Dear Suzy,
Our house is finally beginning to coalesce from the various piles
of lumber and whatnot. However, there’s a bunch of small triangular bits left over.
I was wondering if you know how to build a bat house from scratch. We have mosquitoes
aplenty so it could be pretty good-sized. — Andy
Dear Andy,
I do know how to build a bat house from scratch, thanks to A Bat House
Builder’s Handbook, a booklet published by Bat Conservation International. But the
predominant shape of the building blocks is a definite rectangle. Not a triangle in sight
in any of the detailed plans for the perfect bat house; a trapezoid is as close
as it gets. But don’t let a little geometric disparity discourage you from either
finding a use for your triangular scraps or building a bat house.
Bats are great. (It’s hard to believe now that Austin is bat-happy that as
recently as 1986 petitions were circulated to have the Congress Avenue Bridge colony
destroyed!) Mexican free-tails, of which there are hundreds of millions in the Hill
country, eat 600 mosquitoes an hour. And when these millions of bats give birth, their
offspring will eventually need a nice roost of their own, lest they turn into simpering
momma’s boys with low-self esteem who are always whining about the dark and the dirty
cave and do they have to eat mosquitoes again tonight? So if you provide
housing to independence-seeking bats, not only will you make a dent in the nasty
skeeter population, you’ll also be doing your part to preserve bat manhood. (As
opposed to Batman’s hood.) To get your own handy bat house book, you can send $15 to:
BCI, North American Bat House Research Project, PO Box 162603, Austin, TX 78716. You
even get a highfalutin title if you build a house and send in data on its occupancy.
Say hello to a new Volunteer Research Associate. (I’ve got a friend who’s building a
giant bat house. Read about it in the September issue of Texas Monthly.)
Now about those pesky triangles. I remember when my family built our first
house on Galveston Bay, I was fascinated by the triangle scraps. They looked like
sails, no? So I stuck one on a scrap of wallboard using a glob of leftover cement,
trotted it out to the end of the pier, and set it off on its maiden voyage… to the
bottom of the bay. Any use for the scraps would be better than that, right? You
could open the first Pythagorean Museum and fill your gift shop with the three-sided
gems. How about nailing one to a board and using it as a crude and totally ineffective
sundial? Or you could glue a stack together with PL400 construction adhesive and call
it a doorstop. Paint it red and call it art. Stack ’em real tall and you’ve got a
rickety fern stand. Paint the stack with red, white, and blue tempera paint, scribble
some unintelligible bit of scripture on it with a Magic Marker, nail a bottle cap
on top and call it Outsider Art. Drill half-inch holes in them and paint them gloss
black, transforming them into avant-garde pencil holders for all those SoHo-types on
your Christmas list.
Wanna make my Christmas list? Send me a question. Suzebe@aol.com. And
hurry. There are only 116 shopping days left!
This article appears in August 1 • 1997 and August 1 • 1997 (Cover).