BUYING A BAT HOUSE,
BUT, OH MY, THE BATS
 
June 6, 2004

     ANY insect found in my house is destined to be poisoned or pancaked. Luckily I haven’t encountered any environmentalist groups named Save the Spider. But I do have friends who make me feel guilty about my killer instinct. One woman will scoop up a cricket found indoors and set it free outside, a striking contrast to my reaction, which is screaming followed by flailing with a rolled-up newspaper.

     Naturally, summer requires an accelerated exterminating campaign to insure a healthy insect-free zone around my deck. The seasonal offensive requires serial-killer success, but how to achieve maximum deaths with minimal effort?

     A bug zapper would be an eyesore. And the hardware store’s insecticide aisle included chemical products with warning labels so scary that they repelled me from holding the can in my bare hands. I was in the market for a cleaner, kinder kill.

     Then I had an entomological epiphany. Bats. One bat will eat thousands of mosquitoes a night. I loved the ease. And a small bat house accommodates 12 bats. I loved the efficiency. There would be no dangerous chemicals and I would be considered an environmental darling on equal footing with the cricket lady (despite my raccoon coat). I saw my mosquito-free future, and it had little brown wings.
Common to Long Island from March through Halloween are little brown bats and big brown bat (only a half inch distinguishes the two). Numbers on mosquito munching vary, but 600 mosquitoes an hour was average, in addition to other nighttime insects. “They’re in the air a lot, that’s why they eat so much, for energy,” said Ritchie Lettis, a bat fancier and co-owner of Wild Bird Center, a store in Stony Brook. He told me that bats’ fluttery, seemingly erratic flight pattern is actually an clever adaptation allowing them to match an insect’s flight. These tiny nocturnal mammals can catch a bug in the outstretched skin of their wings, lift their legs to their mouth, shove the bug in and continuing flying. Now that’s a bug zapper.

     At Hicks’ Nurseries in Westbury, bat houses are sold in the bird feeder section. The goldfinch feeder packaging pictured a pretty little finch, but the black label stapled to the wooden bat house had minimal directions and no pictures. Even the praying mantis got better billing in the adjacent Remedies section featuring chemical-free pesticides. A pouch of “Live Praying Mantis Egg Cases” had an illustration of a praying mantis standing and smiling with a rake in one of its hands. Did I detect bat scorn?

     Surprisingly, a bat house is just an empty rectangular wooden box with an opening at the bottom. The bats roost inside (yes, hanging upside down), squeezing in tight with others for warmth. I bought the smallest model: 2 inches deep, 11 inches wide and 16 inches long. I could expect a dozen bats.
What I didn’t expect was the problem of placement. Bat houses should be mounted facing south, 12 to 15 feet above the ground on a pole or under the eaves of a house. The latter was out of the question. My husband and I like to admire nature from afar: Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom or Animal Planet programming. While bats in one’s backyard may reflect a balanced ecosystem, if bats got into our house Robert and I would run screaming into the night appearing to have bats in our belfry.
I consulted Mr. Lettis about tree mounting. All my oak trees were compromised by branches of smaller trees below. Unlike birds that can fly off their perch, bats have weak legs and upon leaving the house drop a few feet before flying, requiring unobstructed swooping room below.

     The dropping and swooping sounded problematic.

     Meanwhile, my idea was being met with surprise and derision. “Why do you want to attract bats?” my friend Diane asked, echoing the comments of others. “And what have you done with my friend Paula?” (I’m not regarded as the outdoorsy type.)

     “We see bats in our backyard,” said my friend Chris, “but we still have lots of mosquitoes.”
Really?

     I made further inquiries. Manny Alvarado, manager of Able Wildlife Solutions in Valley Stream, thinks bats are amazing creatures, but is acquainted with them more for their pest popularity. “During the summer we’re swamped with bat work,” he said, explaining their exclusion method. He installs reverse vents on houses: bats check out, but they can’t check in.

     But setting out the bat welcome mat, was I inviting another pest problem? I worried, if I mount it how many will come? I imagined backyard barbecues ruined by sweeping hordes, bats getting caught under the patio umbrella, women screaming, men swatting, mosquitoes laughing on the sidelines.
Suddenly the romantic flicker of citronella candles seemed like the perfect solution. Though bats looked adorable on the internet (those big puppy eyes, oversized ears and little snouts), when I was out at night spying the sky, I’d get spooked by the flutter of a moth. What was I thinking? I saw our bat-filled future, and it showed Robert and I uninstalling the bat house, waiting until dark - after they’d all dropped and swooped - to take it down. Decision made. Problem averted. I was resigned to a bat-free summer.

     And then I received a response email from my next door neighbor who had been away while I was conducting bat house research. “What a coincidence!” Jeanette wrote, explaining she had just gotten a bat house. “I’m so glad you don’t object to it.”