ajo stinks

So I wasn´t totally honest with you when I told the bat story. I said we just ¨got rid of the bats¨but that wasn´t totally honest. My host dad Marico eagerly showed up at our house the morning after I told him we had a problem. He took a quick look at the situation and scurried back to the main house for supplies. He reappeared in like 2 seconds flat with a long flat stick, a ladder and a giant knife we all affectionately know as the Machete. I was shocked to see the knife that we perceive as a weapon, but they think of as a tool, and I asked him what it was for. He replied with the ever present smile on his face ¨para matarlos!¨ which means to kill them. I then yelled to Jenny to get out of the house and she scurried around the corner and tried really hard to concentrate on her Harry Potter book. So what actually happened was that I held the flashlight while Marcio skillfully stabbed the bats with the machete through the rafters, then finished them off one by one. We didn´t just get rid of the five bats, we bascially hacked them up with a machete. And I might add that I was totally not in support of this, but I wasn´t about to refuse the service.

The reason why I am letting you know the details here is because we didn´t actually get all 5, one smart bat actually flew away out the space in the roof where they entered. And the ajo did work for about 5 days, but it dried up and the night before last we had our mercielago friend back as a roomie. Marcio was away so my new siblings and I worked as a team to shoo the bat out, then saturated the area with fresh ajo. But aho stinks, yes, it stinks like very strong garlic smell and our whole house smells like an italian restraunt, which is totally cool for a little while. But this morning, guess what, our smart bat roommate came back: with fresh ajo and all. So now I am beginning to understand Marcio´s methods, I think he has experienced this before. He has been asking me every morning for a week if the bats came back. And now the answer 2 days in a row is Si. So I´ll be holding the flashlight for the carnage again this evening and right after this entry I am leaving the cafe to buy some mesh screen to cover whatever gaps in the roof I can. So I am not totally in favor of hacking up all of our pests with a machete, but this bat is like that cat that keeps comming back. I won´t be posting any pics of our bat because that wouldn´t be cool, but I will try to get some up of our amazingly porous house.