BY INMAN NEWS, FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011.
1. Opossum
A Harris County, Texas, real estate brokerage is being sued by a former tenant for negligence, among other things, because the tenant contracted typhus after moving into a home rented by the agent.
According to UltimateMontrose.com, an affiliate of the Houston Chronicle, the suit says that in 2009 the tenant was admitted to a hospital with typhus after an ongoing opossum infestation of the house brought fleas into the home. She charges that the defendants' failure to properly manage the house exposed her to an unreasonable risk.
2. Bats
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.
And I thought the squirrels nesting in the attic of my 4 flat were bad.
