Jane Stacks Wood, Freddy Catches a Bat – This Week With Jane & Freddy

Well, it’s been quite the week over here on Bluff Road. My neighbor Steve Kroupa delivered some firewood, which makes me feel better about the rapidly-approaching winter.

By the way, Steve is great, ensures that you have the correct length and size firewood, keeps in touch (promptly returns phone calls – a rarity these days), and the wood is perfect. And he’s right here on the OMP. Give him a call if you need firewood or mulch, (231) 620-2500.

Steve’s dad, Adolph Kroupa, and my dad, Walter Johnson, were in the same class, starting with the Mapleton School and going through high school.

Here’s dad’s dipoloma dated May 19, 1936, certifying that he “completed the studies prescribed for the first eight grades of the Public Schools of Michigan…” After this, he made the big commute to Traverse City for 9th through 12th grades, then went off to college at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

So I’m now in the wood-stacking phase of fall. Below is a photo of the current state of my woodlot. I’m really hoping we have a long stretch of pleasant fall weather, because I still have a bunch of outdoor projects to do.

Amazingly, I still have some of Tim’s firewood that he cut before he passed four years ago, which is still in pretty good shape. I’ll use that up first, then move onto Steve’s new wood. It’ll be nice to have some fresh, well-seasoned hardwood with high BTUs to toss into the stove. I had Steve deliver four face cord, and will decide how much more I need after I get it all stacked.

Staining the House – Year Three

I also started my house-staining project. You might recall that my goal is to stain one wall per year. I’m currently on my third wall – the west side of the house. As with the previous two years, I wish I’d started sooner.

The first year was a steep learning curve that involved watching lots of YouTube videos and placing many calls to the good folks at Sashco, the log home company Tim and I used when we built the house 36 years ago. Their customer service is the best.

The second year, I had a better idea what I was doing and wasn’t quite as freaked out about ruining the house that Tim built. Staining a log home is a several-steps process that involves power-washing to remove any old stain, spraying with insecticide to deter the woodpeckers and carpenter bees, filling the cracks, applying a couple coats of stain, and fixing any chinking issues.

Read more about the process and my first steps here. It took me several tries to find the exact right stain (Sashco’s oil-based Transformation Stain in “Natural”).

This year’s wall has the most square footage out of all the walls, but surprisingly, shouldn’t be as labor-intensive as the first two walls. Just the little bit of power-washing I’ve done has revealed beautiful white pine underneath that weathered top layer. There’s a few cracks that need filling, but the chinking is in pretty good shape.

I also discovered that Perma-Chink, another log home company, has something called “chink paint,” which I’m overly excited about. The first year, I tried taping off all the chinking, which really didn’t work all that well. I still got stain on the white chinking. The second year, I didn’t even tape it off, knowing I could just paint over it. I’m not taping it this year either, but will do my best to keep the stain off it.

The Bat in the Cat

Now, onto the bat-wrangling! Props to my creative friend Kris Hains for the title of this section. Check out her Etsy store here. She is the sticker queen, but also sells keychains, her own books (including this one she and her grandpa wrote about the state hospital), purses, vintage things and other fun stuff. She also wrote this story about working at PFE.

My last bat incident occurred a couple of years ago, but I didn’t get around to telling you about it until last year. I was feeling pretty good that the ultrasonic bat deterrents that you plug into the wall seemed to be keeping the bats away.

Well, my friends, my no-bat stretch ended last week. For a few days, we’d been hearing something knocking around in the little room upstairs where the woodstove chimney goes through to the roof. A room, by the way, that I *thought I’d sealed off pretty well from the rest of the house. Here’s Freddy in my closet next to that little room, stalking the soon-to-reveal-itself bat.

I plugged a bat deterrent into the wall right next to the little room. Apparently, that set the little guy off in a bad way, because around 4 a.m., Freddy went nuts when the bat flew through my room upstairs. I have no idea how he got out of that supposedly sealed-off room, but as John Wunsch told me once, they can fit through the tiniest holes. They just need enough space for their head to fit through.

While I was yelling at Will to come help corner the bat, I turned around and Freddy HAD THE BAT IN HIS MOUTH. He was so proud of himself. At some point, he dropped the bat and we all cornered the little thing, stuffed it into a zippered bag and put it outside.

Before I adopted Freddy in April, he’d had a rabies shot in February. But when I called his vet at Oakwood Veterinary Hospital, they said to bring him in for a booster shot, just to be on the safe side. So off we went the next morning for a shot.

That same morning, I called the Grand Traverse County Health Department to see if I should bring the bat in and have it tested for rabies. They said yes, but was the bat dead? Well, it wasn’t when we stuffed it into the bag, but it was by the time I put the bag in the back of my Subaru, with Freddy in his carrier in the seat beside me.

They told me during the phone call that I could take the bat to Bayside Animal Hospital and they would euthenize it. I didn’t realize that I didn’t have to pay for it (the county partners with them on this project), so being the frugal girl I am, I sent Will out to take care of the bat. When I got to the Health Department, the bat was indeed deceased, thank goodness.

A few days later, I got the call I was hoping for – the bat tested negative for rabies. Because prior to this, I was trying to decide if I trusted that the bat didn’t land on me or bite me (their bite marks are very tiny) or whether I would need to do the whole rabies shot protocol. Thank goodness I didn’t have to make that decision. Some research on my part determined that a very small percentage of bats in northern Michigan actually have rabies.

The gal at the health department said little bats are getting pushed out of the nest this time of year, so I’m thinking that’s what happened with this one. Maybe he was disoriented. Maybe he didn’t understand they’re not supposed to fly into homes, especially homes with ultrasonic bat deterrents. I’m just glad Will was the one who “took care of him.” I know they’re good creatures. I still don’t want them in my house. And especially not in my cat’s mouth.

I’ll end this by noting that my chimney guy came out last week and cleaned the chimney out. I’m wondering if the bat was hanging around in there, and got disrupted by the cleaning, but there’s no way he could have gotten out of the chimney and into the little room unless he flew out the top of the house and came back in somehow. It’s certainly possible, since I haven’t gotten around to stuffing steel wool into the little holes around my roofline yet.

I’m just glad it all worked out, that none of us have rabies, and that Freddy seems completely unconcerned about the whole bat drama. He’s a very good bat-wrangler, should the need ever arise again. I sure hope it doesn’t.

Also Read…

This Week With Jane & Charley: Bats, Duct Tape and Bad Timing