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Bats find a home - and a friend - at Wilson's Presbyterian Church
By Kris Bair
Last Updated: April 02, 2008
WILSON — Bats in the belfry? Not an issue at the First Presbyterian Church, which anchors one corner of the historic district of Wilson.
When the congregation noticed nearly five years ago that bats had established residence in the attic, unofficial church section Elder Leroy
“Batman” Klema tracked down every possible crack through which a bat could enter and plugged them.
A few unlucky bats didn’t make it out, though. When digging through basement records and church inventory four years ago, newly commissioned Pastor Kris Bair found a dead bat here and there, “one or two, every six months or so,” she said. Most of them had been there for awhile.
“They were all dried out and shriveled up. Not very scary, really,” she said.
Not very scary until, while cleaning up to prepare extra seating for a funeral, she reached down between two boxes to pick up something and — “Holy Pewseats!” — she pulled up a live bat in her bare hands.
“I dropped that bat — Kabaam! And I have to confess, I hollered an interjection that might have made Robin blush. Our youth group was helping, and they got a big kick out of it.”
None of them, however, wanted to be on bat-disposal duty.
“The bat didn’t respond to all the hoopla, so I guessed it was either dormant or ill. I got a plastic bag and picked up the poor thing again — and took it to my husband to dispose of.
“You know, while [pastor] training does help us learn to go to bat for our congregations, it never addressed this kind of situation.”
A number of historic buildings in Wilson are homes to bats. In fact, Dr. Jerry Choate, curator of the Fort Hays State University Sternberg Museum, said in a telephone interview that “Wilson is full of bats. There isn’t a building in town that doesn’t have them, specifically big brown bats.”
Now bats are good things to have around — in particular, these bats eat their body weights in mosquitoes every night and their guano contains concentrated quantities of nitrogen, excellent for fertilizer.
But they’re not good to have in your attic. The guano smells and the bats themselves are an indication that your building isn’t weather tight. Plus they scare people when confused. Bats fly through the sanctuary during worship.
Leroy saw the bat dilemma as a challenge: How can we discourage the bats from entering our buildings,but encourage them to reside in town and eat the mosquitoes?
For full story see this week's I-R.
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