The State prison system wants to free 750 thousand bats. These Mexican freetails have called an old warehouse just across the street from the Walls Unit in Huntsville home for a long, long time.
The warehouse is owned by the Texas Department of Criminal justice. Spokesman Robert Hurst says "they started moving in there sometime in the 80's after there was a fire in this warehouse, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had to move its operations out of that warehouse. Since that time the warehouse has not been used by TDCJ."
Which makes this an ongoing problem. Hurst says these winged nocturnal creatures pose a safety hazard. "Number one, our employees that have to go in there and clean out the bat guano, which smells awful, many of them get sick after they go in there. Also there's a daycare facility right behind the warehouse that's operated by one of the churches in Huntsville."
So that's not good. And top of that there's a concern about the building itself. It's dangerous and needs to be demolished, but the agency doesn't have the funds to bring it down.
The TDCJ a couple of years ago tried to lure the colony to greener pastures by building bat housing. "There were several bat houses that were built just south of the warehouse itself with the intent of the bats moving from the warehouse to the bat houses. Unfortunately, bats being self-minded decided they didn't want to go there."
The TDCJ plans to meet with bat conservancy groups and the Texas Parks and Wildlife in the next few weeks to determine what the best course of action is for everyone concerned.
"We want to be responsible to the bat colony that's in the warehouse. We want to be responsible to the public as well."
However, if the building goes down, the bats could migrate to other parts of Huntsville, perhaps homes or businesses.
If they're going to be evicted, time is important. The vast majority of the huge colony has flown south for the winter. And when they're here they do good things, spending their nights around Lake Livingtston eating insects and mosquitoes.
Plus, he adds they're actually kind of cool to look at. "I have stood right outside of that warehouse and I have watched them fly out. And they don't fly at people, they fly up and away. It looks like a cloud of smoke coming out of that warehouse."
Hurst says the colony is the third biggest in Texas, behind the Congress avenue Bridge in Austin and the Devil's Sinkhole near Rocksprings in the Hill Country.
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