Science in our Chimney

A couple years ago we had an issue with flies.  We cleaned up really good and thought we were rid of them.  We didn't get them last year but this spring they came back with a vengeance.  After looking at the situation and doing some thinking I told Briant that I thought they we coming from the chimney.

You see when we bought our house there was no wood stove but there was a chimney.  The people who owned before us must have taken out the stove because I'm guessing the chimney had issues and was not up to code.  I am guessing that they didn't close off both ends of the chimney when they took out the stove.  This doesn't make any sense if you ask me.

Earlier this spring we heard "noises" in that area of our house that sounded like wings moving across the walls (I thought it might have been a bird)... but it went away after a week or so.  I didn't think anymore about it until this issue.

My suspicions were confirmed when I drove into the garage one day and saw a ton of flies in the garage.  Then everything came together.  The chimney was the only thing connecting the basement to the garage and the flies were coming out the chimney through that little trap door.  Plus I could see the flies pupae  (they look like cocoon pod things) in our house by where the stove used to be close to the wall.

So we called a chimney cleaner to help clean our chimney hoping to clean out the eggs they were laying and get rid of our problem.  Well, the guy took one look in that little trap door and shut it and said, "YUCK, guano."  I didn't know what that was.  Well my friends, it is bat poop.  That's right we had a bat and he was hanging out right next to that door.  The guy took a picture with my phone.... I didn't want to get anywhere close!

I guess that "wing on the wall" sound we had heard earlier was a nice little bat making a home.  You can see the rag the bat put in there that's ripped up (obviously not from human hands).  The flies then feed on their guano and lay their eggs there because it makes a perfect meal and habitat for them.  This was all very interesting to me and it felt like a nice hands on environmental science lesson to me.  So many things I never knew.  Bats and flies living in harmony.
He wasn't really sure how many bats there really were.  Bats live in colonies so there could be more than one.   There were a couple options to get them out.  We could bomb them and kill them, or we could try to nicely coax them out with a chimney brush.  Well bats are good for the environment so I chose the latter.

I video taped the whole thing from the car.  I never actually saw the bat leave. The guy said he thinks there was only one.  But when the guy was done the bat was no longer there.  I hope he is happy somewhere else and am glad he isn't in my chimney.  The nice guy vacuumed out all the guano and taped off the top of the chimney.

I can say happily that our home has returned to a normal state :)  No more annoying flies!  What an adventure.  End of science report.