Home » News » Downtown becoming regular target for bat removal

This spring, on a night like any other, Hollyhocks owner Gloria Herriott was fast asleep in her loft apartment above her downtown store when she felt something smack her in the head. She lifted the covers to find a bat hanging from the ceiling fan.

That’s when Herriott decided enough was enough.

First, she tried a $100 bat sonar box that emits high frequencies to deter the bats, but it never worked. Then, she hired a contractor to seal up holes in her apartment’s brick wall, some of which were no larger than a dime. The same could not be said for the cost of the work: $400.

Likewise, Becky Scott, who owns the building on 210 Fifth St. S. that houses J. Broussard’s restaurant on the first floor and apartments upstairs, said she paid more than $1,000 to remove bats that had been nesting inside an old decorative metal piece lining the top of the building.

“I think it had reached a point where I could smell it in our building,” Scott said.

Scott also said that at night she could see the bats flying out of the old Kwik Kopy Printing building next door before they infested her building as well.

“It had a major bat problem,” Scott said. “I could watch them fly out of the back of that building at night all the time.”

Critter Capture, an Alabama-based wildlife and pest removal company, has removed bats from four downtown businesses in the last six months and about 12 residences in Columbus since it began servicing the area in 2010.

Other than the irritation associated with bats nesting in a building, the guano they leave behind is dangerous to humans when it produces fungus. The fungus can get into the lungs and cause histoplasmosis, a respiratory illness, according to a report on bat guano by the Environmental Protection Agency.

When services like Critter Capture arrive, workers need to find the entrance point, sometimes smaller than a dime; then they place a net over it where bats can escape through but not return. Once they are gone, workers apply a sealant like caulk or silicone to the holes and then clean the nesting area of guano and bat residue.

Critter Capture office manager Lea Hartley told The Dispatch the cost of bat removal ranges widely depending on how large the colony of bats is inside the building and if the company will need to clean up the guano left behind by the creatures.

“I mean, we’re working on a church now that’s going to cost $150,000,” Hartley said. “So, depending on the building size, it can go way up.” A bat sits on a windowsill in the old Commercial Dispatch newsroom. Bats have been flying into downtown businesses and homes recently. Grant McLaughlin/Dispatch Staff

Critter Capture doesn’t actually capture the bats, meaning they could easily move to a nearby building. According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, three of 15 bat species native to Mississippi are federally protected, meaning it is illegal to kill them.

Removal companies must also have a trappers license to operate in the state.

“That’s why the pest control companies can’t come in and spray some kind of poison and kill all the bats in your attics; that’s illegal,” Mississippi State University associate professor of wildlife Leslie Burger said.

Burger noted that as land in the area continues to develop, and grounds are cleared for construction, the bats will use human dwellings to protect from falling temperatures and predators.

“It’s a safe place for them,” Burger said. “They are using our human dwellings and structures because there isn’t as much habitat for them as there once was.”

Local developer Chris Chain, who is developing the Old Stone Hotel on Fifth Street into an apartment/retail space, said he often deals with bats in his downtown buildings. He said he usually removes them himself. The one time he did use a wildlife removal company, it cost more than $6,000.

“It’s very expensive for just one of my attics,” Chain said. “I was floored by how much it cost.”

Still, he said bats are just part of the downtown landscape.

“That’s just the nature of a building downtown,” Chain said. “I mean they are everywhere.”

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