Bat Count

I finished my annual bat count for the Pennsylvania Game Commission last night.  I’ve been counting bats for years, emerging from our attic, from the space above our porch roof, from our shed, and now from the Kibler one-room school to the east to our house.

My father and I started this years ago.  (He died in 2006, so you know we’ve been doing this for quite a while.)  This year our grandson Gavin helped in the count, so it has become a family tradition.  

I did succeed in keeping them out of our attic, although it took 19 tubes of caulking.  We like bats, but the amount of bat crap in the attic was not a good thing.  We didn’t mind them in the space between the porch and the porch roof, but evidently “white nose syndrome” hurt that particular population, and none are currently living there.

On the other hand, the population in Kibler School is growing, and last night I counted 40 bats emerging from the eaves.  We have installed a bat house on the back of the school, but so far we don’t have any bats living in it.  In my experience, it usually takes a year or two for the bats to discover the house.