This morning I was woken up at 4.15 am by a fairly loud buzzing sound. Not an alarm clock as I never use the things. I have to confess I’m not at my best and sharpest around 4 am. I groped for the light and discovered the sound was next to the bed in the corner of the room. Next I noticed the acrid smell and black smoke curling up from behind a small bedside set of drawers. My foggy brain accelerated from 5% functional to 95% function faster than a Tesla. A hasty look showed the smoke coming from a power point. So of course I ran in the other direction. To cut off the power. I ran outside to the inverter to shut down the whole electrical system. Then quickly back inside to see if the wall was on fire.
By this time I had been joined by my friend Martin, guest for the night, who is a light sleeper and had heard both the buzzing and my pounding feet. I removed the chest of drawers and gingerly pulled out the plug for the bedside lamp, which hadn’t been on or even used for months. One of the brass prongs was burnt off…. completely missing. The smoke was subsiding not growing and that was an encouraging sign. A fire inside the wall could have been difficult to deal with. Then we turned our minds what had caused the burn-up with the lamp not on and no obvious cause. Then our eyes turned to the ceiling and directly above the powerpoint was a diminutive micro-bat. Perhaps most people are too quick to blame some outside cause for their troubles rather than consider their own complicity, but we quickly jumped to the conclusion it had pissed on the powerpoint. Ah ha! Caught red-handed! You fiend!
A little consideration might have prompted us to think more kindly of the tiny creature. When it pisses we must be talking a few drop here and not the copious flow of the town drunk against a convenient lamppost. But other theories of why after 30 years of service it would spontaneously combust were hard to come by, so that tiny bat has become the official culprit. 1 or several microbats have been using my bedroom as a night rest spot for the last few years. They have a permanent day cave to sleep, but use temporary cave-like night perches as well. I always have a window open even in the depths of winter as I don’t like to be totally isolated from the environment at any time. They do shit a bit, which is a nuisance, but fortunately roost in the corner, rather than directly over the bed. I often hear them flying around my bedroom and it sounds a bit like someone flogging a tea-towel, but doesn’t disturb me. I have a policy of live and let live unless directly threatened.
Martin’s advice was to leave the system shut down and deal with it in the morning with the benefit of daylight and fresher minds. Sounded good to me so we went back to bed. In the morning I asked Josh, my other guest if he had slept well. Splendid, fine, he replied, blissfully unaware he wasn’t that far off from having been cremated. I have seen a wooden house go up in flames. It is quick, dramatic, spectacular and devastating. There is a bed of ash decorated with tortured blackened tin. It was many years ago as I drove home from a moon dance. Yes, I was into these hippy gatherings. I saw a light at 1 am and went to investigate and down an isolated road was a house totally engulfed in flames that reached 20m above it. There was no vehicle outside, which in the country means there is nobody inside. Perhaps there was an unpredictable electrical fault like mine, perhaps an insurance job. So I gawked at it for 5 or 10 minutes and went home. It was impressive how quickly the fire destroyed the house.
Moral of story:- do not let bats piss on your powerpoints. For most of you this will be easy to comply with.
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