Post by L Roebuck on Aug 14, 2006 8:55:16 GMT -5
Bats in our house? Sure, but that's OK
By Steve Foss
Lisa counted them as they slipped out from under the ripped tar paper and the gap between the soffit and the siding.
“One, two-three-four,” she breathed in the gloaming, “five, six, seven, eight-nine.”
We were sitting out on our lawn furniture behind the house on Finn Hill, peacefully sipping a couple cocktails and waiting for dusk to fall.
We were on little brown bat watch.
I’d just finished the hard work of building a raised vegetable garden bed out of rough-cut, gray old weathered lumber, raising quite a bead of sweat in the evening heat. The job was done and I’d just showered.
“Come on out and watch for bats with me,” Lisa invited.
Quietly we sat, two feet from our hummingbird feeders, as moisture condensed in the high dewpoint on our glasses. Adult and juvenile hummers buzzed us and each other as the light went out of the day.
There was a span of barely a few seconds when the hummers remained in the darkening yard, the mosquitoes came out, and the first of the bats emerged — a perfect confluence.
We were looking at a spot near the rear corner of our house, where an addition of a single story had been put on the two-story house. After several years it had remained unsided, though the sheathing had been covered with tar paper and fastened in place with nails and lath. Over time, as these things always do, the wind had caught the odd corner and torn some spots.
It was under one of those pieces of tar paper that Lisa, hearing some scratching a few afternoons ago, had found several bats after peeling away a corner.
Later that evening, she’d counted 15 bats emerging, but had walked into the middle of their launches.
On this evening, however, they kept darting out one or two at a time until we tallied 37.
That’s a lot of bats to rest under tar paper and inside the eaves of our house. Bat guano, you know.
But little brown bats don’t hibernate in houses. They find caves, generally, and will be gone within a couple months to those winter quarters.
A good friend gave us a suggestion on how to place chicken wire to allow the bats to leave for the evening but prevent them from coming back in the morning.
Humane, for sure.
But we like to have them around. Worth their weight in mosquitos, they are, and one more piece of the wildlife puzzle that, when put together, makes us feel closer to our natural world.
In other words, we’re keeping the bats. So Lisa and I sat, sipping in the breeze, surrounded by the flitting of slight shadows, and I was notified that something that would allow us to keep the bats but keep them out of our living quarters had been added to my honey-do list.
“You’ll build a bat house this winter, right?” Lisa asked.
“Yes dear.”
Contact Foss at (218) 365-3114 or ely@timberjay.com.
Article: www.timberjay.com/current.php?article=2503
By Steve Foss
Lisa counted them as they slipped out from under the ripped tar paper and the gap between the soffit and the siding.
“One, two-three-four,” she breathed in the gloaming, “five, six, seven, eight-nine.”
We were sitting out on our lawn furniture behind the house on Finn Hill, peacefully sipping a couple cocktails and waiting for dusk to fall.
We were on little brown bat watch.
I’d just finished the hard work of building a raised vegetable garden bed out of rough-cut, gray old weathered lumber, raising quite a bead of sweat in the evening heat. The job was done and I’d just showered.
“Come on out and watch for bats with me,” Lisa invited.
Quietly we sat, two feet from our hummingbird feeders, as moisture condensed in the high dewpoint on our glasses. Adult and juvenile hummers buzzed us and each other as the light went out of the day.
There was a span of barely a few seconds when the hummers remained in the darkening yard, the mosquitoes came out, and the first of the bats emerged — a perfect confluence.
We were looking at a spot near the rear corner of our house, where an addition of a single story had been put on the two-story house. After several years it had remained unsided, though the sheathing had been covered with tar paper and fastened in place with nails and lath. Over time, as these things always do, the wind had caught the odd corner and torn some spots.
It was under one of those pieces of tar paper that Lisa, hearing some scratching a few afternoons ago, had found several bats after peeling away a corner.
Later that evening, she’d counted 15 bats emerging, but had walked into the middle of their launches.
On this evening, however, they kept darting out one or two at a time until we tallied 37.
That’s a lot of bats to rest under tar paper and inside the eaves of our house. Bat guano, you know.
But little brown bats don’t hibernate in houses. They find caves, generally, and will be gone within a couple months to those winter quarters.
A good friend gave us a suggestion on how to place chicken wire to allow the bats to leave for the evening but prevent them from coming back in the morning.
Humane, for sure.
But we like to have them around. Worth their weight in mosquitos, they are, and one more piece of the wildlife puzzle that, when put together, makes us feel closer to our natural world.
In other words, we’re keeping the bats. So Lisa and I sat, sipping in the breeze, surrounded by the flitting of slight shadows, and I was notified that something that would allow us to keep the bats but keep them out of our living quarters had been added to my honey-do list.
“You’ll build a bat house this winter, right?” Lisa asked.
“Yes dear.”
Contact Foss at (218) 365-3114 or ely@timberjay.com.
Article: www.timberjay.com/current.php?article=2503