Bananas

I could have called this post ‘batty’, but as WhichEndBites said, I have to have my five a day and ‘Bananas’ follows on nicely from the pears I had earlier.

Some time ago, I was in the early stages of a nice big project (large for Alice, that is) and was rubbing my hands together with the thought of enjoyable, muddy site visits, arguing with the builder about money, earning lots of fees and delighting the client once all the dust had settled. The long, low, pink washed, oak framed house was on the edge of a small village of thatched cottages, surrounded by ancient trees and was really pleasant – there was a pond in the garden with water lilies, a paddock with two elderly ponies, a swathe of lawn studded with daisies and bluebells in the shady parts. Just down the road was a nice little shop, which sold home made pasties, and a posh fishmongers with such delicacies as smoked eel and salmon pate. I am going to enjoy this, I thought. And so I did, until I received a phone call from the builder.

‘Er.. ‘ he said. ‘There’s a problem. We’ve disturbed some bats’.

Some years ago, I would have said ‘so what?’, and so would everyone else. These days, thanks to a draconian law brought about by people with beards wearing tweeds and sandals, lobbying the government on a day the government just wanted something to do, disturbing a single bat is a crime worthy of hanging. Well, not quite that bad, you understand, but a severe fine and a criminal record is more than enough to make someone think twice about waking the little critters from their daily slumber.

I notified English Nature, as the law dictates, and they sent a ‘bat worker’ round to spend the evening monitoring. The builders continued to work elsewhere, away from the roof, as quietly as possible (digging a foundation, if you must know). Despite charming assurances from the Bat People on the telephone, I received a horrible letter saying that all work must cease at once, and could not start again until the bat season was over, and how dare we even consider repairing the roof when the bats needed it. (There was no mention of the people who also happened to live there, and for whom the building was actually constructed).

Disaster! The worst thing that can happen to a building contract, in terms of extra costs, are delays. The contractor is within his rights to claim loss and expense for the extra time he has to spend on site, insuring it, providing a site hut and loo, transport, pushing paper around the office labelled 'Health and Safety'... all this means, of course, extra money. It is not the kind of news you want to give a new client in the first month of the work to his house.

Enter Batman to the rescue! Or rather, a plain, short, shiny little man in an aged Volvo who was an expert on bats and was, more importantly, engaged independently to advise my client. Eventually, after a short delay, the bats had finished making lots and lots of little bats and had flown the roost. Work proceeded, and a bat box installed on the chimney, as you are simply not allowed to remove your bats without a licence in triplicate and alternative accommodation for their next breeding session.

We got off lightly. There are some kinds of bats that are so rare, that some buildings are simply not allowed to be worked on at all (according to a colleague who this happened to) even if it is listed and in danger of falling down. There are some people with colonies of 300 bats in their roof, all peeing and pooing into the insulation. Despite what the nicey nicey literature on English Nature’s website says about bat poo being ambrosia from heaven, it actually stinks. Many churches have bats, and whilst in some parts of the building they do not cause much of a problem (the belfry!) bat droppings all over the ancient furnishings are not particularly desirable. English Nature’s advice? Put cloths over everything.

With laws like this, bats can certainly make a lot of enemies.