I’m going to try and keep up with writing down these experiences as much as possible. And please notice the clever opposing directions diction used in the previous sentence, just one more reason you should continue to read this blog.