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ROOSEVELT, Duchesne County — East Elementary School has been dealing with some unexpected visitors of the flying mammal variety over the past few weeks.
In a letter to the school community, Duchesne County School District Superintendent Jason Young said staff members recently noticed a bat in the school, leading them to contact the Utah Department of Natural Resources.
Tonya Kieffer-Selby, conservation outreach manager for the department, said it received two calls over the past two weeks asking for the department's assistance in removing bats from the school.
"One of our staff members went in — he's our conservation biologist for the region — and was able to safely remove the bat after school hours," Kieffer-Selby said. "The second bat, when we received the call, school personnel had already captured the bat and our staff member was able to go to the school and collect the bat to be released."
Once a biologist arrives on scene in the event of an out-of-place bat, the first step is to assess the health of the animal to make sure it isn't sick or injured, Kieffer-Selby said. If the bat appears to be healthy, the biologist will capture the bat using the necessary safety measures, whether it be with gloved hands or a net.
Once the bat is captured, the biologist takes the bat out for release back into the wild during evening hours.
"The bats at East Elementary appeared to be healthy and so they were released back into the wild safely," Kieffer-Selby said, adding that the department has only rescued two bats from the school at this point.
Young's letter to the school community says the school has a protocol in place and in the event of a bat discovery, all students and staff are evacuated from the room and crews remove the bat in a similar fashion as the Department of Natural Resources personnel before class resumes.
"People need to be cautious if bats are found within their actual home. We have lots of protocols that we do follow, whether that is the public contacting the Division of Wildlife or their local animal control (or) their local health department because there are proper precautions. We wouldn't want to just ... encourage people to go and collect a bat and release it," Kieffer-Selby said.
The bats discovered in the school were identified as Mexican free-tailed bats.
Mexican free-tailed bats prefer to roost in caves but actually have a history of occupying schools in the Beehive State along with attics, abandoned buildings and beneath bridges, according to a fact sheet from Utah State University.
Additionally, the Wasatch Front is located right along these bats' migration route to Central America and Mexico, making many schools a seemingly attractive pit stop for the winged mammals.
"We traditionally, this time of year, encounter more bats being found near schools and/or people's personal porches because bats are migrating," Kieffer-Selby said. "It's not uncommon for people to encounter bats, especially during their migrational path back south. However, with the situation at East Elementary, we can't speculate as to whether these bats are migrating or whether these bats are there."
In the letter, Young said that the school was advised — by the Utah Department of Natural Resources — to not plug any holes in the building until after it has frozen and the bats have moved south. Kieffer-Selby said that this is because the department wants to give any other bats that may be roosting in the attic or crevices of East Elementary a chance to escape and migrate as opposed to plugging the holes and killing them.
More information from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources about preventing conflict with bats can be found here and here.
