INSIDE Guest column
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New dump hours
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Legends and Lore
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Islanders gather for a special ‘Day of the Dead’ concert and event to play tribute to their loved ones that have passed on. Read more on page 4
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The
Islands’ eekly W
VOLUME 35, NUMBER 44 • october 30, 2012
Halloween - time to find good homes for bats By Nathan Hodges Special to the Weekly
Halloween – a time to dress as ghosts, carve pumpkins, eat candy and maybe find local bats a good home. And San Juan County is a perfect place for this kind of endeavor. According to Kwiaht scientists – a Lopez-based nonprofit laboratory – the county is a refuge for some of Washington state’s largest and rarest bats, such as the hoary bat, and Townsend’s big-eared bat, which dine year-round on moths including cutworm moths, tent
caterpillar moths, and coddling worm moths. “That’s good news for our farms, gardens, orchards, and locavores,” said Madrona Murphy, Kwiaht botanist and leader of its heritage orchard project. Smaller, “mouse-eared” bats feast on tiny wetland insects like mosquitoes, whose diseases such as West Nile, kill 30 times more Americans each year than rabies, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics. According to Washington State Department of Health statistics, no San Juan
Contributed photo / U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife
A Townsend’s big-eared bat in flight.
County bat has yet tested positive for rabies.
Bats in the belfry Bats like their homes warm, dry, and cozy just as we do. That’s why several island homeowners are finding bats in their belfry. Attics, crawlspaces, walls, under roof tiles or tiny nooks and crannies are preferred roosts for maternity colonies of our local bats. Aging farm buildings and idiosyncratic, owner-built “hippy houses” are especially welcoming to bats, Kwiaht researchers have found.
Lopez Center
Bats have probably shared our homes since the days when Coast Salish peoples built large cedarplank community houses in the islands, which archaeologists believe began more than 3,000 years ago. Tiny uninvited tenants aren’t always appreciated and can make a mess as they birth and fledge dozens, sometimes hundreds, of tiny pups each summer. “Although bat guano is dry, excellent fertilizer and poses little threat to human health, bat urine is smelly and can dampen insulation
…would like to say
Thank You! Lopez Center staff and Board would like to thank all the members of the Home Tour Committee for the hard work and dedication they contributed in creating such a successful and interesting fundraising event this year. We would also like to thank the home owners who so graciously opened their homes to our community and visitors.
and warp drywall,” said Russel Barsh, director of Kwiaht. Bats also often roost under siding and shingles that require periodic maintenance. In many cases, Kwiaht scientists believe the best approach is giving bats a warm and durable home of their own.
Bat box design Since island weather is frequently cool and wet in spring, when female bats congregate to birth and nurse their pups, “bat boxes” here need to be roomy, solarheated, and well insulated. Kwiaht staff has designed bat boxes that are larger, heavier, and warmer than anything you can find for sale online. Painted matte black, with rigid insulation and a sturdy galvanized metal roof, they weigh near-
ly a hundred pounds and can house entire colonies of bats mounted high above predators on a tree or post, facing the sun. Hoisting a hundred-pound bat house thirty feet into a tree is obviously no easy task, but with ropes and pulleys, and the help of Lopez arborist Zack Blomberg, Kwiaht can install each house in a day or two. “The finishing touch is to spray the inside of the bat house with a concoction we call Eau de Bat: fresh bat guano, collected from the existing bat colony, and extracted in alcohol like perfume,” said Kwiaht wildlife biologist Amanda Wedow. This tincture helps convince bats that some of their relatives have already used the box so it is safe. Two Kwiaht bat houses were installed on Lopez in 2012, and there are orders for five more on Lopez, Orcas, and San Juan Island. For more information See bats, page 5
Community Shakespeare 11th Annual Fall Festival AS YOU LIKE IT (appropriate for all ages)
Nov. 7, admission by donation, 12 noon & 7:30pm Nov. 8-9-10 at 7:30pm. Students $10, Adults $15 Tickets online at communityshakespeare.org, Also at Paper Scissors Rock Remaining seats sold at 6pm at the door: Lopez Center for Community & the Arts