Mention bats and most of us think of the old-time horror movies where Dracula sucks the blood out of his victims. Bats have gotten a bad rap for hundreds of year, but that”s beginning to change as humans discover that bats are one of nature”s most beneficial creatures.
Bats are common in Lake County and people either love them or hate them. Recently a number of local residents complained to me about their homes being infested with bats. One woman who owns a home in Kono Tayee said that bats had invaded her house. She doesn”t want them killed or harmed, just removed from her house. In fact, she tried trapping them by placing a garbage bag over the hole where the bats had been entering and leaving. She ended up trapping more than 40 bats. She took the bats several miles down the road and released them. By the time she returned to her house the bats were sitting in her living room. They had beaten her home.
According to Department of Fish and Game (DFG) biologist Betsy Bolster (a bat expert), bats have excellent homing instincts and once they establish a residence they”ll keep coming back.
Despite their bad press down through the years, bats are very beneficial to mankind. They are considered one of the best bug catchers in the world. An adult bat will catch and consume up to 600 mosquitoes an hour. They are valuable in controlling other insects such as moths. Bats feed at night and locate their prey by a built-in sonar system. They emit ultrasonic sounds and respond to the echo.
There are a lot of myths about bats. They”re not blind and they won”t fly into your hair. They also are not disease carriers. Only one-half of 1 percent carry rabies and they normally bite only in self-defense. Normally they are gentle creatures. However, Bolster cautions people not to pick up a live bat without wearing leather gloves as there is the remote chance that a bat could be carrying rabies.
There is also a lung infection that humans can get from inhaling bat droppings. It”s called histoplasmosis, but Bolster said there has never been a case of it found in California.
Bats are not rodents. They are mammals and nurse their young. They have fur but unlike other mammals they have wings, which are a leathery skin membrane that is stretched between their fingers, forearms and tail. A bat can live as long as 30 years in the wild and they only bear one young per year.
When flying after insects, their heart rate soars to more than 1,000 beats per minute. Twenty-four of the more than 900 species of bats live in California. Of those 24, only four species will tolerate humans. Almost a quarter of the world”s 4,400 species of mammals are bats. The most common bat in Lake County is the little brown bat, which has a wingspan of about 21 inches and a body length of only 2 inches.
Like all wild creatures, bats have enemies. Hawks, owls and eagles will prey on bats. Raccoons, skunks and coyotes also eat them. People often kill them, thinking they are vermin.
Bats are so valuable to our ecosystem that under California law that they can”t be killed by using pesticides or poisons. They cannot be captured or possessed with the exception of removing them from your home or property.
Bats enter buildings during the winter and spring months to rear their young. The most common area for bats is the attic and they can enter through the smallest of holes. Bats normally sleep during the day and then depart the building at night to feed, returning at dawn. The problem that many people have with bats is not the bat itself but their urine and droppings, which can have an offensive odor.
For people who want to remove bats from their homes or other buildings, there are successful methods. One is to hire a bat specialist. The closest one to Lake County is Western Bat Specialists in Penn Valley (888-550-2287).
According to a spokeswoman for Western Bat Specialists, they will come to your home and locate where the bats are entering and leaving the residence. They will seal up all but one entrance and then install a special small, one-way door that allows the bats to leave but not return. The bats have such an acute sense they can locate the remaining exit by the air currents that flow through it. She said they don”t kill the bats and will only remove them during the winter months and after August. This enables the young bats to fly off on their own. She said there are normally only 40 to 100 bats in a home, but they have removed as many as 3,000 of the critters.
Bats are so valuable to the environment that many farmers are now building bat houses to attract the creatures.
There are several Web sites on the Internet that offer information on bats. One excellent site is www.batcon.org. The DFG also has a lot of information on bats. Go to www.dfg.ca.gov and type in bats on their search engine.
The important thing is not to kill a bat. Just remember the next time you see a bat flying around your head that he is worth a lot more alive than dead.
