Bats In Strongsville Get New Homes

STRONGSVILLE, OH — Bats get a bad reputation. Despite all the good press Bruce Wayne has afforded the nocturnal insect eaters, many people still associate the animals with vampires and rats (with wings). But bats are a huge part of a healthy ecosystem, and a group of (mostly) Strongsville residents recently made sure the animals have a safe place to close their eyes and dangle upside down in the city.

Girl Scouts Troop 70752 recently installed bat boxes in the city's Backyard Preserve park with the help of Jennifer Milbrandt, coordinator of natural resources for the city, and a pair of eager helpers from Home Depot. The troop is made up of 10 girls, mostly from Strongsville, and are led by Christina Macejko.

The troop was searching for possible Bronze projects (a community service project) to take on. While exploring possibilities, one of the scouts recommended doing a project building bat boxes. The entire troop enthusiastically agreed to take on the project.

"My first thought was, 'You've got to be kidding,'" Macejko told Patch. She knew nothing about bat boxes or how to build them.

What exactly is a bat box? Macejko asked herself.

Think of the boxes as an extremely elaborate bird house, capable of housing hundreds of birds at a time. Bat boxes are complex residences for bats; each box contains hundreds of compartments for the creatures. All of the boxes are painted with dark colors, allowing the animals to sleep during sunlight hours, and have specially designed bottoms that allow droppings to fall out.

"Bats like to live in the hollow of a tree, or small confined areas," Milbrandt told Patch. "What this does is provide an area for them to nest, to live and sleep during the day."

Macejko and the girls spent time researching the creatures at the library, finding all of the benefits bats provide to communities. They discovered that millions of bats have been killed since 2007 and 2008, largely due to the spread of white nose syndrome, a fungus that infects the bat's muzzle, wings and ears, according to the United States Geological Survey. It turns out that bat populations are in jeopardy across the country. These bat boxes were going to be a major boon for Strongsville's ecosystem.

"We thought about actually buying bat boxes online. They were $200 or $300 a piece, so we decided to build them," Macejko said.

With the help of two Home Depot associates, the girls learned how to build the boxes, making sure they met certain dimensions and had a fecal drop built-in. Each box is about 3.5 feet long and 2.5 feet wide. They used tools, with supervision, to construct the bat homes. They used black wood and black calk, as well as black paint where needed.

Once the boxes were built, installation was in order. The original plan was to hang the boxes off wood driven into the ground. Unfortunately, the lumber would have needed to be 20 feet tall, making it extremely unreasonable. So the decision was made to hang the boxes from trees instead.

Milbrandt walked the property around the park with the troop and helped select trees appropriate for the bats. After all, the animals need a specific amount of daylight and proximity to the woodland areas to get by. One of the Home Depot associates then nailed the boxes into the trees.

"People have a lot of misconceptions about bats," Macejko said. "These boxes will provide a place where they can live and have easy access to the insects they eat."

Bats can eat their body weight in bugs in a single night, Milbrandt said. They're an important part of keeping mosquito populations down.

"The Girl Scouts also created a coloring book that they gave me," Milbrandt said in an email. "So that younger scouts can learn about bats!"

The Girl Scouts members attend Surarrer Elementary, Muraski Elementary and Canterbury Elementary. One girl is home schooled, and another recently moved to Brecksville.

Photos from Christina Macejko