Cub Scouts help build a summer home for bats
Little brown and big brown bats are the expected inhabitants of the bat building.
By Terry Karkos
Staff Writer

BETHEL – Like an old-fashioned barn raising, a condominium project for a new fly-by-night operation was erected Sunday.

Thanks to several adults, Western Maine Supply Co. and the spirited Wolf Den of Bethel’s Cub Scout Pack 566, some 200 bats have a new summer home on the town’s covered bridge replica.

Of course, the small, furry tenants won’t all come in one big Whooosh! like seasonal residents, said local bat expert Seabury Lyon.

“We’ll probably get something in the order of dozens, but it has the capacity for 200 bats,” Lyon said, while watching six cub scouts and a handful of adults construct the large structure inside the covered bridge. “Possibly, in the first year, we won’t get very much, because the further north you go, the smaller the colonies.”

Expected tenants of the scouts’ Registered Bat Conservation Project abode are little brown and big brown bats. However, people walking, riding or jogging along the Androscoggin River on the Bethel pathway over which the covered bridge sits shouldn’t be alarmed at the “big” connotation, Lyon said.

“It’s a difference between them having a 5-inch to 7-inch wingspan and a difference between weighing three to four ounces and five to six ounces,” Lyon added.

Den Leader Stacey Rossow of Greenwood said she first envisioned the bat abode idea after seeing bat houses that a Connecticut scout troop had erected along a floral-lined walkway. But she thought her den would be building box-type bat houses, not the large flat, triangular condo unit that was craftily fitted in under the bridge’s south eave.

The south eave, which faces Route 26, will provide the tenants with a sun-warmed nesting spot.

After gaining permission from selectmen to retrofit the bridge with the facade, which offsets the eave surface by two inches, donations of labor and materials arrived.

“Western Maine Supply donated all the materials with no hesitation whatsoever,” Rossow said.

Because the custom-made bat abode had to be architecturally compatible with the bridge, it had to be built at the bridge, Lyon said.

But rather than attempt to build the bat home outside the bridge in the blowing snow, the construction crew gathered inside the structure.

However, working conditions Sunday were downright freezing because the bridge acted like a funnel for gusting chilly winds zipping down the river.

Under tutelage and help from Rossow’s husband, Robert, Lyon, carpenter Tom Miles and Cub Master Andrew Wheeler, the jacketed youths assembled the wood panels, and sawed and secured the spacing slats before a large screen mesh backing was stapled on. Then the construct was carried up ladders and fitted into place.

The project is just one aspect of Cub Scout Pack 566’s national conservation award, Rossow said. They will also be monitoring how many bat tenants arrive and when.

Cub scouts taking part in the project, which is recognized nationally by Bat Conservation International (www.batcon.org) in Texas, are John Drew, Richard James, Derek Merrill, Avery Rossow, Michael DelDuca, James Heath, Sam Wheeler, Sam Miles and Zachary Hartzell.

After the bat house was erected, the youths presented a very surprised Lyon with their handmade, popsicle-stick replica of the covered bridge.

Flying over the diorama’s bridge were cute little bats attached to wires.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com