Bats in the bellfry

This summer we've seen an influx of stinging insects in our yard. In the past we've always had a few bees buzzing around doing their pollination thing and we just let them go about their business. If we didn't bother them, they didn't bother us. However, this year we have the equilivent of the Crips and Bloods battling it out in both the front and back yards and getting dangerously close to invading the inside of our house. We have hornets, wasps, carpenter bees, regular bees, and some kind of shiny winged fly having their way with our hydrangea plants. My sister came up with a Googled home remedy so cut a couple 2-liter bottles in half, inverted the top with the pouring spout to face inside the bottom half, filled them with beer and put the traps out to catch our flying menaces. Yeah, don't mess with us. We'll show you by getting you drunk, you little buggers!

No takers for the beer garden.

In the mean time, we went ahead and called a pest control company because we *thought* we knew where the wasps were roosting. Inside the house we've been hearing an odd chirping or whirring sound coming from the chimney and could not figure out what it was. At first we thought it was birds, but it really did not sound like birds, and that is when it hit my sister: it must be the wasps. Or hornets. Or carpenter bees. Our chimney must be the queen's epicenter. Luckily our chimney is enclosed and does not serve a fireplace in the house. The only purpose it has is to carry fumes out the top of our house. Now it has two purposes...a fume vent and home to a swarm of buzzy insects. Or so we thought. Our yard guy happened to get here before the bug guy and went up to the roof to clean out the gutters. I'm not sure what made him look down the chimney, maybe he heard the wierd sounds too and got curious, but he found the source of our freightening sounds: it wasn't bugs at all, we have bats! Okay. Let me get this straight. Not only do we have mean, stinging bugs to contend with, but now we have creepy, screeching, winged mammals that might carry rabies living with us. *CRINGE* Oh, hell no! The funny thing about the landscape guy is that he's scared of snakes, but the bats did not bother him a bit and even suggested that some people like having them around to eat insects and rodents. I, personally, don't really want to be that green about insect control as to keep the bats around. On second thought, if they would just earn their keep by taking care of the hornets, wasps, bees, and shiny winged flys, I might rethink getting rid of the bats and installing a screen on the chimney.