Had a unique experience as you did when we first bought the house we are living in now.

One day my wife mentioned that she heard scratching sounds coming from the wood stove. Winter was approaching so I decided to clean out the stove and check the chimney. What I ended up finding was BATS.

Although I'm not a bat lover, I certainly didn't want to light a real fire because they would all surely die. Without knowing the proper procedures for bat removal, I decided that the best method to get rid of them was to buy some incense and drive them out with a strong odor. I bought some, lit the whole package, and threw it in the stove. I believe this did overwhelm the bats considerably, but do you think they left........

Not yet the guru in bat removal, and unable to sell secret and high quality bat removal products (incense) over the internet. I decided to smoke them out - and this may have well worked if bats had more intelligence.

I got some newspaper lit it and threw it in the stove. I knew the paper would not produce much heat and would create quite a bit of smoke.

As soon as I lit the newspaper and threw it in, all the bats immediately flew right down into the fire - I threw the grate on the stove to allow no draft for the flame and attempted to snuff the fire, surely they should have left........

As I watched them through the glass window of the stove and noticed their bulging little eyes and their overworked little lungs trying to compensate for the still smoking newspaper I realized that I had to save them.

I opened the door to the stove and regretfully most had perished but one remained and flew out of the stove and perched itself on a magazine rack. I braced the door open, got a towel and gently directed the bat out of the house. He cleared the door flew over a concrete pad about 6-8 ft off the ground and right in front of my eyes a hawk came down and picked him right out of the air.

Webster defines bats as a mouse like mammals with furry bodies and membraneous wings usually seen flying at night. I would add they aren't very smart either!

Andy