Driveway camping ** WITH PICTURES **

[Shannone1]

Our neighbors gotta be wondering about us by now.

We moved in on June 3rd and haven't met anyone yet. We live on 5 acres and only have 2 neighbors on adjacent property. About a week after we moved in (bat incident #1) we were all sitting on camping chairs in front of the house at dusk watching where the bats were flying out from. It must have looked strange from the road....us just sitting there staring up at our house.

Then we disappeared for two weeks to go camping. Chad came back every other day to work in the office and we came back at midnight once during a bad storm to check on the place.

Now we come home and are camping in the driveway. We have the slides out, awning rug out and portable BBQ grill set up. We go into the house for laundry, games and showers during the day, but come back out here for meals and sleeping. We have an extension cord and hose running across the driveway to the MH. I feel like someone's poor relative...visions of Christmas Vacation are running through my mind.

We will finally be able to go in next Tuesday/Wednesday once the place is clear. But then we are leaving for another week of camping with friends on Friday !! It will be nice if EVENTUALLY we get to start enjoying our new home.

Here are a few pictures..

Our house...you can see the motorhome off the the left.

A close up of the house. You can see the support beams in the peaks...that is where the bats are coming in.

Our home away from home. We had the awning and porch rug out until yesterday when the wind kicked up.

The back of the house...and more peaks !!

A close up of the action. They sealed up around the logs and then put up an excluder (one way door). So bats that are in the house can exit through the tube but they can't fly back in.

The side of the house and our view for the past week. You can see the extension cord and hose running out from the garage.

 

[clkelley]

Hey, sounds like an adventure to me!!!

 

[2goofycampers]

Maybe they are saying " those new neighbors are a little BATTY".

 

[Shannone1]

Maybe they are saying " those new neighbors are a little BATTY".

 

[RvUsa]

All this cuz of a couple bats??? LOL

 

[VACAMPER]

I wouldn't sleep with bats either.

 

[Shannone1]

All this cuz of a couple bats??? LOL

We stopped counting at 20 when we were watching them fly out a few weeks ago. And two dead ones in the house are MORE than enough to keep me out of there !! Actually, the one in our sink wasn't QUITE dead yet...he was still moving around when Chad saw him. He is not a man who gets spooked easily, but I heard him yell all the way out here !!

 

[RvUsa]

We're talking this

Not this right????

Bats are cool and very helpful to the ecosystem. We have bats in the house every once in a while, but we just open the door and shoo them out.

 

[djblu883]

Bat feces is toxic to humans, it carries a disease that is fatal!!! Glad you are smart and keeping away from them!!!! Smart Girl!!!

 

[RvUsa]

I'm not saying to make them pets LOL. I just hope they aren't killing them. As far as the feces, pigeon poo carries toxins too, but as long as you aren't rolling in piles of the stuff naked, I am pretty sure you would be ok.

One of my favorite "dirty jobs" episodes was the one where he went into brakken cave and saw the MILLIONS of bats. The guano was at least a couple of feet deep, the only thing they were worried about was the ammonia and the flesh eating beetles. I think the disease that you are thinking of is histoplasmosis and is very rarely anything more than just a small case of the flu.
H. capsulatum is found throughout the world and is endemic in certain areas of the United States, particularly in states bordering the Ohio River valley and the lower Mississippi River. (Positive histoplasmin skin tests occur in as many as 80% of the people living in areas where H. capsulatum is common, such as the eastern and central United States.) H. capsulatum grows in soil and material contaminated with bird or bat droppings (guano). The fungus has been found in poultry house litter, caves, areas harboring bats, and in bird roosts (particularly those of starlings). The fungus is thermally dimorphic. In the environment it grows as a brownish mycelium, whereas at body temperature (37°C in humans) it morphs into a yeast. The inoculum is represented principally by microconidia that, once inhaled into the alveolar spaces, germinate and then transform into budding yeast cells. Histoplasmosis is not contagious, but is contracted by inhalation of the spores from disturbed soil or guano.

 

[DisneySoccerScouts]

John, while very informative that is way more than I wanted to know - basically you are saying we could get a yeast infection in our lungs?? Just great!

Shannone - at least you are getting your money out of your MH!

 

[LONE-STAR]

Our neighbors gotta be wondering about us by now.

We moved in on June 3rd and haven't met anyone yet. We live on 5 acres and only have 2 neighbors on adjacent property. About a week after we moved in (bat incident #1) we were all sitting on camping chairs in front of the house at dusk watching where the bats were flying out from. It must have looked strange from the road....us just sitting there staring up at our house.

Then we disappeared for two weeks to go camping. Chad came back every other day to work in the office and we came back at midnight once during a bad storm to check on the place.

Now we come home and are camping in the driveway. We have the slides out, awning rug out and portable BBQ grill set up. We go into the house for laundry, games and showers during the day, but come back out here for meals and sleeping. We have an extension cord and hose running across the driveway to the MH. I feel like someone's poor relative...visions of Christmas Vacation are running through my mind.

We will finally be able to go in next Tuesday/Wednesday once the place is clear. But then we are leaving for another week of camping with friends on Friday !! It will be nice if EVENTUALLY we get to start enjoying our new home.

This is so sad for yall but horribly funny to read. I hope it all works out ok for yall

 

[PolynesianPixie]

Good luck Shannone! I know it's hard now, but eventually you will look back on this and laugh and probably have some really good memories!

John~ I have personal experience with that stuff you spoke of-not fun! We moved out near the lower Mississippi River for a while and we all got sick! Talking to my neighbors I learned that everyone is sick for about the first 4 months and then their bodies get used to it, I guess. It was from breathing in all the chicken guano Here I was, in the middle of nowhere Arkansas, 3 kids-one of which was only 2 months, not knowing anyone, with a workaholic hubby and sick as a freakin' dog!

Stay away Shannone! Stay away!!!!

 

[Gatordad]

KEEP IT UP SHANNONE

 

[Us3]

Maybe they are saying " those new neighbors are a little BATTY".

Shannone..I hope you get to enjoy that new beautiful home soon!! For now, enjoy the camping and the memories you're building with your family!

 

[momoffive]

We too had bats before we moved into our new home. How the home inspector or the pest inspector missed them we'll never know . Thank God we still had our apartment the company put us up in. Before we could move in it had to be cleared, cleaned, and sealed. If you did sleep in there and were bitten you would have to have the rabies vaccine series and those are painful !!! Great choice in the MH, but I do hope you get to enjoy your new home soon!!
Loretta

 

[Shannone1]

John- no worries about killing the bats. I personally think they are great as long as they are NOT IN MY HOUSE !! It is illegal to kill them here. All they can do is seal up the house so they can't get in. They put excluders (one way doors) on the house where they are coming in. Then the bats that are inside fly out but can't fly in again. After 3 weeks they come back and take the door out and seal it up. The only bats that die are the ones that are too young to be able to fly out on their own. I think the two dead ones we've found were young ones.

With the log home we have a huge support beam that is along the peak of the house. The bats have found a way to get up above the beam from the outside so we can't see them but sometimes the droppings have fallen down. I think the dead ones fell from there.

THAT is why we have to wait 5 days once the house is completely sealed. Any bats that can't fly out of the one way doors will starve after 5 days of not eating. We don't want to be in there with bats starving and desperate to find a way out.

 

[RvUsa]

Ahhh the joys of a log home, welcome to the club. LOL I wasn't making fun of you and your bats, I was just pointing out that some people make them out to be giant blood sucking pests, when in reality, they are very important to all of us....

Hope they move out soon and you move in and start enjoying that awesome house, they sure seem to be....

 

[2goofycampers]

Still in the driveway?

 

[Shannone1]

Still in the driveway?

Sadly, yes. The pros told us 3-5 nights. That was Friday afternoon. Tonight is night #3 and so far we have only seen three little bat droppings in the master bathroom. Nothing anywhere else. They weren't there yesterday which means that there was some activity last night. Now it could be from them just moving around up in that beam...or it could have been one flying around.

If 3 nights had gone by without seeing anything we would be safe to move back in. If however we did see something we were supposed to wait 2 more nights

We were all set to move back in tomorrow, and then we saw the droppings. ARGH. If they were in the loft or upstairs bathroom we'd go back. It was only 3 little drops. BUT they were in MY bathroom and I am not going to hide under my covers all night wondering if there is a bat in the room. And I am sure as heck not going to get up in the middle of the night and wander into my bathroom !!

So we are going to wait two more nights which would put us back in the house on Wednesday. We've been in the motorhome for 3 weeks now. Two camping at the campground and one week here at home. I am soooo ready to go back to my own bed and my big kitchen. But we are leaving on Friday for another week of camping and I am actually dreading it just a little.

Thanks for checking on me. I have to tell you that we actually put the awning up yesterday. We got some rain on and off and we put the awning up to make it easier to come and go. We had a place to kick off our shoes and stick our umbrellas. Between the awning, grill and tie outs for the dogs...we really DO look like we are camping !!