Bats drive woman from apartment

ABERDEEN, Scotland, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- A Scottish woman says she has temporarily left her apartment in Aberdeen to hundreds of bats roosting in a crawl space.

Alison Murray, who works for an oil company, bought the top-floor flat in January, The Scotsman reported. In May, she realized she was sharing it with the bats -- about 500 female pipistrelle bats and their pups.

Because the bats are protected under both British and European conservation laws, her only legal recourse is to wait until the bats move out at the end of summer and then seal up the holes they used to turn the crawl space above her apartment into a nursery.

"I found the first pipistrelle in my kitchen and I thought at first it was a one-off," she said Tuesday. "But after I found bat number four I realized there was a problem. I found them sleeping in the plug hole in the kitchen sink and flying about the living room."

Murray decided to take refuge with her parents when she dried herself after a shower and found a bat in the towel.

She says she isn't sure she will feel comfortable in the apartment even if the bats leave.