Company Information

FRIENDS of BATS Inc., In The News

The following news articles were written about us in various newspapers. Click on headline to read the article, or, if you wish to get an actual copy of the article, please email us.

The Tampa Tribune, Friday, December 4, 1998 "Bucs' bats could get better digs"

The Palm Beach Post, Friday, January 22, 1999 "Creepy! Ugly! Misunderstood!"

The Stuart News, Tuesday, May 25, 1999 "Bats are helpful to us; don't kill them"

The Stuart News , Sunday, August 1, 1999, "Friends of Bats thank those who helped"

The Tribune " Things that go bump in the night..."

Martin County Forum, August 6,1999, "Palm City 'bat man' devoted to saving feared creatures"

Bucs' bats could get better digs

TAMPA - As Tampa prepares to go prime time with its first Monday Night Football television appearance in 15 years, Raymond James Stadium may have gone, well, batty.

Thousands of bats that have spooked Houlihan's Stadium for decades have been kicked out. There is speculation that some of the flying mammals have gone upscale, taking up residences next door at the new $165 million showpiece of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The only question now is where the bats are roosting - club seating or end zone?

"From Day One we've known that we would probably have bats come over", said Bill Hand of the Tampa Sports Authority. "Whether some of them or all of them end up in the new stadium is a separate issue that can be dealt with at a later time.

"All I'm concerned about right now is getting out of the way of the demolition [of Houlihan's]."

Since Nov. 23, Patrick Walsh, a pest control expert from Palm City, has been hanging reams of netting around 365 expansion joints, around 178 pipes and across hundreds of other narrow openings bats find particularly inviting for a daytime snooze.

In a method called "exclusion," the netting allows the bats to leave their home at night, but the quarter-inch mesh prevents them from returning at dawn.

Bat experts think about 70 percent of the estimated 6,000 to 10,000 bats living at Houlihan's have been "excluded". It will take a couple of weeks to move the rest of them.

So where have the bats - mostly two species of Florida natives, Brazilian free-tailed and evening bats - gone?

"We don't know," said Bill Kern, an urban wildlife specialist with the University of Florida. "Some of them could have gone to bat shelters at Al Lopez Park."

George Marks of Punta Gorda said bats forage at night for mosquitoes and other insects. They travel within a radius of 15 to 20 miles, and they could find their new home anywhere within that area.

Walsh was called in after concern was raised that thousands of the bats would die when heavy demolition begins this month. Houlihan's should be gone by the end of March.

Hand said there has been no indication, so far, that Raymond James - which will be featured on ABC's Monday Night Football next week when the Bucs take on the Green Bay Packers - is harboring the displaced bats.

But Hand, who is overseeing the demolition of Houlihan's, said he hasn't really focussed on where the bats have gone.

Creepy! Ugly! Misunderstood!

Local Bat Man: Just outsmart them

Patrick Walsh got into the business of removing bats because he got tired of killing things.

He owns Walsh Pest Services (now Friends of Bats) in Palm City, and guesses about half of his pest business is bats - jobs that can cost from a few hundred dollars for a home to $15,000 for a stadium.

I'm in my glory doing this," he says. "No one is going to talk to me about bees, roaches or crickets. I go home, and we helped something live another day."

Walsh removes bats from places they're not wanted - such as the outdoor bar of a resort where bat guano was falling into drinks - by using soft netting that seals off access to the roost. When the bats can't get back "home," they find a new place to live.

Walsh has relocated bats from a Stuart gas station, a $1 million home in Lake Wales and a gym at Jensen beach Elementary.

But the mother of all his recent jobs was the soon-to-be-demolished Houlihan's Stadium in Tampa, where 4,000 to 6,000 Mexican free-tail bats once lived. "I'd rather spend the $15,000 than be known as a bat killer," said Bill Hand, construction manager for the Tampa Bay Sports Authority.

Its illegal to kill a bat in Florida, just like it's illegal to wantonly kill any animal. It doesn't take much talent to move a bat colony, Walsh admits - just a sturdy stomach.

"The hardest thing is having the nerve to get in a 5-foot bucket and go up 30- to 70- feet," he says. "And then there's the smell (of the roost). Not a lot of people want to do this work."

Bats are helpful to us; don't kill them

Hundreds, maybe even thousands of bats, which are beneficial to our delicate ecosystem on the treasure Coast, are being killed by homeowners, handymen, contractors and pest control companies - sometimes by accident, but most of the time knowingly and cruelly.

From May to September is the mating season for bats. Any attempts to remove them or exclude them from places where they are living will result in death for the babies who rely on their mother's milk for life. When excluded or removed, the mothers cannot feed their young , resulting in the cruelest form of death by starvation. Free advice, literature and help is available and its only a phone call away.

We need our bats. Each bat can eat up to 3,000 mosquitoes and other flying insects each night. Killing bats will only result in more mosquitoes and bugs. So please help our bats by helping to protect them. If you see someone trying to remove, exclude or kill bats, call "Batman" at (561) 260-1555. We are here to help. - Patrick Walsh, Palm City.

Friends of Bats thanks those who helped

I would like to thank all of the people who read our editorial letter about helping our bats during the bat maternity season. Because of the response to the editorial we have been able to save thousands of bats this maternity season.

Responses included requests for bat houses, for which we donated several bat houses to schools, we have performed several free educational seminars for organizations who responded and in two cases we were informed of removal attempts of bats during the maternity season which we were able to stop, thus saving thousands of bats. Also, we were able to successfully rescue and are rehabilitating several orphaned baby bats.

For all those who cared to help the bats, I cannot thank you enough. Thanks for being Friends of Bats.

The maternity season ends soon, but the bats still need our help all year long. Too many times bats are still thought of as pests rather than beneficial friends. Every night each bat eats over 3,000 mosquitoes and other bugs. Help us help them. For more information on how you can help protect our much needed mosquito eating bats, check out our web site at www.friendsofbats.com or call 1-888-758-BATS. Thanks for caring.

Things that go bump in the night.

Patrick "Batman" Walsh spreads the good word on area's bats

Palm City, They're one of the most misunderstood species in nature. Yes they do have fangs - but they're for biting through the skin of fruits, sucking the nectar from the flowers, and chomping on insects.

Blind? Contrary to popular belief , they have outstanding eyesight.

Bats.

For hundreds of years, people have had negative misconceptions concerning the small furry creatures.

Patrick "Batman" Walsh, however, hopes to change the way the winged-mammal's reputation by educating area residents about bats' living and feeding habits.

According to Walsh, if it weren't for bats, Florida residents would experience many more problems with mosquitoes and moths. "They (bats) save us from spending thousand of dollars on pesticides each year," he said.

Walsh's Palm City-based company, Friends of Bats, provides exclusive bat removal, rescue and rehabilitation services along the Treasure Coast and other areas in Florida.

May 1 through September 25 is bat maternity season, and Walsh ceases his exclusion service during this period.

"It's a time when the mothers feed their "pups", Walsh said. He explains that performing bat removals during the maternity season will cause more problems for a homeowner or business.

"The babies rely on their mother's milk to survive. When the mother go out to get food , they are unable to get back in to feed," he said. The pups then die of starvation.

Walsh, who has worked with bats for more than 10 years, said that most people rely upon a pest control agency to solve bat problems.

"That's the biggest ineffective way," said the former owner of an extermination business. He complained that some of the agencies don't teach their workers the correct way to remove bats. "A lot of times, I'm called to go over the jobs they did," Walsh said.

Some of Walsh's experience with Friends Of Bats includes work in the old Buccaneers Stadium in Tampa where he helped remove more than 20,000 bats, Jensen Beach Elementary School, and Club Med.

During his off-season, Walsh conducts bat workshops for schools, home improvement centers, churches, and other organizations.

He recently teamed up with Hillary Brandt, the Kids Workshop Program manager at Home Depot in Jensen Beach, to teach 6 to 12 year-olds how to build a bat house. The youngsters also learned about the different species of bats, what they eat, and safety precautions.

"Bats are wild animals," Walsh said to the classroom of kids. "If you're able to touch one, then that's a sign that they are hurt or sick."

Through education, Walsh hopes to prevent bats from becoming extinct. "If people are educated that bats are not bad, but helpful, then it may lead to their protection and preservation," Walsh said.

Palm City 'bat man' devoted to saving feared creatures

Pat Walsh sits quietly in his chair. In front of him is a red cloth from under which small, furry creatures emerge and crawl haltingly toward his hand. He carefully take an eyedropper and fills the syringe with a white fluid that looks like milk but really is a special formula. Walsh carefully places a single drop of the liquid on a cotton swab and one creature begins feeding.

This is the stuff of which Hollywood horror films are made. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Walsh is better known as "the batman" in this part of the state. His life is dedicated to rescuing and recuperating injured bats. The ones Walsh is feeding are four orphaned infant Mexican Free-Tailed Bats. Their mother was killed either by marauding fire ants or pesticides and were just a few days old when he recovered them. He had to feed them every three hours, day and night. Now, they feed freely on the cotton swab. One even seems to recognize Walsh's voice and crawls toward him, onto his hand and nudges the sibling bat out of the way so he can feed.

Walsh said he sees to all their needs and hopes one day to release them back into the wild. He said the major obstacle is teaching them to to locate food. "Their mothers teach them to use echolocation," said Walsh. " I don't know how I'll overcome that issue."

The Free-Tailed bat, named for it's tail which is free and not connected to the bats flying membrane, is one of 13 bats that are native to Florida, Walsh said. Because the bats fly at night, often at 60 miles and hour and up to two miles high, most people don't realize how many bats there are along the Treasure Coast. A single colony, he said, can contain between 30,000 to 40,000 or more bats. And each bat eats 3,000 insects each night. "I can't imagine what this area would be like without bats," he said.

Walsh started in the pest exterminating business about 10 years ago. When Walsh moved from New Jersey to Palm City, he found there was a greater demand for bat removal. A few people in the area were doing some type of bat control and those who did were doing a poor job. Walsh's bat removal service, Friends of Bat Company, has handled jobs ranging from Stadiums to small homes. Each removal job is as unique as the bats themselves. He finds a variety of personalities in the bats he has to feed and care for. For example, one bat wouldn't nurse and kept chewing on its sibling's ears, while another ate food and drank water from a saucer.

The two most common bats on the Treasure Coast, Walsh said, are free-tailed bats and evening bats. The evening bats cluster together in small colonies while the free-tail bats congregate in colonies ranging from 20,000 to 50,000 or more. Someimes the two species live in the same place.

When bats become a problem - at a home or a business - his company is called in to remove the problem. His system gets the bats out of the building safely and also seals any openings where bats could get back into the building.

"My main goal is to get them out safely because I'm the one rehabilitating them most of the time so the last thing we want to do is injure them," said Walsh. Another part of their service is rescue and rehabilitation. "It's the hardest part. We do it for free," he said, " and then you get a lot of broken hearts because we see a lot of little bats killed or injured. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes its accidental. Sometimes you can work for weeks to save a bat," he said, "and then lose them. It's tough. We lose a lot of sleep in the rehabilitation."

Walsh said many bats are killed or injured through ignorance and he and his staff make education a part of their service. Pesticide companies could kill 20,000 bats in one application. "We can work for years to get the same number of bats to a safe spot and then someone can come in and destroy the whole colony in one quick day. All our work for nothing," he said.

His company also does rescue work, including bats with broken wings. Walsh works with All Creatures Animal Hospital, where Ross Bizant is the veterinarian. Bizant worked on a bat for three hours recently to fix a broken wing.

Walsh said the educational programs are the most positive part of the service. They teach children and adults that bats are wonderful animals. He said it is enjoyable seeing children or adults who perceive bats as scary animals leave with the idea that they are great animals. Walsh holds many bat education programs at outlets that specialize in selling construction. He also holds seminars at pest control businesses to teach exterminators about what not to do when around bats. Some companies make an honest effort to chase bats out, but noted that if not done right, the animals can be injured. Bat control is a specialized field.

Walsh said Florida has only insect-eating bats and that fruit and vampire bats live elsewhere. The local bats will not come to get you . He said most Florida bats are about four inches long with a wingspan of about six inches. "All they're going to do is go out each night and eat bugs," he said.

The major problem with bats, Walsh said, is that once they get into someone's home, the droppings create an offensive odor and the bats must be removed. However, bats are the best exterminators in the world, he said, and without them a tremendous amount of pesticides would be needed.

Walsh said no bats are removed during their "maternity season" which runs from May to September. When the babies are born, the mother goes out at night to feed and then return to feed the babies. He said that to block the hole the mother is using means the babies would starve, which is a violation of animal cruelty laws as well as just bad ethics. "Bats are mammals and very close to humans in some respects," Walsh said. "They have five fingers and toes and feed their young milk."

Providing information about bat houses is another aspect of Walsh's business. Since bat awareness has flourished in Florida, he said people are starting to realize they want bats around their homes to eat mosquitoes. He said they have 25 bat houses in the field that were not working. But a new type of bat house is showing some promise. It features a top entry instead of the traditional bottom entry. On July 22, Walsh found about 200 bats living in it. He wants to study the design further to see if bats will move into the new design or if it was a one time success or something that really is a bat house that works.

Bats do not live in houses but get into the Spanish tiles or under fascia boards to live and sometimes get into homes by accident.

One of the most important things is that if someone finds a bat on the ground, they should leave it alone. Handling it can injure the scared animal further and could put the person at risk of being bitten. If a bat is on the ground, it is either injured or sick and should never be touched. To protect himself, Walsh has been vaccinated. If people have a bat problem they can contact Walsh at (888) 758-BATS. His company has 24-hour emergency rescue service.

For more information concerning bats or to make an appointment for the education bat workshops, contact the Friends of Bats at 1-888-758-BATS. For problems with bats, call (561) 260-1555.