University Provides Bats With Own Bat House, but They’re Not a Bit Batty About It

GAINESVILLE, Fla. —  It may be the best little bat house in Florida, but no one has been able to persuade the night fliers inhabiting several University of Florida buildings and stadiums.

A specially built stilt house with spacious rafters, inviting crevices and even prerecorded bat squawks was supposed to lure the university’s bat population.

But several months’ work by the university’s top bat experts have failed to persuade the critters to move in to the bat house on the shore of Lake Alice.

Using the “Field of Dreams” theory of “build it and they will come,” the University Athletic Assn. spent $30,000 last year to remove the malodorous bats from the track and tennis stadiums and relocate them to the gray bat house, which has a black bat painted on the outside and is scented with bat guano.

Bill Kern, a graduate student in entomology who works in the Pest Control Unit at the school’s Environmental Health and Safety Division, said many of the bats have taken an aerial survey of the bat house but none has set up residence.

“We will exclude them from each building until they eventually find it,” said Kern, who estimates that there are 20,000 bats living in campus attics, ceilings and stairways.

But Ken Glover, university pest control manager, isn’t so sure. “Whether it works or not remains to be seen,” he said.

The bats were first noticed in the university’s tennis and track stadiums when the odors from their musk glands and droppings became unbearable.

“On a nice, warm day like we’ve been having, it’ll clear your sinuses,” said Michael Powell, a project manager of the athletic association.

It got so bad at one building in March that everyone was sent home and the building was closed. Kern and Glover placed nets on the building so the bats couldn’t return.

So the bats simply migrated across the street to Little Hall.

The two researchers said no one has had much success in attempts to persuade bats where to live. A monumental failure stands in Lower Sugarloaf Key. The 30-foot-high shingled pyramidal building was built in 1920 by Richter Clyde Perky.

To attract the bats, Perky used a secret bat bait developed by Dr. Charles Cambell, a bat expert. The foul-smelling concoction contained bat guano and the ground-up sex organs of female bats.

As far as anyone can tell, not a single bat has moved into the bat tower in its 72 years of existence, although a few birds have tried it out.