A New Home for our Friends

We’ve heard all the jokes by now:

• They MUST be driving you batty!
• To the Batcave!
• You’ve got BATS in your BELFRY!

Yep, we’re starting to get used to our new tenants.

You might recall I wrote that we have bats at our house. They’re roosting in small niche between the cedar siding and an attic vent on the west side of our house. We didn’t invite them to come. We were hoping they’d soon leave.

They make an incredible mess on the driveway and bats CAN be a source of rabies. So, at first glance, they would seem like unwelcome guests. We called a humane wildlife removal company to see about installing a bat exclusion system.

They came late last week and guess what? Time to pass out cigars. We have baby bats. Seems as though our 30 roosting bats have multiplied. And guess what? Baby bats are protected by law. They CAN’T be removed.

So, like it or not, our tenants will be with us until the end of June. And all jokes aside, we’ve started to notice some things.

They’re smart. The wildlife removal company installed the first part of the exclusion system but it didn’t take the bats long to find out that they have a new gateway to the world…it’s just a couple feet below where the old one was. They’ve also discovered that we have a bucket that collects air conditioning condensate.

Talk about an excellent freshwater source!

We have also noticed something else. We worked out in the yard on Saturday. My wife, who is quite prone to mosquito bites was never bitten. Normally, she’s like a mosquito magnet. But, I rather suspect that there are no mosquitos around at all. So, no mosquito = no bite.

So, it didn’t take us very long to decide that we want to find a way to keep our flying friends around (albeit in a remote location). So, we found a bat house – with a 15’ pole – that we really like. So, we purchased the bat house. We hope to have it fully installed in a great location just in time when our friends move out.

It looks like this:

We went online and read a lot of information on bat habitat. For example

Common placement mistakes:

The greatest bat house in the world will never be used unless it is placed properly. In cool climates it is best to avoid shady locations. Often this limits the mounting options to strategically placed posts or sunny chimneys. Bad placement includes the following:

• A bat house that is in a shady location. It needs a minimum of seven hours of morning sunlight.
• A bat house mounted on a tree. Rarely will the box ever receive enough direct sunlight in cool climates.
• Bat house placed on a structure, directly under the eves. The eves may shade the bat house.
• Placed too far from permanent water. Dry, arid locations are less desirable, though bats will drink from swimming pools.
• Located over bright surfaces which reflect light into the bat house. Shiny flashing or pans placed to collect guano may deter use at certain times of the season.
• Located near burn barrels or air vents where smoke or strong wind will disturb bats. Beware of air conditioner units which may not be active when installation occurs.
• Erected where the box is prone to vandalism. Shaking the bat house to watch them fly out during the daytime will cause your bats to abandon the bat house.
• Placed in brightly lighted areas. Avoid mounting where dusk-to-dawn lights shine directly onto the box.
• Erected directly along roads where bats are vulnerable to automobile traffic during their dawn return.
• No maintenance. Some mounting solutions turn a quick yearly inspection into a difficult and even dangerous ordeal. Bat houses do require minor wasp and seam inspection, otherwise bats will begin to abandon the box. Be alert for a hornet invasion as well; bats will immediately abandon a bat house until these aggressive insects are removed.

So, we’re excited about this new possibility.

You hear news about bat populations dying out because of white nose syndrome. So, if we can do a little bit to provide a good home to this group of bats, then we’re all for it.

They’re smart; they’re interesting. And, if they can wipe out some stinging, sucking bugs in the process, then I’m all for it!

JG

Originally posted 5/15/2012