No Belfry

I’ve been considering my choices for this year’s overkill garden project (or two) as the days slowly increase in length. Last year it was the well and its 100s of feet of related piping trenches. I’m sure these projects raise a few eyebrows, but unless there is an intervention I will assume I’m safe for another year.

The First project I think I’ll undertake is a bat house. Why? Bats spend all night devouring all sorts of insects that are intent on devouring my garden.

Two summers ago I could see what seemed like hundreds of bats working the area at dusk an dawn due to a colony that had taken up summer roosting in a neighbor’s attic. The guano situation that comes with am attic bat population doesn’t fit well with what most people consider a hygienic home and understandably my neighbor took measures over the winter to seal his attic.

Last summer there was still activity but much less than before; bats were around but not in the insect-population-destroying numbers of the prior year.

My property, even though it is downtown, is in a great location to attract bats to a properly constructed home. Why? Mainly I am surrounded by two rivers coming together and have water within 1/4 mile in 3 directions. I also have nearby a varied terrain with both open and some wooded land.

Bat Conservation International (Batcon.org) is a good place to learn more if you are so inclined.

Back to the overkill thing-

If a small bat house is good, a larger one is better, right?

I’ll be pursuing a larger 2-house version of this one, a 4 chamber nursery house.

(Perhaps one day I will have enough money to be considered “eccentric” instead of my current status as “a little strange”.)