It's always something... ... Just noticed this on the valance in the TV room. Pretty sure it's a bat. He must have come in through the downstairs fireplace, but I thought I closed that off. I did notice the cat was acting strange late last night. The last one I caught by throwing a waste basket over it. I think as long as it's daylight he won't move. I can put this off for a few more hours. LOL . . Done. Like shooting fish on a piece of cake. A bucket and a piece of cardboard. He spit at me a couple of times, turned around, and took off flying like a bat out of hell. Should of got a picture. . .
This looks just like it, and the right size, but not certain - Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus) They eat mosquitoes.
You're batting a thousand Nancy. "Little brown bats eat large numbers of flying insects (including midges, mosquitoes, caddisflies, mayflies, lace wings, moths, and beetles) during their nocturnal feeding periods. Females, especially if they are lactating and feeding a pup, may eat up to one hundred and ten percent of their body weight in insects during a feeding period. A single bat will eat between three hundred to three thousand insects a night according to the Penn State Newswire (June 3, 2013). " "A million bats, according to the Wisconsin Bat Monitoring Program, eat six hundred and ninety-four tons of insects a year! That's a lot of mosquitoes and potential crop pests! The Penn State Newswire article cited estimates that a farmer in a bat-deprived world would have to spend between four and five thousand dollars a year on pesticides just to achieve the insect pest control that the bats had provided for free."
I like the sound of all that information, Joe. We have plenty of bugs here, in the summer. Hope Mr. Bat didn't get too stressed out. No, I'm batting back to square one. While trying to get out the back door, with the bucket, cardboard, and bat attached to curtain and curtain rod, I broke the storm door handle. It was on its last legs anyway. My father put that door on while visiting in 1983. Thirty-five years isn't too bad. Shopping for a new handle that looks the same, except it has some plastic parts now. Maybe it can be fixed by just using some of the metal parts. Always something....
Back to square one. New door handle installed! Even though it was made in China, it had fewer plastic parts than the old handle, and they provided everything, so it would fit any arrangement you have, as long as the three holes drilled through the door were in the right place, and those were a perfect fit.. $10. Whew! Old and New ..
I don't know, Joe. It was prettier. This was my temporary handle for the last 2 days, because if you went outside and the door closed, you couldn't get back in (ask me how I know). Bottom line, I was going to screw a block of wood on there. Always have a Plan B.
Your new handle is pretty but the wooden one would work, too. People might mistake you for a redneck, though.
Looks a lot like my front screen door, made out of treated lumber. It's tall and wide, and slides. It doesn't get much rain. The back door gets a lot of bad weather. I'm done with doors now. Finally got an idea on the closet rod last night. I'm ready to try again, but have to check on Rusty tomorrow. The drywall chunks worked well under the eave of the garage roof in this last rain. They didn't budge. There are lakes of water in the fields around out there, so they got a lot of heavy rain. Think I'll rake up some pine straw, and see if it will stay on top, so it doesn't look so ugly.
More thinking out loud about the closet.... hopefully I've finally got a workable plan...??? I want one clothes rod to span the whole 8' length of the room. I could be wrong, but I think even a 1.25" iron pipe that long would sag in the middle, because I plan on putting everything I own, that has to hang, in there now. I've been stuck trying to figure out how to support the rod in the middle, working with a sloped ceiling. An angle bracket won't work because the ceiling slope is steeper than 45 degrees and I'd have to bend it. A block of wood wouldn't be stable and hard to get just right, and it would look ugly if it wasn't perfectly straight. This is a clothes rod (stick) suspended from the ceiling on chains. You could put one decorative hook in the sloped ceiling, hang a chain from it, and fasten the chain around the middle of the rod. All that's necessary is the rod not sag. I think I even have some nice looking chain left over from an old ceiling fixture, if I can find it. It would only take about a foot. A little left over chain dangling down would look cool. I might even be able to use a wood rod. Each end supported by a block of wood, like @Joe Riley suggested, and I'll have to put a board under it like shown to possibly span the whole width of the room. That would give something to put some nails in to hang things on. A bonus. I know, no one will see it.... but *I* will see it.
I have the set up of the third photo in my basement. I used a suspension rod and rope on both ends. It's suspended on a support beam by nails. I only hang my blouses on it though so I don't have to iron them once out of the dryer.