May 3, 2007
Crap in the Attic!
There’s something to be said for doing a thorough home inspection before buying a new property – an upstate New York couple have learned this the hard way after discovering over a ton and a half of bat guano in their attic.
When the couple from Ballston Spa first visited the house last summer, their home inspector pointed out some bats in the attic. The couple contacted an exterminator, who investigated the bat infestation and determined that they should wait a short while before trying to remove the animals, as there were a number of baby bats too young to fly.
In the mean time, the couple simply forgot about the bats. That is, until they noticed the acrid smell permeating their home in January. When the couple ventured into the attic to investigate, they found a number of dead bats and a whole lot of guano - 3,500 pounds of guano, to be precise.
The clean up cost the couple $25,000 and their insurance company refused to cover it. The couple are presently battling through the courts trying to recoup their losses – it obviously didn’t occur to them to sell the guano.
Retailing at over $6 a pound, bat guano is one of the rapid-rising super stars of the organic gardening movement because it makes an exceptional fertilizer. The 3,500 pounds of guano would have been worth an estimated $21,000.
Teacher steals coat, rigs auction
A first grade teacher at Jackson Elementary in Hillsboro, OR is on paid administrative leave pending the investigation of allegations she stole the coat off a student’s back. The student’s Columbia Sportswear ski jacket turned up for sale on eBay shortly after disappearing from school. Elizabeth Logan, the teacher in question, has been charged with two felony counts: theft by receiving and a computer crime. She is scheduled to appear in court again tomorrow.
The student’s mother searched high and low for the jacket, thoroughly exploring the child’s usual playground haunts, as well as Jackson Elementary’s lost and found. She gave up hope and started trawling eBay for a replacement coat and was surprised to find a jacket identical to her daughter’s for sale by a local Hillsboro eBayer. The mother was instantly suspicious. She alerted another bidder that she thought the coat was stolen – the bidder, who apparently knows Logan, was also a Hillsboro resident. And if that wasn’t odd enough, it now appears Logan asked the other bidder to outbid the child’s mother for the coat.
The police became involved in the case in January, after the mother reported the strange turn of events when the jacket turned up a few days after the auction closed – it was found in a mud puddle on the Jackson Elementary playground with a significant amount of damage. Police Commander Chris Skinner explained yesterday that the police uncovered a significant paper trail tying Logan to the jacket and proving she tried to rig the auction.
Logan, who has been teaching for 20 years an earns nearly $70k annually, denies stealing the coat, saying she got it from the lost and found – but the police think otherwise, “All we know is this child was away from her coat for 20 minutes.”
