The bats are at it again.
Earlier this year, California officials decided to delay or cancel demolition of a truck bridge because a colony of free-tailed bats had set up a nursery under it. Now, those pesky bats have done it again, this time in Georgia.
The Associated Press reported June 2 that a colony of 200 bats, babies in tow, had taken up residence under the Talipahoga Creek bridge near Omaha, GA, a town that sits on the Alabama border south of Atlanta.
Demolition work on the bridge has been delayed, the news service reported, until mid-August, when it will no longer represent a danger to the bats.
In California, hundreds of bats during the past year made a home under the Hicks Haul Bridge, intended as a temporary structure to give trucks access to a gravel mine near Lake Forest, CA, in Orange County. However, the demolition was delayed indefinitely after area environmentalists discovered the colony.
Bat colonies like the ones in Georgia and California have become a kind of eco-tourist destination, with Web sites for bat lovers pointing to large colonies.
According to the Web site KidZone, the largest urban bat colony in the United States – with a million and a half bats – is under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, TX. The bats there are the same species found in Georgia.