April 17 is National Bat Appreciation Day – which seems like a weird thing to write a blog post about, but we really appreciate the bats in our neighborhood. 

Our neighborhood has always had a bad problem with mosquitos. We tried every possible way of avoiding mosquito bites – sprays, repellants, citranella candles, etc, with nothing working. After a lot of research – and out of desperation – we decided to put up a bathouse on the back of our house in order to attract bats that would eat all of the mosquitoes. 

The bathouse hung for 6 years before bats moved in. The way we knew they were there was the telling collection of bat guano just below the bathouse piled on top of our telephone cable box (we obviously didn’t think through the best placement of the bathouse). 

The bats disappeared late last Fall as it got cold, but returned a couple weeks ago. So glad to have them back just before the mosquitoes start showing up.