NBC29Ivy Creek Moves Bat House

Ivy Creek Moves Bat House

Thousands of bats may soon be making a major move in Albemarle County. Volunteers turned out to the Ivy Creek Natural Area Tuesday night to relocate a massive bat house with hopes that the creatures will move in.

Moving the 3,200 pound house took a handful of people and a pretty big crane. This 5,000 bed bat house was hoisted high above Albemarle County Tuesday. In real estate it is all about location, and with bats it is no different. The house was moved by crane to an empty field at Ivy Creek, far from the predator filled plot it once called home.

"If a bat predator were going to design an environment where it would be really yummy, so that every night you could come out and eat bats, this is what they would design," said Bat Educator Robin Eastman.

"It took so long to build that with this donation of crane time now we can take advantage of all of those hours and move it to a location where it can be used by all of the bats," said Ivy Creek's Bruce Gatling-Austin.

The staff at Ivy Creek is hopeful county bats are ready to make the move.

"We see maybe a footprint or we hear them but we don't get to see them," said Gatling-Austin. "So this is an opportunity where we would get to see the animal and talk about what they're doing."

Bat lovers say the late night creatures can tackle more than 3,000 mosquitoes a day and keep bugs away from your garden. They are confident the big move will draw big crowds to Ivy Creek to learn something new about an animal with a bad reputation.

"They'll learn that bats are maybe not just that horrible thing that Aunt Mildred said wanted to get caught in your hair," said Eastman.

The bat house was built as an Eagle Scout project back in 2000. The plan now is to use it as a part of a series of summer workshops for kids and their families.

Reported by Keith McGilvery
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