Adopt a bat and help rebuild a home for Florida’s misunderstood and important mosquito-eaters
If you’ve always wanted a pet bat — and who hasn’t? — here’s your chance: You can name one and support its fly-by-night lifestyle as a mosquito-devouring friend to bug-infested Miami.
Through the Adopt-A-Bat program at Patch of Heaven Sanctuary donors can help rebuild a bat house and christen the winged creatures who will roost inside. Suggestions from the wildlife preserve in the Redland include Batilda, Elizabat, Sebatstian, Batty Hearst and Batrick. Of course, the possibilities are endless: Bruce, Wayne, Robin, Alfred, Barbara, Kate Kane, Count Chocula, Vlad, Guano, Buffy, Barnabas, Bela Lugosi, Bat Bunny, Cardi Bat, Jimmy Batler, MABA (Make America Batty Again).
“Bats are unappreciated and often misunderstood essential workers in our ecosystem,” said Fred Hubbard, Patch of Heaven executive director. “They’re also quite cute.”
Hubbard is raising money through a GoFundMe campaign and $15-plus Adopt-A-Bat contributions to replace the 36-foot tall bat pagoda that burned down when it was struck by lightning on May 26 at the sanctuary, which is not far from the county’s Castellow Hammock Preserve and Nature Center.
“We had lightning rods and suppression devices, but an extreme storm hit that night and, bang, the whole thing went up in flames,” said Hubbard, who had designed the wooden Indonesian-style structure. “It was like losing a loved one. The new one will be built of steel and concrete.”
No bats were killed in the blaze because they had not yet taken up residence, but it was designed to house up to 400,000 bats, including large chambers in its top section for the endangered Florida bonneted bat. The trumpet-eared, speedy fighter jet of the bat world has a 22-inch wingspan, twice the size of the more common Brazilian or Mexican wingtailed bat.
The planned $1 million bat tower will be more resilient and more elaborate, with room for six species of bats. There will be no Batmobile, but it will have a 3,000-square-foot bat cave that will function as a rescue and rehabilitation center for bats that are displaced by development in South Florida. Bats who have lost their habitat often roost in the roofs of houses, where they find warm crevices, and when roof construction occurs, they can be injured.
“We want to bring attention to the plight of our bats,” Hubbard said. “There are less than 1,000 bonneted bats left on the planet.
“One bat can consume 1,200 mosquitoes per hour. Some bats eat fruit or fish, feed on nectar, or blood. The agave plants farmed for tequila in Mexico are pollinated by bats. Banana and avocado trees need bats. South Florida bats are primarily insect and pest eaters.”
There are no vampire bats in the United States. Bats do not attack people. Bats are not blind, although they do have a highly developed sonar system called echolocation. They’re not rodents; they are mammals that fly with their webbed hands. Only a tiny percentage of bats contract rabies, according to the Florida Bat Conservancy.
The new tower will have a bat observation floor for visitors and a rooftop deck that overlooks the nonprofit sanctuary’s 20 acres of gardens, pineland forest and tropical hardwood hammock. Hubbard, a former science teacher, and Director of Horticulture Roberto Del Cid are also growing chocolate and coffee and keeping bees. They conduct research, teach classes, run kids’ camps and host tours.
Hubbard was inspired to build the bat house by the bat conservation project in Gainesville, where the University of Florida built three bat houses with half a million inhabitants.
“It’s an amazing spectacle to see them come out at night and go foraging,” he said.
People who adopt a bat can attend nocturnal walks using echolocation devices that tell which species is flying past based on the sound of the clicks the bats emit to navigate. The walks will be virtual until coronavirus pandemic restrictions are lifted.
This story was originally published August 31, 2020 at 10:20 AM.
