At the end of 2021, after having lived in our house for seven years, we finally got our chimney repaired to usable, working condition. We spent hours and hours making a fire and sitting in front of it over winter break. The smell of the wood burning, the coziness of it all. It brought us so much joy over the past few weeks. And we’ll chalk this up to yet another thing in life that we wondered why we waited so long to fix.

How we came to finally repairing our chimney, though, is a comedy of missteps. It all started this past early summer when Nathan and I were sitting down to watch a TV show in our living room after putting the boys to bed.

We sat down on the couch and heard a noise coming from the chimney that could only be described as a loud whine. The kind of whine that sounds like, “that’s a little too close for comfort.” Now, we sat watching our show, and I being the curious one, went up to the chimney several times looking inside of it trying to tell what was making the sound.

”Aren’t you worried that whatever is making the sound is going to come into the house?” I asked Nathan.

”No. We’ve got that screen in front of the opening, so nothing can get into the house.”

Assuming I was potentially overreacting, I let it go.

The next morning, I woke up for my normal early morning work-out class before the rest of the house. That sound, again, was still coming from the chimney. Puzzled, I walked over to the opening once again, and without moving the screen, I turned on my phone’s flashlight and. BAM. I saw it. On the wall of our fireplace opening. A baby bat.

Not knowing what else to do, I texted Nathan that there was INDEED something in our chimney, and that he needed to remove the baby bat immediately.

When he finally woke up that morning, though, guess what? No bat in the chimney. It had disappeared.

Once again, I asked Nathan, “But aren’t you concerned that it’s in our house now??” Again, the answer was the same, “No. It wouldn’t have gotten through that screen.”

That was one of those moments where you think your partner is DEAD WRONG, but what’s the use in arguing? Because you’d really like to believe there isn’t a baby bat somewhere in your house, too.

We went about our morning routine. The boys got up, and we fed them breakfast. I packed up their backpacks and put on their shoes, ready to send them out the door. And that’s when I saw it. THE BABY BAT. Lying on the floor of our living room, looking very dead. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

Now Nathan and I have an arrangement in this house. I don’t do rodents and small animals, and he doesn’t do bug squishing, but particularly, spiders. Bat extraction was firmly in the responsibility category of Nathan. So, I calmly started my work, hopped on a video conference call for my new job, and that’s when I see Nathan out of the corner of my eye, walk in the house with the snow shovel.

And then a text comes while I’m on my call. “It’s not dead.”

Animal Control shows up at our house 15 minutes later to take the bat. Yes, I’m still on a video call. But I can hear from my front room office that Nathan is not asking ANY QUESTIONS about this baby bat. Because here’s the thing, if there’s a baby bat, there’s a mama bat. And even though I don’t want the answers, I need to know what kind of bat situation we’re talking about here.

I excuse myself from my work call, and I begin asking the Animal Control officer questions. And here’s what I learned…bats live in colonies. Maternity colonies and bachelor colonies. That’s right. Boy bats live altogether and party while the ladies birth and raise the next generation of bat. Every female bat has one baby a year. And that baby bat, should it be successful in its rearing, will return to the same “home” to have their babies the following season. Baby bats are flightless until late summer/early fall. And they’re protected wildlife.

You’re following what I’m realizing, right? If there’s one baby bat, there’s most certainly a mama bat living in our chimney. Not only that, but there’s likely multiple mama bats and baby bats living in our chimney. And because bats are protected, our chimney would be their home until the fall when the baby bats could fly, when we could have them extracted from the chimney and it sealed off.

So here we are. One baby bat removed to be rehabilitated at a bat rehabilitation center. No idea how many bats we have been hosting in our chimney. So, that evening, we put the kids down, and Nathan and I went outside for a bat watch. That right, to see if we could tell where the bats were getting into and out of our chimney and just how many bats we had living there.

9:01 rolled around, and we saw one fly right over our heads. Nathan and I looked at each other and moved closer to the chimney. Another. Whoosh. and another Whoosh. My eyes got really big. They were coming now in 2’s and 3’s, one after the other.

SO. Many. BATS.

After watching these bats fly out of our chimney, I tell Nathan the next night, we’re counting.

Night two of bat watch, and 9:00 rolls around and here they come. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6….THIRTY TWO BATS fly out of our chimney. And if there are 32 females bats living in our chimney, that means there are another 32 babies (minus one, that fell into our house). THAT’S 64 BATS.

We homed all bats until early fall, when they were extracted from the chimney by using a one way bat tunnel, that allowed them to fly out, but not back in. I’ll kind of miss the bats. I even looked at putting up a bat house. After all, I certainly appreciated the mosquitos they ate all summer long. Perhaps they’ll find a good home somewhere nearby, but as of now, our chimney will only be home to smoke from these cozy winter fires at home.