Bats

I know that bats are good.  I know that they are threatened by White-nose Syndrome.  I know that one bat can eat 2,000 to 6,000 mosquitoes in one night.  And this, of course, is why I have fallen in love with bats.  There has been an increase in the mosquito population in recent days, and I am counting on my bats to take care of them.

My bats?  Yes, I have bats.  In the belfry and in my crawlspace attic.  This has been a problem for a couple of years, and I am still trying to solve it.

Many years ago, when my daughters' bedroom was upstairs, we would find mysterious droppings on the window seat cushion every morning.  Guano.  Bat poop.  Picture a ceiling where the roof peaks over a ridge beam.  See the little triangular space above the ridge beam?  That's where the bats were entering.  Pete discovered the solution:  he nailed bird netting over that little triangular space (on the exterior), but using nails only on the top of the netting, allowing the bats to fly out, but preventing them from flying back in.  Once he knew they were out, he caulked the opening.  Problem solved.

Well, Pete's not here to help me now.  For the past couple of years, bats have found their way into the crawlspace attic above the closet in my bedroom.  Occasionally, a bat finds its way into my bedroom!  There's nothing quite like waking up to a bat circling around your bedroom.  Believe it or not, I remain quite calm.  I turn on the bedroom lights, open the sliding screen door, and wait on the deck for the bat to exit.  Eventually, it will.

When my son was home this spring, we turned on the attic light when it got dark, went outside, and saw all the cracks of light indicating possible entry sites.  Sam caulked all those cracks, and for several months, my bedroom was bat-free.

Until the other night.  Same old, same old.

So last night, Jenna and I went outside with the attic light on, and sure enough, we found some light escaping.  Duct tape to the rescue.

No bats in the bedroom last night.  I slept like a baby.

A friend of mine is spending a lot of money to rid his attic of a bat population.  I'm still going to try to manage the situation by myself.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, I don't want the bats to leave my yard.  I want them to keep eating the mosquitoes!  And I want them to survive.  I am looking into a bat house.

It's always good to remember that things could be worse.  If this were Australia, the bat flying around my bedroom could be Pteropus poliocephalus . . . also known as a flying fox.  I saw a gazillion of these when I visited Oz in December.  Enlarge the picture and fall in love: