Bats

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 15, 2009

By Helen Sierra, Ogle County Master Gardener

Bats are popular Halloween symbols, depicted as fearsome fanged critters. We should be grateful for bats, not afraid of them.

Bats are fabulous controllers of night flying insects. One little brown bat can devour 3,000 to 7,000 insects a night. Among the bugs: mosquitoes, corn borer and cutworm moths. They aid homeowners who'd like to enjoy their backyards and farmers too!

"If you look at a bat face, they resemble a little Chihuahua dog. I don't know of anyone who has a natural fear of Chihuahuas so bats must freak us out because they hang upside down," says Sandra Mason, a University of Illinois Extension educator.

Bats have specialized legs allowing them to hang upside down, a trait that allows them to use areas for roosting and raising babies that nothing else uses.

"People are afraid that bats will fly into their hair," says Mason, a fear she quips started in the 1950s when women had beehive hairdos.

Bats have good eyesight and some also have a sonar system called echolocation. Bats send out high frequency sounds, then listen for the echoes to avoid objects and to find food in complete darkness.

Many people believe bats are filthy and carry disease, but the little mammals "spend a great deal of time cleaning their fur," Mason says, and "they have no more incidence of rabies than other mammals."

Homeowners don't want bats moving into their attics, which sometimes happens. Be sure to close any entrances to your attic or elsewhere in your home.

An alternative is to install bat houses. Bat Conservation International has information about excluding bats and how to make bat houses at http://www.batcom.org. I've seen ads for bat houses in some gardening magazines and catalogs.

Our old barn is home to several adult bat pairs. On summer nights, just before dark, I head outdoors to watch the bats zipping above our garden and the neighboring farm fields. Occasionally, I've heard them squeak, as they rocket past, but not one has come close to connecting with me. What fabulous fliers!

Far greater a menace to bats than bad press and Halloween cartoons are wind turbines, those giant windmills turning up in this region, including Ogle County.

"Bat fatalities have now been documented at nearly every wind facility in North America where adequate surveys for bats have been conducted, and several of these sites are estimated to cause the deaths of thousands of bats per year," reports the U.S. Geological Survey on its website.

"The mystery of why bats die at turbine sites remains unsolved," says the website, which also says that it's unknown why some bats fly into the turbines instead of avoiding them, as they do other objects. For more details, search: bat fatalities at wind turbines.

Though Halloween is advertised with black cat and bat images, remember, these characterizations aren't reality. Bats are valuable members of our ecosystem. They deserve our respect and protection.

A Halloween happening: The Ogle County Master Gardeners will be at the Halloween on the Prairie celebration at Jarrett Prairie Center, 7993 N. River Rd., Byron IL, 815/234-8535, on Sunday, Oct. 25 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Master Gardeners will be at two tables just inside the Center. Fund-raising items for sale include gently used garden tools, hand-decorated candles, daffodil and Resurrection lily bulbs, attractive permanent plant markers and live plants. Local Master Gardeners will be available to answer gardening questions.