- April 24, 2024
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Flagler County administration recently got something in the mail with an ominous tone. Sent by Fly By Night Inc., in bold letters on the top, it reads: “Bat Management Invoice.” Sounds spooky. And that’s because it is!
A couple of months ago, Richard McInturff, project superintendent for CC Borden Construction, was working on the renovation of the old hospital in downtown Bunnell, which is the site of the future Flagler County Sheriff’s Operations Center. As the metal flashing was removed from the side of the roof, he noticed a row of sleeping bats. They weren’t all that scary, though: They were no larger than his thumb, he said, adding that he had never seen bats inhabit a building like that in 35 years in the business.
The discover of bats put a stop to the construction of the rear of the building for a while (interior work continued). Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sent in a game warden to examine. He stayed out one night and watched groups of 50 bats drop out of holes in rear of the building and skitter through the air on their mosquito-hunting expeditions.
Before construction could continue, a permit had to be obtained, and a bat mitigation project had to be completed. This sounds like a job for Faith Alkhatib!
Faith is the county engineer (and a neighbor of mine), and she met me at the site on April 16, the day after the deadline for the mitigation. I asked her how many bats had been found originally.
“Not a lot,” she said with a straight face. “Maybe 300 or 400.”
She explained that an plastic tube called an “excluder” had been placed in a small hole in the building in such a way that the bats could exit but not re-enter. The culmination of the mitigation effort was the construction of a bat house. It’s about the size of a large suitcase, mounted on a pole about 20 feet in the air near the building. The cost of the bat house was about $600, plus about $400 in research and “urban bat population management,” according to the Bat Management Invoice.
Unfortunately, although the bat house has been complete for a month, there is no evidence of activity; or, in other words, there is a disturbing dearth of droppings underneath the structure. Laura Seckbach Finn, director of the nonprofit Fly By Night, wrote in an email to Alkhatib that the construction activity likely drove the bats away for now.
I hope they return. Because what a shame to have this beautiful bat house (max occupancy: 1,100) with no bats. We have enough vacant homes in our county without adding another.
Finn added another wrinkle, however. She wrote in the email: “It’s important to remain alert: Bats are faithful to a roost.” In other words, they could return and try to re-inhabit their old haunts in the building.
But even if they do live in the building, what’s wrong with that? Finn’s email is sprinkled with a playful emoticon ^^0^^ that makes you want to have a bat for a pet. And her email signature ends with this cuddly quote from Mark Twain’s autobiography: “A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful for caressings, if offered in the right spirit.” I wonder how bats show their gratitude? And what is the “right spirit” in which to offer such caressings?
Most of all, it would appeal to our inner super hero as a county if we knew the sheriff had bats living in his office. They don’t bother anyone during the day, and at night, there’s no need for a bat signal: The bats are already here.
