Holy Guano!

That's what our friend MzB said when she saw the photo of Hubb's latest workshop product. I have to agree. He never does anything halfway. He decided to take on the mosquito population with a bat hotel.

He's retired now you see...

This is no ordinary bat box. Oh no... this one contains narrow little chambers sized specifically for bats. With passageways for the bats who have trouble making up their minds which group of friends they want to hang with. And a section designated as a bat nursery. Don't ask me how they know, they just do. And of course he included a specially textured little bat landing pad at the bottom.

He has left nothing to chance; we will be hosting (mosquito-eating) bats.

I held my breath as he climbed the ladder to mount his bat box at precisely the specified height, that will receive the exact amount of required sunshine each day.

Now we wait for our bat tenants to arrive. We are expecting at least 450. After that we will be over capacity and we will have to call the bat fire marshall.

In the past we've seen a single bat at dusk, circling in the sky, as lonesome cowboy music played.

All right, so I made that last part up. All the other bats are swarming around at our neighbor's house. Did you know a group of bats is called a colony? Or sometimes a cloud of bats. The cloud congregates down the street. Apparently we only have a solitary bachelor bat with pitiful social skills.

Does he hear his own bat drummer?
Or is he a social bat outcast?
Will he find a significant bat other?
Will he notice the bat hotel and inform the others?
Will the cloud crown him as their new bat leader?
And most importantly... will they move to our neighborhood and eat their weight in mosquitos?

Stay tuned...