March 6, 2005
Bat Box
Speaking of bats, I have a bat box that's been sitting on my dining room floor forever. I have no idea where it came from. I gave one to my mother once, but this ain't it, obviously. I need to hang it on my fence to attract some bats, who will repay my largesse by swallowing voluminous amounts of mosquitoes. At least that's the theory. God forbid I should catch dengue hemorrhagic fever while sipping on a cold one poolside. I should probably put up about twenty of these. Just to be on the safe side.
Posted by Velociman at March 6, 2005 12:56 PMI loved the bats I had on the mini-farm---- at least until one flew down the chimney and ended up inside the house. Freaked the wife out when that happened. And happened several times.
I always tried to catch them and turn them loose again. A big beach towel works well for that purpose. Bats are EXCELLENT at mosquito control.
Posted by: Acidman at March 6, 2005 5:47 PMWe have a huge Mexican Freetail bat colony in Austin. They live under a bridge that goes over the Colorado River. Every night hundreds of people walk out onto the bridge to watch them come out to feed. Pretty spectacular sight.
Posted by: Dash at March 6, 2005 7:06 PM"To the batpoles, old chum!"
Posted by: Jim - PRS at March 6, 2005 8:04 PMI suppose I should read the posts from oldest to newest, as I commented proudly of my knowledge of bats, and mosquito control, only to find that you had already addressed the subject.
Posted by: jmflynny at March 6, 2005 9:24 PMYes, flynny, you read posts like my boss reads e-mails.
Posted by: Velociman at March 6, 2005 9:47 PMHEY! HEY! There! You need to be very careful about throwing around accusations such as that!
Posted by: jmflynny at March 6, 2005 9:57 PMRight! My bad.
Posted by: Velociman at March 6, 2005 10:30 PMI don't know what I'm talking about (So what else is new?) but since that's never stopped me, I shall continue.
I've only seen batboxes once. They were mounted about 20 feet up, on the sides of the light poles by the lake at Bethesda Park.
And they'd been painted a dark color, too. That made no sense to me because since bats don't see well, what difference does the color make?
You might want to ask some of those here who have more experience with batboxes than I do.