The First Night

Not much of a sunset last night. Guess it is hiding for a bit but I will not give up!

Have you ever had company come over at a really bad time? Well, our first experience with company at our new homestead happened before it was even really built. The shell of the house was up, so the roof was on but the eve's were wide open, when a friend of ours decided to come and visit for a few days. Now remember we were still camping out in the old house. No running water, nothing...  But who were we to say no? When someone is willing to drive over 25 hours to come and visit it is really hard to turn them away. Besides, we had been out here for a few months now and it would be nice to see a friend.

We explained our living conditions and that it he would be camping but he didn't seem to care so we looked forward to his visit. But where to put him? That was a dilemma. We finally decided that we would give him the little house to sleep in and we would camp in the new place. It would be fine right? The roof was on so it would be kinda cool to camp out there. Besides! Maybe it was time to move there! No more going back and forth! Talk about exciting! Finally, we were actually going to spend a night in our new home!

We moved everything we needed over and made a make shift kitchen. By now the nights were warm and the days beautiful so the cold wasn't something we had to worry about. I did wonder if we would have to deal with a lot of mosquito's so while I was in town buying groceries I purchase a netting to go around our bed and set it up. We hadn't had too many mosquitoes yet but I figured it paid to be careful since we had heard on the news that the West Nile virus was a concern.

We had a lovely visit and went to bed a bit late but all seemed well until about an hour after we had gone to sleep. We woke up hearing this weird fluttering noise that was pretty loud. Something was hitting the netting, maybe flies? There were some horseflies hanging around but they hadn't really bothered us. We turned on the flashlights and I have to say it was like a horror film.  Moths!!! Thousands of moths! They were everywhere! Of course as soon as we turned on the flashlights they started to swarm the light. Thankfully they could not get too close as we had the netting up! I've never really had much of a problem with bugs of any kind but this? This was ridiculous!

There was nothing we could do that night but it took us quite a while to fall asleep knowing our house had turned into the set of a strange movie. Eventually we did, however, when we woke up the next morning there were dead and living moths everywhere. We estimated that there were probably tens of thousands of them.

It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. Why they swarmed us I don't know. I had never heard of a moth swarm before. Of course the next day we tried to close the house in completely. The insulation and vapor barrier went up quickly but we didn't account for them hiding during the day and many of them ended up caught in between the vapor barrier and the insulation. At night we would hear them fluttering and trying to get out but there was nothing we could do unless we tore the whole thing down!

I am loath to use chemicals of any kind but must have sprayed two or three cans of Raid trying to get rid of them. They were in everything. Even two weeks later we were still cleaning up dead moths. Despite everything we had a wonderful visit with our friend and he seemed to really enjoy himself. I know there are a still a lot of moth bodies hidden up in the insulation because we were never able to get rid of all of them. Do you think they are helping insulate the place?

If you have ever heard of an instance like this I please let me know about it! It was one of the most bizarre things I have ever experienced.

Thank you Frugally Sustainable for featuring my blog!