Chris Lindenmayer stared in distress at the tiny, stunned bat lying between his Buddha statue and patio ledge.
He hadn’t meant to smack the bat so hard. He was just trying to get it out of his 11th floor apartment on Brazos Street. But in the chaos, he’d whacked the bat with a broom, knocking it down to the patio floor.
Lindenmayer, a creative director at a digital product company, felt terrible.
Is it dead? he thought.
Then he saw the bat’s legs twitch.
Twenty-five years ago — when downtown Austin had far fewer skyscrapers, hotels and apartment buildings — bats didn’t have as many buildings to explore. Now they have plenty.
The bat-human conflict is just one way in which Austin’s soaring development intersects with downtown wildlife, residents and businesses. More people and structures means more opportunities for animals to show up in peculiar places.
In December 2000, there were 50 buildings downtown, according to a planning document for the City of Austin. By 2021, that number had jumped 38 percent to 69 buildings. Several dozen more have gone up since then and more are in the works.
That’s something developers need to consider when planning and building downtown structures, said Lee Mackenzie, co-founder of Austin Bat Refuge, a nonprofit that rescues and rehabilitates the world’s only flying mammals. Because bats, he said, love big buildings.
“I think when you’re building buildings in the flight path of one-and-a-half million bats it’s incumbent on you to take the time and spend the money up front and design the details that don’t invite the bats to come in and get in trouble,” he said.
Nooks and crannies under ledges? Perfect. Cracks in brickwork? Yes, please. And let’s not forget how much they love gaps near utility rooms.
Take, for example, a frigid February night last year when Austin Bat Refuge took in 200 bats that had been removed from a warm utility room in a downtown hotel. Another time, the group wrangled several hundred more that slipped into an apartment through an open, unsealed water closet.
This is what Mackenzie and refuge co-founder Dianne Odegard specialize in: conflict resolution. Bats want in, people want them out. The pair removes the bats, makes sure they’re healthy, then releases them.
While big bat removals come along now and then, Lee and Dianne spend a lot of time relocating disoriented bats out of houses or offices.
Or, not infrequently, apartments.
Buildings mimic natural habitats
Lindenmayer’s bat encounter started shortly after he entered his home at Whitley apartments in early December. Something flew over his head, then whizzed around the living room. Probably a bird, he thought.
Then it landed on an air conditioning vent and perched upside down.
Lindenmayer dropped to the floor. What if it was rabid? He’d heard bats were pretty docile, but what if it accidentally swooped down and hit him? In his 15 years of living in Austin, he’d never been to the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge to watch the 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats’ nightly excursion into the sky between spring and late fall. He didn’t think much about them.
Lindenmayer just wanted the bat gone. He struggled to push it toward the open patio door with the bristles of the broom.
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he said. “I just wanted to gently get her out. But she was flying so fast and I swung wrong.”
Lindenmayer called Austin Bat Refuge. Under their guidance, he picked her up with potholders, wrapped her in a washcloth, emptied the shoebox holding his sewing kit and used a pen to punch holes in the lid. Then he gently secured the bat in the box, put it in the front seat of his car and drove to the bat refuge.
Lindenmayer isn’t sure how the bat ended up in his apartment, but he thinks it flew through the open patio door the night before. That’s how it often happens in high-rise apartments, where doors without screens feel like an invitation. Buildings, Mackenzie said, mimic bats’ natural habitats.
“To them, they look like nothing more than a series of cliff faces with crevices in them,” he said. “I mean, to bats, that’s just where they’ve lived forever, for eons.”
Bats, who can squeeze into cracks the diameter of a dime, can find plenty of other ways to crawl into buildings: through spaces around doors and windows; joints that allow buildings to contract or expand; cracks in rooflines, siding or uncovered vents.
Sometimes the problem lies with flawed construction, said Talmadge Smith, an architect with Stantec, an international design and engineering firm with an Austin office. Sometimes companies don’t cover vents, which keep out bugs, bats and other critters. Sometimes the mesh or flaps are defective.
“They’re designed to prevent infestation, but if they’re broken, there’s a place to get in,” Smith said. “I mean, we don’t like holes in buildings. We’re trying not to design them in.”
Bats crawl into structures for lots of reasons. Buildings help them hide from predators; provide the tight, dark spaces they like; keep them cooler in the extreme heat and warmer in cold weather.
Sealing up cracks and putting screens over openings like vents, pipes and culverts is highly effective, Smith said.
“That’s a really easy retrofit, putting a screen up,” Smith said. “That’s not hard. What is hard is getting them out.”
‘They don’t want to hurt the bat’
Within an hour of removing the bat, Lindenmayer stood in Austin Bat Refuge’s rehabilitation building, watching Odegard inspect the little animal.
It’s a girl, she said. She’s a Mexican free-tailed bat. Wings look good, nothing broken. Maybe a little dehydrated.
Odegard gave the bat some fluids, put her in a one-cubic-foot mesh habitat and said they’d check her out the next day.
Bats don’t always escape from such situations unscathed. They can die during removal from tight spaces. Some people trap them in their roosts by spraying expanding foam sealant into the cracks that allowed them in, all but ensuring their deaths. Others try to remove the bats humanely, Odegard said.
“They don’t want to hurt the bat,” she said. “Most people, at least those that call us, are interested in helping the bat.”
One way professionals safely remove bats from buildings is to install a one-way exit in the roost, then seal the opening after they leave. Mackenzie doesn’t recommend using brooms or other objects to remove bats.
“Bats don’t need to be escorted out,” he said. “If you open the door, they will find their way out.”
The day after Lindenmayer’s bat arrived at the refuge, Mackenzie stood in an outdoor flight enclosure, holding the animal with gloved hands and blowing on her wings. She quickly flapped them and Mackenzie released his grip. The bat sailed across the enclosure, landing on the mesh wall 45 feet away.
Mackenzie smiled.
“She’s a good flyer,” he said.
They named her Whitley, after the apartment complex she sailed into. Mackenzie released her under the Congress Avenue Bridge a few days later, knowing more would soon take her place at the refuge.
