In February I was back in Iowa to visit my folks in rural Johnson County, and I told my mom that I…read moreneeded to get some stuff that I had stored away in the attic. Don't go in there, she said, because there was a lot of animal droppings that needed to be cleaned up. Say wut? Some creature has been using your attic as a latrine and you haven't done anything about it? I donned some protective gear (a.k.a. old clothes and a dust mask) and went to investigate. Yup, there's a lot of turds in there. I suspected bats because we've had them in there before, and I noticed that the screen covering the attic vent had a hole in it. What to do now? We needed an exterminator, but I didn't know how to find one. I posted an inquiry to my local friends on Facebook but got no responses. So, I did something completely OG: I picked up the Yellow Pages and let my fingers do the walking. I had to call a couple places before landing on Catch 'em Critters - the other ones didn't do bats. Lucky for us, they had a job nearby that day, and somebody would be able to come by. The fella shows up and I take him into the attic, and he's says yep, you got bats. He set about to inspect the entire house and identified multiple potential points of entry, and then gave me a quote to plug them all up, plus a one-way bat valve to allow any hibernating bats to humanely exit our attic once the spring thaw came. I agreed to the service and he set about his business, finishing it pretty quickly that day. A few months later he came back to remove the bat valve. My folks then engaged their services to humanely remove a few moles that were wreaking havoc in their yard. Overall, we got great and friendly service and our problems were solved promptly. Highly recommended for all your unwanted critter needs.

Batman, the Squeakquel…read more UPDATE: Second bat here in the house in four days, none in previous 33 years. My blood pressure spiked off the ceiling. Grandson left garage door open yesterday, not realizing this is "bat season"--we have GOT to be more careful. Left a (fairly frantic) message at 7:30 AM and Joel showed up here ten minutes after telephoning me back. Thank goodness he did because I thought I had the bat totally contained in the kitchen sink with three towels over it and numerous kitchen implements holding them all firmly down, but nooooo... When I went into the kitchen to put the phone back, it had crawled out from under everything and was just sitting there smugly on top of the towels looking right at me. ARGH! Put yet ANOTHER towel over it and this time taped the edges sealed shut. Joel, Superhero of the Suburbs, came to the rescue again and quickly had it in a containment jar and out the door. (See photo below). I can't thank Catch 'em Critters and Joel enough for the swift response and for immediately removing the problem bat. My heart's still thumping, but at least I can take a deep breath and relax now. Please, neighborhood bats, no more excitement for another 33 years!