by Dan True Bats in Your Belfry?
If you were surprised to hear of bats occupying Roden-Smith and a local school, you may be surprised to know that one bat can dine on 800 to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in one hour. So what were the bats doing in Roden-Smith and a school? Looking for a place to hibernate in Clovis through the winter.
Personally, I dislike mosquito-sized insects boring holes through my skin and sucking away at my blood as I chase a ball around the golf links, grill outdoors, or watch grancshildren play outside on a summer evening.
Considering the bat's appetite, I felt it worthwhile to offer the furry flyers a place to stay in our yard through the winter and then sic them on to our mosquitos next spring and summer. My wife Diane greeted that idea with wide-eyed fear of bats in her hair, or worse, the dreaded rabies. "Not in my backyard", she shuddered.
I know enough about the little fellows to understand that those ideas are dark age myths. As to the hair myth, I can't imagine a bat family waking in the evening from their daytime sleep and yawning, "Let's all fly out into the dark and get ourselves tangled up and tied in knots in a woman's hair so we can get ourselves killed by her boyfriend." As for rabies...just another dark age myth. Although our enlightened age has discounted both myths, many prefer to cling to dark age ideas. To do so is to embrace getting chewed on by a variety of insects. Is this preferable to accepting enlightenment?
My wife hates insects. At the same time she is extraordinarily intelligent, with a Masters in Audiology from the University of Idaho. So I appealed to her smarts. Diane's training and experience made her aware that bats "echo-locate" insects on the fly through onboard audiology. Even so, after we heard about the Clovis bats, they were not an animal she was eager to deliberately cultivate. Gently I suggested she surf the 'net for bat info. In short order she was connected to www.batconservation.org.
As I said, Diane is extraordinarily intelligent. After she read and absorbed a lot of bat information in a short time, she quietly placed an order for a copy of the build-it-yourself bathouse titled "A Simple Guide to Bat House Designs." Cost was $3.50 plus postage.
Materials for two bat houses that will each old 100 bats cost $11.47. She is helping me build them and we hope to have them installed in our back yard in time to lure the little creatures to spend the winter with us. If we're successful, we expect our mosquito population to be in peril next spring and summer. With a chuckle she hopes the little night flyers also learn to catch cockroaches.
My license plate is "HUMBIRD". If we do attract bats, Diane is thinking of "BATMOBL" for hers.
Dan True is the author of Hummingbirds of North America, published by the University of New Mexico Press. He is an aviator and former weatherman for the Albuquerque and Amarillo, Texas markets. Visit his web site to learn more. Photo courtesy Dan True.
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