this is the original summer kitchen that sits on my parents' country property. the history people love it because it still has its original paint. i used to love it. i remember going into it as a young girl and imagining the women from long ago cooking in it on a real fire. i remember sweeping it and thinking how it would make a great playhouse or fort. it reminded me of little house on the prairie because it had a loft and i thought how fun it would be if i had the nerve to sleep up there. sometimes i thought it could be my own little barn. i could get some chickens and scatter hay about or maybe i could throw quilts on the ground and use it as a picnic house...i had big dreams for the little place. but it needed some work and so it was locked up for safety reasons and was left to decorate the land for awhile. for a good long time no one thought much about it. then one summer day a few years ago, i woke up really early and groggily looked out an upstairs window from the main house. i couldn't believe what i saw flying into this sweet little antique dwelling - bats. and i don't mean like ten, i mean like hundreds. no one believed it, but after further inspection it was discovered that at some point in the past few years, the charming summer kitchen had become a bat house. originally, i was completely freaked by the idea of bats taking over my little playhouse. but then i became intrigued by it. when you walk by you can hear the squeaks and fluttering from within. at dusk you will see the bats leave usually in pairs or groups of four. and at exactly 6 am in july, they all fly back into the house in one big swarm. we have been told people come to see the bat house and while i was there this past time people had set up lawn chairs to watch the bats leave. people come and take pictures of the house, not just because of the historic value, but because of the bats. we hear it has become a local interest. so my mom has to make a painful decision. we love the mosquito-free living the bats provide on the property, we love that area people and town visitors find it so interesting, we especially love that because the bats have a nice place of their own, they are not in the rafters of the house where we sleep...but we want our cute little summer kitchen back! so, what do you think...should we kick them out?