MTO: Bats moved to new home

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City workers moving flying mammals to new home

By Malcolm X Abram
The Macon Telegraph

The thousands of Southeastern brown bats that have made the gables of the round white building at Central City Park their bat cave for decades have a new home.

Unfortunately, the bats don't know it exists, and it could take quite a while for them to find it. On Thursday, city workers started the process of removing the bats from the round building and acclimating them to their custom-built housing.

A group of Macon/Bibb County Parks and Recreation Department workers and Brian Rood, director of Mercer University's environmental science program, introduced about 15 of the estimated 5,000 to 10,000 nocturnal critters to their new bat condo.

The bats' new sanctuary is a wood house set on 12 foot telephone poles in the southern corner of the park, near the Ocmulgee River levee. Underneath the roof are several rows of vertical wooden slats made of particle board to ensure good bat grip. The slats are narrowly spaced to help the bats keep the temperature high as they huddle together.

Rood said the bat house was completed in June, but no bats could be moved because summer is prime bat mating time. The new home will house as many as 60,000 bats, giving the present colony plenty of room to grow.

The first step Thursday was to capture a small number of bats so they could be transported in the hope they would remember the location. So Rood, along with forester Steven Strickland, parks department worker William Rachel and others removed one of the two wooden bat houses recently attached to the roof of the round building. Holding two makeshift bat sacks fashioned from kitchen aprons stapled at the ends, the group gingerly deposited the bats one-by-one.

Contrary to folklore, bats are neither thirsty for human blood nor likely to attack. In fact, when forced to interact with humans they are usually quite passive.

"When you open the box, they just kind of look at you," Rood said, "They're not inclined to move; they're just surprised to see you."

The unknowing bat pioneers were then driven to what Rood hopes will eventually become their new home.

At the sanctuary, Rood, standing on a ladder, was handed the first potential tenant, who quickly wriggled free and flew straight for the trees. The remaining bats were more cooperative, cautiously entering the bat sanctuary and gathering together. Rood says several more transplant procedures are necessary before the bats will begin to learn the new location.

"It's such an ideal space for them, but the likelihood they'll stay here tonight is pretty low," Rood said.

Bats are communal animals that follow patterns. To disrupt a set pattern and start a new one takes a time and energy. It took the University of Florida three years to move a bat colony that had settled in its stadium.

To deter Macon's bats from returning to the round building, sheets of plastic have been placed to reduce the number of entry points. The bats can get out, but they are finding it more and more difficult to get back into the building, forcing them to adjust their patterns.

"Eventually we'll have to seal every crack so they have to find someplace else." Rood said.

At dusk, phase two of the plan to annoy the bats began, when Strickland and Rood stoked fires in two barbecue pits placed at both entrances of the building in an attempt to smoke out the bats.

"If we are consistent and continue to give them frustrating evenings," Rood said as smoke billowed toward the rafters, "they should begin to look for a new place to roost."