Homes that have gone into foreclosure and sit unoccupied often suffer many indignities. However, a foreclosed house in Tifton, Ga., has more than its share of problems — perhaps 20,000 more.
The house, in the town’s historic district, has been taken over by about 20,000 Mexican free-tailed bats, which have filled the interior and exterior walls with guano, according to a representative of an animal-removal service, who described the accumulated bat waste as a "cocktail of pathogens."
The Tifton Gazette reported that the house has been unoccupied (by humans) for more than a decade; city officials recently declared the house unfit for human habitation until the bats are gone. (The animal-removal service will install one-way valves that will let the bats leave but will block their return to the house, the paper said.)
The paper quoted a local real estate agent as saying she had a buyer who is interested in the foreclosed home, which is reportedly owned by a lender in California.
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