Be Silly. Be honest. Be kind.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
BATS VS. BUGS
Bats have a bad reputation
that they don't deserve. Bats are rumored to tangle in
hair and suck blood, but the truth is that bats have no
interest in human hair, and eat bugs, not blood. As for
rabies, bats were once blamed for the spread of the
disease, but in the past 30 years, only 12-15 cases of
human rabies can be traced to bats. Of these cases, not
one was caused by a bat attacking a human, but rather by a
human picking up a sick bat from the ground.
A North American bat consumes over 1,000 mosquitoes, moths
and beetles per night, and is an asset to any yard and
garden. The best way to attract bats is to hang a bathouse.
Bats don't move into a bathouse as readily as birds move
into a birdhouse, so some patience is required. Your
patience will eventually be rewarded with a drastically
reduced bug population.
From the outside, a bat house looks like a bird house, but
instead of using a door in the front, bats enter through
slots in the bottom and cling to partitions inside to
roost. If you plan to build your own bathouse, make wooden
box with 3/4-inch wide slots in the bottom for entrance
holes. The inside wood should be rough, and 1/16-inch deep
grooves in the inside walls will give the bats a place to
hang on and roost. Hang your bat box 15-20 feet above
ground on the southeast side of a building.
You can buy a ready-made bat box here: Bat Box
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