The Housing Crisis That Fed My Family To Dracula

Part 1: Becoming Parents, Buying a House, Getting Attacked by an Army of Bats

This story is entirely non-fiction. It’s actually happening to us… It is as miserable as it is whimsical. Enjoy.

As we pulled up to our new home, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the scent was of spring flowers, fresh spruce tips and the wind off the sea. The day was April first, and little did we know the magnitude of the joke that would become our lives for the rest of the year.

Taking the keys from the real estate agent who met us there, this was the first time we had been to the house together. We had toured separately while taking turns caring for our infant son. My name is Tom, with my wife Mackenzie, and our then-five-month-old son, Robert, or Robby. Our journey to get to this point had been challenging, it felt like our fifteen years together, working hard, had finally paid off.

Our little family unlocked the large double doors and stepped into the entrance of our grand Victorian home. Sitting atop 'Hoypus Hill' overlooking Cornette Bay, it has views of sailboats and islands nestled into the iconic waterway of Deception Pass. A true jewel of the Pacific Northwest, the beautiful Whidbey Island in Washington state is full of history and character. On the drive up, we listened to music from the Studio Ghibli films, and the magic in the air that day was palpable.

At nearly four thousand square feet, each floor of our new house was larger than the entire interior of the mobile home we had spent the last five years in. The previous owners had left a number of antique furnishings, ornate chandeliers, all the finishing work was rendered in baroque style. Tireless craftsmanship had been put into the main two living floors, although we would come to find later that major corners had been cut on the exterior.

We were able to afford this place due to it being on the market a long time. We bought the home for seventy thousand under asking. For years we had lived frugally, saved instead of spent, and worked hard at our jobs to buy somewhere large enough to raise a family.

All our careers flashed in front of our eyes. The overbearing supervisors, the scraping-by financially, the sexual harassment, the unethical law firms, the random layoffs, the failed startup, the union volunteering, the backstabbing corporate politics, the toxic company drinking cultures, the boring coworker birthday parties. All of that was in the past, we thought. Surely something as simple as a real estate transaction would not be loaded with the same complications as our working lives?

Despite procedural challenges during the purchase of the house, we were across the finish line now. There were things about the inspection that worried us. However, we are the type to roll up our sleeves and fix things on our own. At our old place, when we had a water leak under our driveway, we rented an excavator and retrenched a new line of pipe.

When we found out we were expecting, we renovated our office into a nursery, with new flooring, paint, and curtains. This new house had issues, problems with the porch, moisture in odd places, but we could handle it. The one thing which we couldn't control was the derelict property next to us, but maybe in time we could come up with a plan and work it out with the neighbor.

Becoming parents had reset our expectations too, raised the bar. As we brought a new life into the world, we wanted to be more intentional about the way we lived. Transitioning to a remote-centric working situation allowed us to provide more time as parents, but it also meant we could pick the ideal location for our son to grow up. The town we had been living in was an 'exurb' of Seattle in south King County, and it was rapidly growing. Thousands of acres of managed forest land had been torn down for medium-density single-family-housing.

Our old property was situated near to a lake that had been very important to us. Growing up down the road, I would bicycle to the nearby convenience store, then go to the lake-park for swimming or fishing. At the very dawn of our relationship together, Mackenzie and I had gone skinny-dipping in the lake at night, in the peak of summer, under the moonlit sky.

Now, all the trees surrounding the lake were being cut down by both developers and tree-phobic property owners. As John Steinbeck once stated, "it was only as I approached Seattle that the unbelievable change became apparent... I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction."

The wholesale deforestation, coupled with the massive increase in traffic on our street, the negative comments from the neighbors for our unwillingness to clear all our trees, all pushed us further away. Instead of developing our plot of land, we would move somewhere that was wild and free.

Having spent many summers on Whidbey Island, as far back as grade-school, we knew it was aligned to our interests and our values. Hiking, fishing, aerospace and art, all blended together here in a unique culture. I had launched my first model rocket at Whidbey’s Camp Casey, and we had camped at Cranberry Lake for many years.

Sitting down for lunch on the first day in our house, we ate a meal that best depicted our transitioning phase of life. Mackenzie had found incredible crystalware at a secondhand store. In the basement we found an unopened case of Perrier, so we drank it in our only drinking vessels, the crystalware.

We also had paper plates, and a random assortment of grocery-story snacks. This plus the formula bottle for Robby comprised our plat de résistance. We ate this upon a folding card table sitting on antique chairs left by the previous owners. Luxury mixed with frugality, it felt like we were camping again.

The next few weeks and months unfolded like a dream. Moving was a ton of work, I moved us one truckload at a time. The time of year was incredible, we watched the unfolding of spring into summer on Whidbey and the surrounding area. For those who don't know, Mount Vernon in Skagit Valley is one of the best places for growing tulips outside of the Netherlands. Having honeymooned in Amsterdam, the sight of so many colors reminded us of long bike rides, windmills and swans in the canals.

What we should have taken back with us from Amsterdam, however, was something of the spirit of the illustrious Doctor Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the first week living in our new house, I was putting supplies into our 'powder-room,' which is the fancy name for the bathroom and is written on a floral placard hanging on the door. Putting the boxes down in the powder-room supply closet, I came across a dried-out mummified bat. I thought very little of it, possibly someone had opened a window and it had gotten in. Living so deep in the woods, there was sure to be encounters with wildlife. For the time being, we simply tossed it away.

Friends and family were beyond excited for us with the baby and the new house. We had more people come to visit us in those first six weeks than we had in the previous six months. It was also the first time that we could actually host people to stay the night, with a full guest room. We were still unboxing things, and hadn’t even furnished the living room yet, but we had a table to sit around and several beach parks we could go picnic at. Robby loved the attention, he was just learning how to eat solid foods, and now he had an audience. He would toss scraps to visiting dogs and laugh as they licked the yogurt off his face.

One valuable arrangement that would help with the challenges of parenting would be that Mackenzie's mom, Elizabeth, would live with us. She could provide an extra pair of hands to grab the baby or assist with making formula bottles. She moved in just a few weeks after we did.

We had living with us our tuxedo cat, Teddy (named after Theodore Roosevelt for his large mustache). Elizabeth brought her two cats of her own, both black as the night, named Poe (after Edgar Allen Poe) and Howard (after Howard Hughes). Suddenly we had an entire cast of feline characters for Robby to chase after.

Another connection to the area was the family tradition of fishing. On Mackenzie's side, her dad and uncle had been fishing the waters near Deception Pass since the early eighties. Her uncle Dave had gone on to become a biologist, and now a licensed fishing guide. I had done a little fishing as a kid, but had only become ‘hooked’ in the past few years now that I had the cashflow to buy better gear. Uncle Dave had been one of the first people to come up and visit, and soon we were out on the water.

It was nearing the end of lingcod season, but several marine areas were open for shrimping. Leaving Deception Pass by boat is a surreal experience. The enormity of the Deception Pass Bridge is truly felt, it towers hundreds of feet overhead. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, it was a marvel of its time and remains so today. Breaking into the open water of the Rosario Strait, it is only an hour to the San Juan Islands. We set traps, and after a few hours without success for lingcod, we hauled up a full catch of shrimp.

The last thing we did before returning to shore was to stop in the “Canoe Pass.” People on a tour boat waved at us or pointed in awe, which was a funny experience. After they had gone, we looked up at the sheer cliff face of Deception Pass. Carved by ice-age glaciers and fierce tidal currents, the rock wall extended several hundred feet up and several hundred feet down, beneath the waves.

Nested high up in the rock wall was something straight out of the Gooneys, a large cave entrance. Over a hundred years ago, the site was a rock quarry mine, built by prison laborers. Now the tunnels were cordoned off with iron bars to discourage teenagers from attempting the dangerous traversal down the cliff. However, the tunnel is home to a very special species of bat, the Townsend's Big-Eared bat. With large, rabbit-like ears, they are unique to the pacific northwest.

Just as in Dracula, the ship called the Demeter made landfall near the small seaside town of Whitby, we returned to the docks in Cornet Bay on our island called Whidbey. As in the book, Mina and Lucy listened to the fisherman's tales and the coming of the storm, we returned home to regale Mackenzie and Elizabeth with tales from the choppy seas. Except in this case, I cooked up a hot meal of fresh-caught shrimp scampi served with white wine.

A few days later, it was almost the end of May. In the twilight hours of the early morning, we could hear Teddy leaping into the air. The baby had finally driven him mad, I thought. As Mackenzie came to consciousness, she saw it first, the dark shape, the flapping wings. Teddy was jumping trying to catch a solitary bat flying around inside our room. Without hesitation, Mackenzie scooped Robby into her arms, wrapped him in a blanket, and ran into the hallway.

Rousing myself from sleep, I quickly snapped into action. First, I closed the door to the bedroom. Then, I emptied the Home Depot bucket we had been using as a makeshift diaper trash. By that point, the bat seemed to be missing. Then I noticed two tiny ears peeking out from above the ceiling-mounted headboard. Taking a broom, I convinced the little creature to shoot out into the air and start circling the room again. When it landed on the window, I got the bucket around it, and then opening the window, moved the bucket down and the bat flew out. As we would find out later, that was a key mistake.

Shaken, we collected ourselves and tried to make sense of what had happened. Guests had visited the day before and slept in our room, possibly they had opened a window? Maybe the bat had come in, roosted above the headboard all day, and then come out again the following night? We considered whether this was just another random incident, for the whole neighborhood was teaming with life - birds, rabbits, super-tame deer. We thought it might just be part of the 'forest life' experience. Still, we started reading into the rabies exposure risk. The cats were vaccinated against rabies, but Ted was completely exhausted the next few days.

I had a work trip in early June, so Mackenzie's sister came up to help in my absence. She would be staying in the attic guest room, getting the whole floor all to herself. I had all sorts of manic adventures in air travel, spending over nine hours in O'Hare airport. Meanwhile, Mackenzie scrambled to keep up with Robby, who had just learned to crawl. The days wore on, and Mackenzie's sister was starting to notice something at night. Right at dusk, as she was settling into bed, she would start to hear a crawling sound in the walls above the attic. It wasn't loud, it was easy to miss, but something was up there.

My first night back from travel, we stayed up in the attic after putting the baby to sleep, and listened. There was definitely a noise, a scrawling, shambling sound. There were tree branches near to the house or even overhanging the roof. We did see squirrels running on the high branches outside the attic window all the time. What we feared, however, was that it was something scarier than squirrels. It took almost another week before we confirmed our suspicion. Elizabeth, looking out her bathroom window to the west at dusk, could see dozens of dark shapes buzzing against the twilight sky.

The next night, we staked out the house from the outside. What we saw horrified us, both as homeowners and as parents. From the attic bathroom dormer, we could see not just a few, but dozens of bats shooting out from the roof. They came in small bunches, two or three at a time, but they just kept coming. That night we sealed off the door to the attic with duct tape, and we barely slept a wink.

The next morning, we fired off a barrage of emails and calls to wildlife control and pest companies. We managed to get a few commitments, but a lot of inquiries ended up being fruitless. Surely this was just something normal that other homeowners had to deal with all the time? As we walked around our neighborhood with Robby in the stroller, we got to know our neighbors.  Bats occupying their homes or garages was somewhat common, but never this severe.

That same week, the entire neighborhood began filling up with little caterpillars, western-tent-moths, millions of them. They swarmed our house, took over the stairs, the porch roof, every surface they could find. The mailbox, the garbage can, the little bugs were everywhere. They were the larval form of what is called the western tent moth. Sometimes they would drop down onto us, and we would later find them clinging onto us after we had gone inside. It was as fascinating as it was disgusting, and it made perfect sense why the bats were here. There was food, insects, tons of them. Unlike the suburban sprawl we had come from, this place was not completely doused in insecticide. It was wild and free.

The bats seemed to be keeping out of the house. As long as we kept our windows shut and the attic sealed off, we felt reasonably safe. We had cancelled plans with a lot of visiting friends and family due to the bats, but our close college buddies from Portland were undeterred. They are farmers from Troutdale, Oregon, and have a daughter just five months older than Robby. They were coming up for a wedding in a Skagit county town called La Conner, and were fine staying on our futon in the basement.

Simultaneously, I had more work travel, a quick conference in San Francisco. On my way home, I noticed a small tickle in my throat. Our Portland friends, driving up, had a sick daughter, but they thought it was just motion sickness from the car. What ensued was the perfect storm, an unimaginable collision of germs. The first day they visited was wonderful, trips to the beach, hikes through the forest, marveling at our house. We were connecting for the first time in nearly a year.

Then came the second day. Their daughter didn’t have motion sickness, she had rotavirus. First it hit her mom, after the wedding night the illness had spread. Our friend was essentially confined to our basement. I started to get full on migraines, as a severe flu set in. For almost a day, I could barely break out of napping on the easy chair. What was intended to be a fun fourth-of-July weekend looked more like a hospice center. By Monday, our friends limped home, but for us the illness was just picking up.

Robby caught the respiratory issues I had, while Mackenzie caught the stomach bug.  Getting through the next few days, our eyes started to ooze out a form of snot, crusting shut each night. The fourth of July was a tired, lonely affair. We watched some of the fireworks on the docks far below, while blowing our noses and going to bed early. It reminded me of the bats, which are prone to 'white-nose' syndrome, a disease which can destroy entire bat colonies. It also reminded me of the ‘Dracula’ character, Lucy, drained by a mysterious illness and visited by the Count himself.

By the following weekend, we were slightly on the mend. That Saturday, we finally had our first visit from the wildlife control expert. 'John' was from a bat specialist company based out of Colorado. He was personable, nice, impressed by our home. However, after seeing the shear amount of guano and insulation piled up on our roof, he told us, "this is the worst residential infestation I've ever seen." If we had seen dozens of bats, there were likely hundreds, maybe thousands.

Then he went on to tell us about the dangers of rabies. One in a hundred bats, on average, will have it. They are less prone to the disease than possums, raccoons and other terrestrial mammals, but they make up for it in sheer numbers. It was then that we learned that there is a proper way for dealing with bats that get into the house. Releasing them is ill-advised if there is any chance that the bat had touched someone. What is better is to trap the bat, alive if possible, and bring it to the local health department for testing. If killed, put the body on ice to preserve it.

We thanked John for his time, and now we were more horrified than ever. That night, we staked out the house again. This time what I saw made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Sitting securely in our car, we watched as the bats poured out of the house. Except this time the count was far higher than we had seen before. Hundreds upon hundreds came in waves, not just from the bathroom dormer, but from the entire upper attic and the top ridges of the roof. Our stomachs dropped, the panic started setting in, the scale of the problem and the cost to fix it was beyond our ability to handle. They just kept. On. Coming.

The other thing we had learned is that these bats were migratory, and they were up here to have their babies. In that strange way, we had a connection, a kinship with the little terrifying creatures, as we were building our own family here too. John had mentioned that at some point the mothers will kick out the fathers, and then the younger bats will start to explore. This made us anxious, we imagined angry males and confused adolescent bats getting into our home. Just as Robby was learning to crawl around the house, so too might the baby bats. That night, with the vision of dark beating wings and a thousand angry bat families, we tried to sleep, but found it challenging.

The next day we tried to debate what we should do. It's not legal or ethical to murder the bats, nor something we would want to do. The bat experts all specialize in a process called exclusion, which is to put up wire mesh and patch the roof so that the bats can get out but not back in. However, since most of the bats are parents, their young would be trapped inside.

Sealing them off would result in hundreds of dead baby bats. The cost to do that was astronomical too, close to forty thousand dollars. That was before factoring in any damage that might already be done to the interior walls and insulation. We had just poured all our savings into the down payment, this seemed insurmountable.

As we ruminated on what to do, we were also making lunch. We had just put Robby to sleep upstairs. We closed the baby gate but kept the door open to be able to listen for his cries. Mackenzie was preparing a family favorite, homemade Spam Musabi. I was still sick, with less headache but still the blurry vision and crusty eyes. What happened next was a whirlwind of chaos and commotion. We heard the baby stirring upstairs, and then a blur flashed into the dining room. I saw a moving dark shape, but not trusting my hazy eyes, rubbed them furiously. Mackenzie spotted it before I did. A bat had gotten into the house and was flying around the kitchen.

Immediately Mackenzie went up into the bedroom where the baby was sleeping and shut the door. I sprang into action. Despite my foggy vision, I ran to the basement to grab my fishing net, then came back up. There is a black crystal light fixture above the kitchen table, in the turret, that we affectionally call 'the Addams Family' chandelier. Then the bat was flapping around the room, and it landed on one of the black crystals. It chirped as if in defiance, perhaps it was laughing. Finally, it took off, and swooping the fishing net, I caught it and flung it to the ground. It was a comic but terrifying site.

In a moment of darkness and abject terror, I killed the bat, as I could barely see and had no way to get it out from the fishing net without risking a bite. It was a very small thing, likely a small brown bat, maybe a juvenile at that. I put it on ice and sealed it away for the day. After that however, we were DONE. We could not put the baby at risk another day. It was time to move back to our trailer. In less than two hours Mackenzie had everything she needed, and departed to go live with my sister until I could move the essentials back into our old place.

For me, the challenges were just beginning. The next day, during my lunch break, I drove the iced bat body to the Island County Health Department. There I met with the zoonotic disease specialists, who prepared the sample and sent it into the state for testing. A day later, we had back the results from the lab, showing as inconclusive. Which meant they would need another specimen. The health department told us they would come out to our home in a few days.

In the meantime, I tried negotiating with our insurance company. At their request, we sent them our home inspection from a few months prior. We immediately got a response back that we had been declined. We had language in our inspection, indicating "recent/past rodent activity," and that they "recommend checking the seller disclosure." As it turns out, there are no seller's disclosures for estate sales, at least in Washington state.

Additionally, bats are not rodents, they are of the order "chiroptera." Humans are more closely related to mice than bats are. In fact, cats, dogs, horses and dolphins are closer in lineage to bats than to rodents. Nevertheless, that did not matter to our insurance company. Moving in, we had set mouse traps in the attic, which came back empty. A problem with mice seemed small, manageable, something we could easily handle. What we didn't read from our inspection report was the risk of having a thousand bats living and defecating inside our attic walls.

The health department showed up a few days later to help take another specimen. One man in his mid-thirties was the director, a biologist, and he had two others with him. Yet when we got up to the attic, there were no bats just sitting there to be found. We pushed on walls and the insulation in the crawlspace and we could hear them. We could see their scat in the crawlspace, we could definitely smell them, but they were so deep in the walls that we would need to dig into the insulation to reach them. They left empty-handed, but gave me gloves and a specimen container. They also issued an “immanent health hazard” on our property, meaning we could no longer live there.

A day later, the second wildlife control operator (WCO) came by. This time we discovered some bat mummies trapped inside the chimney curtains. One bat was even stuck trying to squeeze out from the top of the glass fireplace doors. The WCO summitted to the very top roof, a good fifty feet in the air. His assessment showed dozens of gaps, patches, and holes. The chimneys were completely uncapped. This was BAT CITY.

On Friday, I braved going up into the attic, I had left open the crawlspace doors the night before so that some of the bats might come into the living space where I could grab them. The plan worked, I found five bats, sleeping, nestled into the top crook where the chimney met the ceiling. Grabbing them with a trash-picker, it was almost too easy. When they are asleep, they don't wake up quickly, they almost seem groggy. One I put in the sample container, the others I released. After taking the single bat in to the health department, Uncle Dave was there. This time however, he was here with his wife Judy, and they were there to help us move back out.

Coming back to the trailer, it was bittersweet. Sure, we'd have family closer again, but we wouldn't have live-in support from Elizabeth. We also had much less space and a very mobile baby. The yard was completely overgrown, the grass was tall and many of last year's greens and vegetables had self-seeded but were overcrowded. With a weekend of intensive effort, we soon had the guest bed, a futon to sleep on, and some of our kitchen gear. It was enough to get by, but most of the place was empty. On a positive note, that made childproofing much easier.

A few days later we got the results of the rabies test, it was negative, but the state health department strongly advised us all to get the rabies post-exposure series shots anyway. That included our baby Robby, who was just barely seven months old at the time. So, we all started going in for the shots. The challenge is that they can only be administered in an emergency room. Which meant a lot of ER visits.

The first shot is the most intense, with two deep needles into each leg, and one in each arm. What's most terrifying is when the nursing staff have no idea how to administer the shot and read the instructions in front of you. Then you receive the next round at three, seven and fourteen days out. Robby took it like a champ, despite the long waits at the pediatric ER. However, at night he would have extreme fevers, coupled with his continued cough and mucus-filled eyes, it was a gut-wrenching time for us.

Then the hospital we were getting our shots done at ran out of dosage, so we had to finish at a different hospital in a different provider. In the end, we had twelve ER visits, across three hospital systems, with all the billing challenges that come with that. Luckily, we hit the out-of-pocket maximum, and would only be paying around eight-thousand dollars, instead of the sixty-thousand that it would cost without insurance. Still, it added insult to injury on the whole situation.

I love my wife and my son. Watching Robby suffer because of this situation began to fill me with a fatherly rage that is impossible to put into words. The bats had not done this to us, people had done this to us. Specifically, the heirs to the estate, possibly the seller’s agent, our buyer’s agent, and the inspector, all played some part in this. So, we considered our legal options. As an attorney, Elizabeth researched the case law, and reached out to some former associates for support. However, after spending a few thousand dollars reviewing the situation, it became clear that Washington state is a 'buyer beware' environment. There was even a legal case where a seller painted over a rotten foundation that collapsed and the buyers lost the suit. In short, we were completely, utterly, screwed.

Not knowing what else to do, we did what any sensible millennial in our situation would, we told the internet. On Reddit, we soon had a post with over two million views. Despite tons of bad advice, there were a few nuggets of value. The terms "north Puget sound, Victorian, bats" was enough for some readers to figure out which house, including one prospective buyer who had an inspection done almost a year prior. It was wild to read it, the other home inspector clearly identified the severe damage done by bats, not rodents. There was no loose language, it was extraordinarily clear.

Even armed with this new knowledge, it made no difference in the legal case. We even had admission from the neighbors that the heirs to the estate had lived on the property almost two years fixing things. We found their Facebook posts proving they lived there, but it made no difference. The slippery wording in our home inspection was enough to put us "on notice" and to protect everyone, except for us. Forget becoming a serial killer, if you want to murder people in Washington state, just get a realtor's license. You'll face less liability than a doctor and there's no such thing as malpractice.

Then the story was picked up by the local paper, the 'Whidbey News Times.' In preparation for the article, we decided to pull together a funding page. We felt like a GoFundMe wasn't quite aligned, we earned enough not to need charity. Half-joking, we decided on an IndieGoGo campaign for what we had been calling the 'Bat-and-Breakfast.' People could buy names on bat-boxes or pre-book a stay in the "bat-suite." That's what came out in our article, our story plus our vision. Soon we were being interviewed on radio stations, including the local NPR.

The publicity helped with our fundraising a little bit, but mostly it helped with morale. It also led to several introductions to bat biologists and then a call with the Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW). They had a few different divisions, which could offer different types of help. A few weeks later, I was up at the house again, this time meeting with 'Keith' from DFW and 'Janna' from Washington State Parks. Keith setup a huge acoustic scanner atop a tripod, and then we hiked around the local state park to look for potential bat-box placement sites.

We came back to the house at dusk and staked it out. Taking multiple positions, armed with clickers, we performed a ‘bat count.’ To my surprise, the huge colony over the bathroom dormer was gone. We only spotted one-hundred-fifty bats instead of the multiple hundreds we’d seen a month prior. By now it was August, the nights were getting colder, and the bats were starting to migrate south. The species identified were small browns, large browns, yuma myotis and grey-haired. Each species emits a sonar frequency at a different kilohertz range. However, it was likely that only the small browns and the yumas were nesting inside the house. The other two species lived in the woods.

A few weeks later I was up there again, this time with bat conservationists and a WCO entomologist we'll call 'Hanna.' This time the conservationists, two older women who rehabilitated bats, were there to make suggestions on what we could do. Hanna was able to crawl up, into the cavity behind the drywall, and photograph the inside of the roof. Her picture could clearly show the gaps in the ridge vent. Later, we sat outside and did a bat count again. This time however, the bat conservationists had a plugin-device for their phone. When a bat would shoot out, it would dive past us and we could immediately register the species, confirming the small browns and ‘yumas.’

Hanna also found several egress points for other pests and insects. Then there was the big shocker reveal, she had visited the site in twenty-eighteen, before the estate owners had passed away. We had smoking-gun evidence that the estate knew, from the WCO company, from the previous inspection, from our neighbors as witness, and yet we could do nothing. We would have to raise the funds for repair on our own. Getting quotes from our friends in the roofing trade, as well from an insulation contractor, we were looking at prospective costs well above one-hundred-thousand dollars.

The financial reality for us was starting to feel a bit grim. We had bought while interest rates were tolerable, but still challenging. We were barely breaking even each month, so we pushed harder on marketing our social media campaign. I drained half of my 401K, as Mackenzie had emptied hers for the down payment. We tried finding support from the USDA or the Department of Commerce but came up dry. We tried and tried to get our bank to give us a reprieve on the mortgage, but it was just a bureaucratic loop.

Eventually Mackenzie decided we couldn’t afford for her to be a stay-at-home mom, she would go back to work early. It wouldn't add a lot to the cashflow, as we would have to pay for childcare, but it was a step forward.

The weeks flew by. To blow off some steam, I spent time going out fishing with Uncle Dave and his friend, Dr. Bats, yes really, but he studies fish. After a successful day out on the water, we had a family ‘smoke-out.’ We had four species of salmon. Sockeye from the mountainous Lake Wenatchee a few weeks prior, mixed with Coho, Pink and Chinook caught that day on Puget Sound.

Our insurance sales rep, my mom’s close friend, came over for dinner that night. She was sympathetic to our situation but couldn’t do anything to change the mind of the claims agent. Like an early Northwest Thanksgiving, our family and friends were all together for a bountiful meal. It was a glimmer of comfort in what had otherwise been a miserable summer.

By this point, conversations with the DFW were going well. We had engagement from Keith and a few of his peers. They wanted to help us put up bat boxes. As we worked to kick out the bats, the bat boxes could become their home instead of our neighbors’ houses. We eventually made the trek up to sort out which neighbors would be willing to put up a bat box, which need direct sunlight not available in the forested state park. We made a little flyer with the simple message of, "we're going to kick the bats out of our house next year, it would be a real shame if they tried to get into yours." Nobody wants an army of angry pregnant bats breaking into their house, so several people volunteered.

We got offers to help from all sorts of people. The Girl Scouts, the local alternative high school, and various supporters that had read our news story. Coordinating between several state agencies and volunteer groups hasn't been easy, but there is a loose plan in place for what lies ahead. We also wrapped our crowdfunding up, bringing in just shy of twelve grand. Pulling together all of our quotes and trying to finish the plan to remediate the situation, we had the faintest glimmer of hope.

The last time I went up to the house however, something was different. Arriving at dusk on Friday the thirteenth in October, the abandoned mini-van at the end of the road was now clean from debris. The neighbor from the derelict five-story house next to ours appeared to be back. As the light was fading, I staked out our house for bats again. I didn't see any come out from our roof, but I did see one huge bat buzz past my head. Then I heard a noise from next door, and I could see a person climbing down a ladder to get to another section of the run-down house. I had heard that the neighbor next door was in his eighties, but this person did not seem that old.

The house next door is large and foreboding. Walking by it on the easement, you can see the bottom story has a garage area with no doors, it is directly exposed to the elements. There is a rusted-out truck with plants growing out of it, dozens of empty buckets, a huge wet pile of discarded clothes, and several aluminum ladders. Then peering into the garage, there is a running refrigerator withs several animal carriers atop it. Seeing the man shimmy up the ladders reminded me of the scene in Dracula where Jonathan Harker is trapped in the castle, watching the Count climb up and down the cliffside.

I went inside our house and called another neighbor to confirm whether that was 'Mick' or not. It turns out that it was, and the neighbor I called would pass along word to Mick to come introduce himself. However, night had fallen, so it would happen tomorrow. The safest place to sleep was the futon in the basement, so that's where I slept. Then, just before two AM, I woke.

Rubbing my eyes and looking out the window I could see a lit window next door, and standing in the frame was Mick. He was staring, watching our house, maybe watching me, in the dead of night. I did not go back to sleep until sunrise.

The next day I spoke with a few contractors and specialists on various parts of the remodel. It seemed that we would have the support to get the work done, but it was going to be costly. Then, I finally met Mick in the late afternoon.

It took him a long time to answer the door, and when he did, he hurried off, apparently late to drop something at the post office. From accounts by other neighbors, he used to run and audio-video company. He would work on commercial store displays at night, thus the inverted schedule. Still, it was jarring. Soon I was able to drive back to our trailer home, and I was never so relieved to be there. The next day I managed to reach Mick by phone, he was a nice sounding person with medical challenges. My fears seemed to be misplaced, and he was planning to do some cleanup of his property.

Here we now sit, at a crossroads, on Robby's first birthday. The toll this year has taken on us has been monumental. The stress of parenthood, our personal housing crisis, and the innate fears that haunt our every waking moment, have strained our marriage and our sanity like nothing we could ever imagine. We're doing our best to transform this challenge into an opportunity, but every day that passes we are drained further, like Dracula's victims.

A community is forming around us, our family is supporting us, we are staying true to our purpose, dedicated to the ecology of the island. We may yet have hope, but first there is action to be had. Having engaged with dozens of governmental bodies, lending institutions, wildlife experts and contractors, we are only just pulling a full plan together.

The next chapter of our story will pull together a new mix of fascinating characters, tradespeople, and an army of Girl Scouts. For now, we are balancing our busy careers, raising our beautiful son, and solving this illusive housing mystery on step at a time. We are like the undead. Sleep eludes us, stress and anxiety consume us, but we put on a smile and push forward.

For Halloween, we dressed Robby as a baby bat, and we wore matching vampiric outfits. Perhaps the transformation is complete. Just as the baby bats learned to fly, Robby learned to walk. The path ahead is fear mixed with hope, but we are going to keep flapping our wings. We look forward to welcoming you into our home, our castle, for a stay at our illustrious ‘Bat and Breakfast.’

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