Life at the Lake - Bad Natured

It's beautiful at the lake in mid summer.  Everything is green and growing.  Critters everywhere.  But some of the latter have it in for us.  I guess I can see their perspective, it was their home before we came along.  So we generally have a live and let live attitude....but there are exceptions.

1. Mice.  Industrious little chaps, a few are always finding their way in.  They are oddly inclined to collect great hoards of acorns collected from far and wide, then accumulated on a specific bookshelf.  Solution:  we trap 'em.  As part of our ongoing educational program for the grands I set up one demised rodent outside with the automatic "trail cam" pointing right at him.  I figured we'd see some small predator ambling along for a midnight snack.  But the mouse vanished without a trace or a photo.  I wonder if the little blighter was just faking.

2. Bats.  My first task on arrival to the cabin is always to sweep off the front steps.  A gang of bats has been using it as a social club for years.  They swoop around eating bugs, which we appreciate, then alight to squeak the latest news of the night and to defecate all over the place.  I've been tolerant so far, but recently they have started actually living in the rafters of the overhang.  

Good news really, bat numbers have been crashing in recent years due to White Nose Syndrome.  Maybe this suggests a comeback.  But really now, does it have to be so messy?

Solution:  Put up a couple of bat houses.

My grandson named "Batville", I came up with Gotham City.  We have a third unit I'll dub Batavia when we see how the first two work out.  Here's the little niche that is home to the messy squeakers, I'll seal the area after a respectful interval.  (Addendum:  my contacts in the bat world tell me this is a roosting colony of little brown bats.  Great news as they have been hit so hard by disease in recent years.  Probably some baby batties up there so they get to stay until fall.)

3. Carpenter ants.  Oh, we've had dealings with this bunch before.  We'd sit on our enclosed porch watching the lake and be amused by the industry of black ants that popped their heads out of various nooks and crannies  Here our live and let live attitude came back to bite us, the ants had been stealthily gnawing away at the wood in several sites.  A considerable amount of damage was done and had to be repaired/rebuilt.  At that point we hired a service that comes and sprinkles granules of Death to Ants about at regular intervals.   Their local rep is a cheerful man named Ray.

Our grandson was fascinated by Ray "The Ant Guy".  It was agreed that Ray would treat the outside and that any ants found inside the house would be given The Stomp by the youngster.  It seemed to be working out until we went up for the Fourth and found this:

Yes the ants are back.  A particularly industrious batch of invaders is digging away, dropping granules of sawdust out of that little hole up above every few seconds.    Well we called Ray the Ant Guy.  Hopefully he comes with fire in his eyes and a vengeance in his heart for this gang of wreckers who defied his treatment just a couple of weeks earlier.  And to make sure he found the spot right away...

Spray 'em Ray.  I had considered the more classic "Nuke 'em from Orbit" but I would not want Ray to take me literally.

I wish ill to very few life forms but am eagerly awaiting The Big Stomp for these guys.