Hello Mr. Bat
 

Where did you find the bat?

Cool. They can eat a bunch of skeeters every night. Good to have.

its hanging out above my door.

Lucky. All I've got is wasps.

^ All I got is waterbugs, yay nyc.

how well do you think he'd transplant to my bat house? I dont think we have any yet. hard to tell.

I had to remove a few wasps nests...


no clue. im sure he didn't like the weather yesterday, and since it was all shitty out there was no bugs and no reason for him to leave again, so hell more than likely be there until dusk today, if you wanna come by and try to wrangle him.

Cute little feller! Hope he brings friends back as long as they don't find a place to roost in the attic. Good critters to have around as long as guano isn't piling up somewhere inside. Bats for the bugs, owls for the mice.

srsly put up a bat house. you can get it at the wild bird place by the new elevation burger.

you want full sun alll day and 15 feet off the ground. niiiiice

So you know abouts them bat houses too hunh?

I had to setup a handful around a barn and at first I couldn't understand WTF the owners wanted with bat houses!! lol

... and red tailed hawks for the squirrels. This one had lunch in my driveway a few months ago.
Attachment 205311

Attachment 205312

I wish it would come back. Some critter just dug up all my wife's crocus bulbs and left a bunch of holes in our landscaping beds. Heeeeere hawky hawky.

a little bit. i just want to reduce mosquito populations in my back yard. i've got meat to grill out there dammit.

amen to that, luckily where i moved has no mosquitos compared to before but maybe i'll put up a couple bat boxes anyhow since i hate those fuckers:vash:

sweet. Tame it and train it. How awesome would a fully trained bat be :brain:

Expecting this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5SMZNrmH__...0/P1020581.JPG

I can relate big time.. The fucker that lives next door to me breeds mosquitoes... He has a stupid water garden with tons of standing water. I'm about to sabotage his garden with some of those larva donuts...

.

i wanted to do this to an old neighbor who had let his pool become a pond. i was getting very close to dumping old oil in his pool to give the surface an unliveable film because the mosquito dunks cost money

I know all about pool swamps. The house behind me fell victim to this shitty economy. I'm guessing some shitty bank owns it now. The pool has turned into a mosquito nesting ground. I cant go outside without getting eatin alive.
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

1: Go to the local home improvement store.
2: Buy several bags of Portland Cement.
3: Take picture of bags of cement sitting on the deck next to the pool.
4: Send picture to bank, along with a brief explanation of what will happen to said bags if the pool is not maintained.


Alternately (and much less destructively) if there is still power to the house, you could simply pump out all of the water. Granted, a small amount will remain behind, however a single bucket of slow-dissolving stabilized chlorine tablets will last a long time.

Scott; You need to get another bat and get them to make babies.. Sell em on the internet to people like me!

Why would you buy a bat house? my dad and i used to throw them together in ~20-30 minutes, our property was full of them at one point in time, found that the ones facing the west tended to get more business than others, don't know if it was a fluke/coincidence or if there's a reason behind it but thought it was kinda strange. Plenty of info online on them to be found too.

I know all to much about that shit as well.....well you and me are separated by the friggin everglades as well... skeeter Heaven there!!!!
congrats on becoming a mod lol

You should check with the city. Alot of municipalities are giving away mosquito fish for this exact reason.

yeah, it's a HUGE issue in New Orleans with so many blighted abandoned properties.

One of those hawks pictured above would have a field day at my property. I have never seen so many squirrels. Fat ones too. I think the neighborhood kids must be feeding them or something. I saw one yesterday that looked like he was too obese to climb up a tree.

http://jugrnot.com/sq22.jpg

Best thread on the interwebs... Ever..

Squirrels make good target practice. If I let them all live I would have armies of them roaming. Plus my dog likes to catch them as they fall out of the tree and shake them like a live action squeak toy. Side story, I have one I've been trying to catch for nearly a year, I call him Bob. He has unusual red fur and a bob tail. I would almost feel bad to kill him, but I try, he is just too smart and fast. I need to get me a bat box though, I have killer mosquito problems, but not sure from what source. I may have a few tires, but they are 500ft from the house and likely have oil in them... we have plenty of owls and hawks too, so not many critters smaller than squirrel.

So correct me if I'm wrong, Bats are used to control mosquito population?
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

bats eat mosquitos.

i would put it more like this: lack of bats leads to out of control mosquito populations.

hmmmm, anyone know where bats can be bought? I've seen them flying around but wouldn't mind them staying.
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

And mosquitoes are on the menu. A 1977 study in the journal Ecology found little brown bats fed on mosquitoes in 77 percent of their evening forays, consuming the bloodsuckers throughout the summer. BCI reports that little brown bats, big brown bats, and Mexican free-tails are three prevalent species in the U.S. most likely to occupy bat houses and feed on pests. The big brown bat specializes in beetles, while the Mexican free-tail bat lives in southerly climes. The little brown — which can eat 50 percent of its body weight each evening — is common throughout the Midwest and specializes in feeding on small insects — including mosquitoes.

Full article is on this hippie enviro site: :)
Conscious Choice: Bat Those Mosquitoes Away

put up a bat house. they'll move in in a few years.

Importance of bat houses

Bat Houses

this one is nice and will hold up to 40 bats:

Bat Conservatory - Gaiam

I didn't realize bats could eat 600 mosquitoes an hour apiece.

Nice find man. For $55 it's worth a shot.
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

follow the guidelines on the page I linked for location. ~15 feet off the ground, full sun (south facing) all day. either two back to back on a pole or on the side of a building works well.

I know what I'm doing in the garage this afternoon.

My in-laws back yard is insufferable between the economy and Hurricane Ike's effect on local housing, and Houston's normal mosquito population to boot.

This is easily the most interesting and useful thing I've learned this year outside of turbocharging my car.

just be aware that it's probably a little late in the season to get bats moving in.

ideally you'd put up the houses just before spring and bats MIGHT move in during mid to late spring. and they may not move in for a couple summers.

Houston was the only place I've lived where the mosquitoes will bite you right through your damn shirt. Most skeeters in other places will get somewhat discouraged if they can't find bare skin. When the West Nile paranoia hit back in the early aughts, they'd have pickup trucks with big ol foggers in the beds driving through our neighborhood. Sounded like small jet engines. They still do that?

I am intrigued by these bat houses. Can't put them on any of my trees because they all have too much foliage that would block the sun from the houses, so I would probably have to mount it to the chimney. Anybody know what kind of guano production rate can be expected from a small bat house?

no idea, but were you thinking of selling it to greenhouses?

They used to...but haven't done so in about a year. I didn't notice exactly when they stopped, but it might have coincided with the Hurricane.

Piss poor timing if you ask me.

There's a market for guano? Well spank my ass and call me Charlie. No, I was mostly concerned with not having my house covered with bat excrement if I chimney mounted it. Could do a pole in the yard maybe.

Bats will not live in houses mounted on trees according to the article I read b/c of predators. Mount the house to a pole or the side of a building facing the sun (no shade).

Edit: And they said 15 ft was the minimum height, 20-25 is good also.

I wonder is the city would mind me mounting it to a telephone pole.
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...4/DSC00496.jpg
found this bastard on my neigbors door. if that old bag walked out and saw this, id be singing another one bites the dust again.

For those ponds and pools with mosquito trouble. Stop by a fast food place and get as much used cooking oil as you can. Other cheap option is bleach.

Squirrels aren't a problem around here. We kind of like em. Don't get the annoying attic invaders like other parts of the country.

or just use those mosquito biscuits. since they wont pollute your pond.

They wouldn't care until they did maintenance then the utility company would just knock it out of the way, so it would be better to use your own pole. Which I always recommended in most circumstances anyway. ;)
It is kind of incredible to me that "bat houses" can get 3+ pages on a forum like this. "Cat Houses" I could believe, but this ... amazing.
It is good info tho, and I've followed all the links to get to this point. I'm considering the $55 option for my house.
Being a :noob: I actually hope to say something useful or interesting about Miata's one day.