// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: It's the 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. A little personal aside to begin this next conversation. I got my first taste last week of a bat in the house — I should say a couple of weeks ago. That was the first time that one flew out a window after I looked up on the internet what I should do. The second one did not, and had me paying a professional a lot of money to get it out. So, in the Battle of Brian versus the bat, we are tied at 1 to 1.

Now, a little 21st Show behind the scenes: I was relating this story to some colleagues when our news director, Reginald Hardwick, mentioned he had recently heard a similar story from someone else. And so that is inspiring the rest of our show today about bat populations in Illinois, how to safely get one out of your home, some of the health concerns related to bats, and some of the benefits also that bats provide to our ecosystems.

So, we are joined today to talk more about this by Sarah Livesey, who is executive director of Grand Prairie Friends — a nonprofit conservation group that helps restore prairies and is working to regrow bat populations in Coles County. Also with us is Tara Hohuff, co-principal investigator and project coordinator for the Illinois Bat Conservation Program. And Christina Krost, program officer for local programs for the Lumpkin Foundation — that's by day. They're a group that distributes grants in education, preventative health and conservation. But more to the point for us, Christina has had the experience of being visited by multiple bats in her home over multiple years.

So, Sarah, Tara and Christina, welcome to the 21st Show. Thanks for being with us. And Tara, I'm gonna start with you — maybe you can just tell us briefly about some of the bats that you can find across Illinois and where they're located.

[00:02:06]
Tara Hohuff: Yes, so we say that we have 13 species of bats in Illinois, but really around here in Champaign County in central Illinois, we typically find about 9 species. They range from ones that are really common, like the big brown bat, that is the one that typically is showing up in people's houses. We also have a pretty rare bat that's endangered, the Indiana bat, and another endangered bat, the northern long-eared bat.

[00:02:31]
Brian Mackey: So you know there's a bigger population of little brown bats, or at least there was a bigger population of that that has been declining. What's behind that?

[00:02:40]
Tara Hohuff: Yes, so the little brown bat used to be a really common species that we would find in Illinois, but since about 2013 we had confirmation of white nose syndrome, a fungus that grows on bats when they're hibernating. And that has really decimated a lot of our bat populations that hibernate. It spreads really quickly as bats are moving between hibernacula, and it causes them to wake up out of hibernation and burn through their fat stores really quickly, and they end up — we've found many, many bats have died of this fungus.

[00:03:12]
Brian Mackey: So, Christina, we need to take a break in about a minute here, but maybe let's just sort of set up the rest of our conversation. I wanna ask you, what did you think of bats before you started cohabitating with them?

[00:03:25]
Christina Krost: I mean, I have a deep respect for bats, and a lot of the work that I do is to conserve the areas that bats like to live in. So bats are great. I just don't love them in my house, and so it's been an interesting relationship with bats.

[00:03:43]
Brian Mackey: And just before we go to break, how many have you now seen in your house, and over what time span?

[00:03:50]
Christina Krost: I'd say it's been well over a dozen since June of 2020.

[00:03:56]
Brian Mackey: Oh my gosh. All right. Well, we're gonna have to take a break. We're on a fixed clock on this program. So we will continue this — uh, battastic conversation. I'm gonna try not to do too much more of that. But I do want to invite you to join us. Maybe you have had a bat in the house. How did you deal with it? Was it a frightening experience? Was it interesting? Let us hear how you experienced this. 800-222-9455 is the number. 800-222-9455. We will continue talking about bats in Illinois. This is the 21st Show. [Stay] with us.

It's the 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. We are talking about bats in Illinois, the different species you can find, where you can find them, and in a moment, we'll talk about what you can do if a bat enters your home and how to respond if you are exposed to a bat. We're talking about this because of my own experience with a bat in my residence. Like the bat, I was nocturnal for that night, working to try and keep my family safe and get it safely out of the house.

We're talking about this with Christina Krost, who's a program officer for local programs at the Lumpkin Foundation. For the sake of our conversation, she's also a homeowner with a recurring bat problem. We're also talking with Tara Hohuff, co-principal investigator and project coordinator for the Illinois Bat Conservation Program, and I wanna introduce now Sarah Livesey, who is executive director of Grand Prairie Friends, a nonprofit conservation group that helps restore prairies and is working to regrow bat populations, specifically in Coles County.

I should say you can join us at 800-222-9455 if you have a bat story to share, 800-222-9455. Sarah, let me bring you into the conversation now. So what drives some bats to consider people's homes for shelter?

[00:06:10]
Sarah Livesey: Hi, yeah, I think that especially the bats that Tara just mentioned, those are bats that really like roost structures. And, you know, when we think about places like attics or other tight spaces — it takes a very small opening, Tara taught me this, it takes a very small opening for bats to be able to get into those spaces. And I know specifically at Warbler Ridge Conservation Area, our large bat restoration site down in Coles County, we use different artificial bat structures that there's just a very teeny opening that they like to squeeze up into, and we may have hundreds in one tiny artificial bat structure. They like to be tight and hot and hang out together in those spaces.

So I think, to give them some credit, they don't necessarily always know when it's someone's attic or inside the siding, or if it's somewhere they're maybe supposed to be. And I think, you know, with habitat decline and loss of some of our forest areas and things, really what Grand Prairie Friends works to do is restore those areas. We hope that they find the spaces they're supposed to find, but in some cases, certainly we know that's not the case.

[00:07:28]
Brian Mackey: And is there a time of year when bats are more likely to, you know, seek out a 3-bed, 2-bath with an attic, as opposed to an abandoned barn or an oak tree?

[00:07:40]
Sarah Livesey: You know, I do know just from our experience at Warbler Ridge that we have seen them — they are migratory. So our bats come back to us here in Illinois around May — April and May, we see them certainly, I think even into March, the end of March we've seen them, and that's probably when they're coming back to roost, so to say. A lot of our bats — and I would defer to Tara on this — it'd be interesting to know if the same bats tend to come back to the same roosts year after year. I think that's the case.

But there are things that happen over the course of the year, and so their roost tree might be gone now, or for some other reason, loss of habitat, and unfortunately maybe that's a built structure now. Maybe it's a house now. And so they are coming back to the place where they thought was their roost tree, and now it's someone's garage or something to that effect. And so that's some reason why they're going to seek out those spaces when they return from migration in the spring.

[00:08:43]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, and maybe you can speak to that. In my extensive reading on bats that I've done in the last couple of weeks now, I've read that even if you can do an exclusion — that's what people call it when you try and get your house sealed up — the bats, if they were born there, may spend the rest of their lives trying to get back in.

[00:09:00]
Tara Hohuff: That is correct. Bats really like to return to the same roost year after year, as Sarah mentioned, they're trying to find that perfect area where they feel safe, that's the right temperature, and so it's hard to find that and so they want to return to those same structures over and over. People ask me all the time, can you come take a bat out of my house? And I say, I can come take it out, but it's going to fly right back in, unless you do something to keep them out.

[00:09:26]
Brian Mackey: All right, let's bring Christina back into the conversation here. So, take me back to that first time you had to get rid of a bat. What was your reaction when you first figured out what was happening?

[00:09:40]
Christina Krost: My response typically when I find any kind of wildlife in my house is I appreciate the wildlife, but not inside my house — love them outside. So we did what you did. We really quickly googled how do you get a bat out of your house and we were able to kind of isolate it to a room, get the windows open, and it did find its way out, and that's been pretty successful for us when it's been in the main living area of the house, like the kitchen or the living room or something like that. We're able to usually get it out of the house pretty easily through just opening up windows or doors or what have you. It's when it gets into the sleeping areas of your house that you really need to be careful.

[00:10:19]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, and maybe we should get into that then. I'm not sure who is best to take this conversation. Maybe Tara — bats have this well-earned reputation for carrying disease. When should someone consider getting tested for rabies or something else?

[00:10:36]
Tara Hohuff: Yes, I would say if you've had any sort of bite, obviously, but also any sort of bodily fluid transfer, you want to get a rabies vaccine right away. Also, we say, you know, if they're in a room with someone who is sleeping, or a child who might not be able to communicate very clearly, you would also want to get that rabies vaccine just to be cautious, and you really need to get them really quickly. I think it's within 2 to 3 days you have to get that first shot. So you really have to kind of move quickly if you think you need the rabies vaccine.

[00:11:10]
Brian Mackey: And this is where it's ideal if you can safely do so to actually capture the bat so it can be tested and then you can know if maybe you don't need the rabies prophylaxis.

[00:11:22]
Tara Hohuff: Yes, if you think you're at risk, you can catch the bat and call your local public health department and see where the best place to take that bat in is, or they might come and collect it and they can test it and hopefully turn that around really quickly for you to know if you need to get that rabies vaccine.

[00:11:38]
Brian Mackey: OK. Let's go to the phones, 800-222-9455. We have Janine calling from Champaign. Janine, I understand you've had bats. Tell me about it.

[00:11:50]
Janine: Yeah, we have a house — our house was built in 1915 and they enclosed a side porch that was open and I'm pretty sure the bats are living in the ceiling of that side porch because we would come home from traveling on weekends at about midnight and they'd just be flying around in the house.

[00:12:12]
Brian Mackey: Oh wow. Have you ever had them get inside?

[00:12:15]
Janine: No, they were flying around inside of our home.

[00:12:18]
Brian Mackey: Oh, inside your home. OK, OK. I thought you were seeing them outside. So how — what did you do? Did you have to call someone, or how did you, what did you do?

[00:12:28]
Janine: Well, OK, I'm gonna sound pompous here, but I'm a science teacher, so bugs and bats don't scare me. So I fashioned a kind of a butterfly net contraption using a wire coat hanger that I looped the pillowcase over. I kind of stretched the wire part over and then I fastened it to a broom handle. And so when they would be flying, I would just kind of whoop them up and then carry them outside and release them.

[00:12:56]
Brian Mackey: Much respect to batwoman there. Thank you so much for calling in. I appreciate it. Let's also hear from Peggy calling from Riverton, Illinois. Peggy, I understand you've had — yeah, go ahead.

[00:13:09]
Peggy: We had about 2 years ago, we had at least 30 bats living in the shutters — behind the shutters on the back of our house, second floor. And every night they would leave and they would come back every morning. I loved watching them. I loved watching them. Now last year we didn't have as many and this year we have very few. My question is, can we put a bat house up somewhere in our backyard? We've got about [125 acres?]. And we've got some pretty tall trees. So I just wanted to know what we could do to — I don't know if they would come back or not, but it was cool. We had a whole bunch of them.

[00:13:50]
Brian Mackey: So I'm trying to get rid of bats. You're trying to encourage the bats, Peggy. All right, good question. Thanks for calling in. Sarah, can you take that? What do you think about these bat houses I've seen around?

[00:14:02]
Sarah Livesey: Yes. So the bat houses in residence — I know Tara's got a lot of information on that. We are kind of the mega scale of bat houses, and so we are in a natural space. Grand Prairie Friends has about 10 preserves across 9 counties. And as Tara mentioned earlier, one of those bats is the Indiana bat, the endangered Indiana bat. And so we have established these artificial roost structures. And Tara and I teased at the beginning because it's not always "if you build it, they will come." They can be kind of persnickety about choosing roost sites. And even if you have the most beautiful bat house, they don't always show up or enjoy it. We found that in our first couple of years they were kind of suspicious, but now in year 8 or 9, we have 700 bats exiting in the evening times, and it's just a really good success story for the bats, but I would defer to Tara more on the residential, smaller-scale bat homes.

[00:15:10]
Tara Hohuff: Yeah, I would say putting up a bat house is great, and just trying to make sure — there are some guidelines of, you know, putting them in places that ideally bats will use. But it sounds like you have bats and if you have an acre, you have a lot of habitat, and so I could imagine that might be a good place for a bat house.

[00:15:26]
Brian Mackey: The guy that I paid to come remove the second bat from my house said his view on bat houses was maybe they sort of invite bats that will be looking for a warmer place during the winter or when it gets cold outside and could actually exacerbate an indoor bat problem, as opposed to giving them an outside place to live. I wonder what you think about that.

[00:15:47]
Tara Hohuff: Yeah, so sort of the life cycle of a bat — for a lot of our species anyway — is summer is their active season. They're migrating in the spring and fall. I always say that's typically when you're going to see bats in weird places. I get lots of emails of bats on people's fences and on their screen door, and a lot of times that's during the migratory period because they're really tired as they're migrating. They might kind of end up in strange places.

Summer is when they're trying to have their young and they need these really specific roost areas to have their young, and that's when it's really important also that we protect their roosts. But then in the winter, a lot of our species are hibernating, and so that's a different set of what they're looking for. They want a consistent temperature, somewhere they're not going to be bothered. That can be an attic if it's, you know, temperature controlled. So there is that potential, but I would say, you know, typically I don't hear a lot about people who have bat houses and also have bats in their home. So I wouldn't think that'd be a huge risk, but I think, you know, putting up a bat house can be great, but again, they're not always used unless it's a good, guidelines [unclear] area with habitat.

[00:16:58]
Brian Mackey: Christina, I think I wanna close with you. I once worked with someone whose father had been a zoologist, and he had this saying that she liked to relay, which was a trespass in nature is a capital offense, right? You think about a human wandering into a bear cave — that would certainly be the case. How have you learned to — have you learned to live with bats? Have you sort of resigned yourself to this situation? How have you dealt with this?

[00:17:23]
Christina Krost: We learned while having a professional come in to kind of look at, hey, why is this happening so frequently? Typically in the spring and in the fall, what could we do to enhance habitat so bats would not want to live in our house, but also close up the house to make it safer. So, kind of both, but it appears that the roof that was put on about a decade ago before we lived in the house needs serious attention. There were some mistakes made on that roof, and so we are literally putting bids out right now to get a new roof. Now that is an extreme — I think not everybody's going to need a new roof — but at least we, you know, we recognize the bat thing and then also maybe some other water issues were exacerbating this bat issue. So we'll be getting a new roof with some recommendations from the bat folks to make it extra safe so the bats stay outside.

And again, we have put up a bat house ourselves to try to make sure that there's still good habitat and safe places for the bats as well. And, you know, I am super committed to the work of Grand Prairie Friends and making sure that we keep these bat populations, which do so much good for our ecosystem, healthy.

[00:18:43]
Brian Mackey: Better outside than in, as they say. Christina Krost is with the Lumpkin Foundation and learning to live — and live without — bats. We've also been speaking with Sarah Livesey, who is with Grand Prairie Friends, and Tara Hohuff, project coordinator for the Illinois Bat Conservation Program. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise and experiences with us today on the 21st Show.

And that is all the time for us today. Coming up tomorrow on the program, we're gonna have an update on the situation in Iran. We'll be talking with an Illinois-based expert about what is happening there, this latest [peace agreement], supposedly between the U.S. and the Iranian government. We'll see how long that holds. We're also gonna hear from a couple of recent high school graduates who not only did their high school course of study, but also did 2 years' worth of college and ended up earning associate's degrees at the same time they graduated high school.

That's all coming up tomorrow here on the 21st Show, which is produced by Christine Hatfield and Jose [Zaeda — check spelling]. Our digital producer, Colson Kahn. Technical direction and engineering from Jason Crofts and Steve Mork, and our news director is Reginald Hardwick. The 21st Show is a production of Illinois Public Media. I'm Brian Mackey. Thanks for listening.