Historic Connection: Meeting Our Home's Former Owners

It's been quite a week for us: the bat, violent weather (worst thunderstorm in Sharon in over 22 years -- still no phone or Internet five days later!) and lots of home projects still to be done.

But the week started with a wonderful new connection for us: meeting the Holst-Grubbes.  The Holst-Grubbe family owned and lived in our house for 22 years.  They sold it to another owner, who sold it to us.  They found our blog via Rick from our favorite local liquor store.  (Thanks, Rick!)

George, Michelle and their daughter Allison visited us last Saturday and it was amazing to hear about the history of our house.  George built and installed many of our favorite features.  Michelle walked us through each room and gave us a detailed history. They told us about trees they had planted, secret storage spaces we'd never noticed and fun gossip about the local area. 

We have a deeper connection to the house now and feel that as much as we love the house, we're also taking care of it for the people who will own it after us.

--Posted by Evan & Lindsey

Batgirl

Over the weekend we enjoyed a lovely visit from the Holst-Grubbe family, who owned our house for 22 years. We will blog about that visit soon.

During the visit, George Holst-Grubbe asked a seemingly innocent question:

"So, have you had any bats in the house yet?"

"No," we said, chuckling. Of course we wouldn't have bats in the house. We have an ADT security system, a caretaker and a cleaning person, for goodness sake!

Well.

Today at approximately 11:00am, I decided to bring my laptop out to the porch for a change of scenery from the dining room table, where I've been working a few days this week to avoid the brutal heat wave in Manhattan.

I sat down in my chair with my laptop, power cord, cordless phone, headset, Diet A&W root beer, highlighter pen and a stack of papers. As I plugged in, I noticed something moving in the corner of the porch.

It looked like a frog.

A very dark, creepy, ugly, beady-eyed, evil-looking frog.

I opened the outside porch door and tried to use a chair to nudge the little critter outside. The froglike thing hissed at me and... shot out a wing. A definite, no-doubt-about-it bat wing.

(Cue Batman theme song.)

I immediately closed all the doors, ran inside and put a towel under the porch door to keep the bat from getting inside the house.

Then I took a nap. (Hey, it's really hot and I woke up early this morning.)

After my nap, Evan called and I told him about the bat. While I was telling the story, I looked up and there was the bat himself (or herself, who knows?), climbing up the exposed brick in our dining room.

Country lesson: Towels are not an effective tool to keep bats out of one's house.

With Evan on the phone, I grabbed my laptop and cord and barricaded myself in the mud room.

"Do you have enough water?" Evan asked, in full emergency mode.

I did.

While Evan called Country Caretaker, I then proceeded to do exactly what one should never do in a situation like this: I Googled "bats and rabies."

Here is the first piece of information I found: Rabies can be confirmed only in a laboratory. However, any bat that is active by day (like, say, at 11:00am?), is found in a place where bats are not usually seen (for example, in a room in your home or on the lawn) (or, perhaps, your porch and dining room?), or is unable to fly (and, therefore, is crawling around behind a chair?), is far more likely than others to be rabid. Such bats are often the most easily approached. Therefore, it is best never to handle any bat.

I decided to leave the house and go outside.

About 10 minutes later, Adam from Country Caretaker arrived. I have never been so happy to see that big burgundy truck. Adam heroically went into the house. I heard some commotion and then he came out with the bat caught in his hands between two baseball caps.

You will be pleased to know that he asked if I wanted to take a picture of the bat for our blog.

I said no. Sorry to disappoint our loyal readers, but I just couldn't do it. Instead, I thanked Adam, called Evan to report the good news, went back into the house and poured myself a very large glass of Tocai from Rick's Wine & Spirits.

So, that is the story of Lindsey and the bat.

The End. (I hope.)

Posted by Lindsey

One For The Road...

One of our favorite local businesses is Rick's Wine & Spirits.  Located a mere mile and a half from our house, Rick and his staff have helped us keep the good times rolling.

They also carry a nice selection of local wine, like the four bottles of 2007 Tocai Friulano by the Millbrook Vineyards & Winery we picked up this evening.  It went very well with the grilled Halibut I made tonight.

I urge all of our visitors to stop by Rick's and pick up a few bottles on your way to see us.

--Posted by Evan

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Last night, just after we went to sleep, at around 12:45am, we heard a loud crash. We were both half asleep, so we heard it but didn't know what it was. I turned on the light and grabbed the ADT Security Alert remote that I keep next to my side of the bed.

Lindsey asked me if I was going to go downstairs to check it out. In this situation it's really hard to tell your new wife that you want her to come with you to check out the loud noise. But I did. I figured if it was an intruder, two against one gave us the upper hand. So we went downstairs (side note: I grabbed a pillow as a weapon. In retrospect this was not the best choice. But I was half asleep). We saw nothing, everything was as it was when we went to bed and the alarm was working fine.

So we went back upstairs and went back to bed. Of course we ended up lying there for about an hour, scrutinizing any and all sounds. There is a fine line between the pitter-patter of a Chipmunk out for a late-night snack and a chainsaw wielding homicidal maniac. At least to me there is. We fell asleep around 2am.

At 4:30am I heard Lindsey say "What is that?" at the same moment I heard what she was referring to: the unmistakable sound of a chainsaw. "So this is it" I thought. I survived 33 years in New York City without a scratch, only to be ripped limb-from-limb by a deranged killer in the quiet little town of Sharon, CT. As I contemplated the irony, Lindsey told me to go check it out. Well, one of us had to go first. So I went to the upstairs landing (sans pillow) and immediately saw a very bright light out of the window. Every recent Hollywood horror movie flashed through my head ("Saw XVII: Death at the Farmer's Market").

And then I saw the answer to the whole evening. There was a massive thunderstorm on Saturday. It must have damaged one of the trees on the periphery of our property because part of it broke off and crashed to the ground. That explained the noise we heard. And now the guy who owns the house next to us was out there cutting up the part of the tree that fell onto his driveway with his chainsaw (our property is next to his very long driveway, but we can't actually see his house).

My only question is why was he doing this at 4:30am? Why not wait until morning?

With the mystery solved, we went back to bed. But we kept the light on downstairs, just in case.

--Posted by Evan