Everyone's gone batty

Living in downtown Porto Alegre is not for the faint hearted. I refer to you to the “human sausage” post for more evidence, and if that is not enough by all means read on. One evening sitting in the living room I heard a high pitched squeak sound from the service area. After much searching I discovered it was coming from outside. Just outside the window, flying between the buildings were hundreds of small insect eating bats. They were making the high pitched noise. I stood at the window and watched them for some time, they were very beautiful. Apparently some high ranking official also thought they were beautiful sometime in the past because there is a law against killing them. At first it sounds like a great law, it keeps the insect population under control and preserves nature. And I love nature. More precisely: I love nature outside my house, nature inside my house, not so much.

Here is how the Great Bat Alarm of 2010 went down:
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner in your room.
Mom: there are no bats.
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner.
Mom: there are no bats! Stop that.
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner.
Mom: that’s nice dear, off you go.
Saskia: Sniff Sniff. Bark Bark Bark!! Can I please, pleeeaaase have the bats in the air conditioner? Please? Just one?
Mom: What do you mean there are bats in the air conditioner? That’s awful, why didn’t you say something? We have to do something about that!
Me: *sigh*

There really is no point in killing a bat that has nested in your air-conditioning unit, if you kill the current resident, someone else will soon move in. And there is really not much point in killing bats that move into the box that houses the mechanism for your roll-up shades, another solution had to be found. The bats moved in, partied all night and apparently were all male because they drank lots of beer and peed indiscriminately all over the place. Or so it seemed based on the smell emanating from the roll-up shade mechanism.

The air conditioning manufacturer had an off the shelf solution for bats inside the units. They came out, cleaned the units, installed an external housing around each unit and presto. Bats-be-gone. By the way, the housing was installed by dangling a man by his ankles out the window. Harnesses? We don’t need no stinking harnesses!

(This is the second time he dangled, he was further out of the window the first time around, but I didn’t have a camera.)

The roll up shade manufacturer said: “Bats? Yes, that’s a common problem downtown. Learn to live with it, have a nice day, call us if you need anything else. On second thought, don’t call us, we don’t really care.”

I devised, what I think is an ingenious solution to the problem. Mom found a guy who was willing to build it and install it for an enormous amount of money and some prevarication that apparently passes for normal in Brazil. The nifty gadget keeps the bats out and allows the shade to roll up and down.
The man installed the gadget and cleaned out the roll-up shade boxes, this is what he found: (insert imaginary psycho music here)That was in the library. Here's what he found in the living room!

YIKES!!!

Everyone has heard of samba and Carnaval, but a little examined aspect of Brazilian culture is the annoying complacency that is endemic to the country. Most apartments downtown Porto Alegre have this type of roll-up shades. My gadget is of my own invention, there is nothing in the market that will keep bats out of the roll-up boxes…. people here have bats in their houses, have been told to live with them and seem to be happy to do so!!! It’s an extreme expression of the cultural complaisance found here. If something is not working, first you look for a way around it, if you can’t find a way around it, learn to live with it! i.e. dangling a man out of a window with no safety precautions is something you live with. God forbid anyone should suggest that a thing be changed or fixed so that it works properly. For decades the Brazilian motto was: “if you are up to your neck in shit, don’t make waves!” and the country resembled Elbonia.

The thing is: in the 90’s most of the shit was drained out of the country, it is now only waist deep and we have to make waves in order to drain the rest out! START COMPLAINING PEOPLE.