Monday, January 02, 2012
Sayonara, Bald Mice
Written by
Chad
PROBLEM: A colony of "bald mice" (bats) has set up camp in the ceiling of your elementary school. All the students wish they had clothes pins over their noses. They want to breathe in the sweet smell of education, but all they get is pungent perfume of guano. Perched high up in their rafter roost, the chirping bats seem to be laughing at humanity. Almost as if to say, "We enjoy making you suffer. We toast to your tears."
SOLUTION: Banish the bald mice back to the wilds from which they came. No matter how many eviction notices you issue them, these wingèd squatters continue to overstay their welcome. They've audited the same kindergarten class too many times, and from the looks of the brown-stained walls, they're still not potty trained.
STEP 1: Get an appraisal from a qualified consultant
You call in a professional from the city who pulls up on his motorcycle, tips his shades down, drops his briefcase, and grips your hand as though squeezing the life out of a parakeet. He doesn't even need to see the school apparently—he's from the big leagues, so he can guess. Mr. Suit-and-Tie quickly presents a receipt with his non-negotiable quote: for only $1500, his firm will asphyxiate the bats with a toxic cocktail of gases. The kind of chemicals that most people with lungs and nervous systems should steer a wide berth away from. The city man also adds that his company doesn't clean or patch the ceiling. Hmm.
STEP 2: A better idea, a hundred times less expensive
For 10 bucks, you can buy a giant sack of charcoal. Rally everyone on the last day of the semester to strip a nearby Neem tree of its lower leaves. Close all the windows tight and set the fresh leaves ablaze inside your coal bins, fumigating the rooms. As the smoke billows out of the cracks between the roof and walls, the nocturnal bats will wake up disgruntled and evacuate their smoked-out beds. They'll try to fly back into the school, but quickly decide that they value breathing and flee the scene.
STEP 1: Get an appraisal from a qualified consultant
You call in a professional from the city who pulls up on his motorcycle, tips his shades down, drops his briefcase, and grips your hand as though squeezing the life out of a parakeet. He doesn't even need to see the school apparently—he's from the big leagues, so he can guess. Mr. Suit-and-Tie quickly presents a receipt with his non-negotiable quote: for only $1500, his firm will asphyxiate the bats with a toxic cocktail of gases. The kind of chemicals that most people with lungs and nervous systems should steer a wide berth away from. The city man also adds that his company doesn't clean or patch the ceiling. Hmm.
STEP 2: A better idea, a hundred times less expensive
For 10 bucks, you can buy a giant sack of charcoal. Rally everyone on the last day of the semester to strip a nearby Neem tree of its lower leaves. Close all the windows tight and set the fresh leaves ablaze inside your coal bins, fumigating the rooms. As the smoke billows out of the cracks between the roof and walls, the nocturnal bats will wake up disgruntled and evacuate their smoked-out beds. They'll try to fly back into the school, but quickly decide that they value breathing and flee the scene.The kids will rabble together in chanting mobs with sticks held overhead, almost like they're on a witch hunt. They'll stand on stumps and swat at the escaping bats with tree branches. They beam so proudly.
STEP 3: Perfumigation
Now that the bats have taken to the skies, you toss a few sticks of incense into the fires to make the residual odor more bearable. This step may seem like a splash of cologne after bathing in the sewer, but at least it motivates the clean-up crew. Now that it's somewhat less of an olfactory nightmare, it's time to go back indoors and pull out all the furniture, which will remain unguarded in the schoolyard for days to come. Local thieves have no apparent need for tiny desks.
STEP 4: Fill in the cracks
You buy three bags of cement. The school director commissions a mason who he continually addresses as "the old man" to patch up the holes. This is apparently the same guy who built the school thirty years ago. The mason mixes cement, sand, and water in the middle of each classroom, then he mounts the stacked tables with his trowel in hand to slop up and smooth on the wet concrete. The village carpenter Thomas gives him screens and wooden frames he made to block the aeration holes in the ceiling. "Hey, the old man!" The director says. "Don't forget this room!"
The afternoon school bell hasn't technically chimed yet, so there are hordes of students still loitering on the premises. Time to capitalize on their boredom by getting some brooms, sponges, towels, and buckets. You pour bleach and anti-bacterial soap into buckets, ready the materials, and use the Huckleberry Finn picket-fence-painting method to motivate them to action. Suddenly, everyone from kindergarten through fifth grade is in full force cleaning mode, competing to have the sparkliest room of them all. Now to mix quicklime powder and water in a cauldron, resulting in a bubbly chemical reaction that drops the jaws of the kids. This makes whitewash, the cheapest kind of faux paint, which looks like the real deal after multiple coats. In all five classrooms, gloved students with paint brushes and sponges restore the walls once again to their original pristine state, forever washing off the foul stench of the bald mice.
CELEBRATION: It's done! And just in time for winter holiday break. Call the village's favorite mustachioed minstrels to the school to play traditional xylophone and drums while the children dance. High fives all around.
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3 comments:
what a great group of kids! Reading this inspires me.
Oh bummer, I wish you could have saved the bat-eradication for my trip lol sounds like great fun, but that ladder would NOT hold me. - Ken
die winged spawn of satan
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