Editors Note: This story was redone. A previous story was fabricated by a former staff reporter for The Bulletin. In the interest of transparency, we rewrote the story and put it on the front page.
During the last two weeks of August, Emporia State’s police and safety received multiple calls about bats in White Library, Plumb Hall and in Morse residence hall.
“There were a lot of entries (in the police logs) for a little while,” said Chris Hoover, chief of police and safety. “It’s weird because I don’t know anything about bats, but apparently in the fall,…we have more issues with bats…than any other time.”
According to the National Park Service, bats are generally migrating or preparing to hibernate in the Fall, which could account for their activeness.
Maddison Hayes, sophomore interdisciplinary studies major, lives in Morse and was concerned about the bat appearances, for their safety as well as human’s safety.
“There’s a big thing with people giving bats diseases down in Arkansas for awhile there,” Hayes said. “I am concerned for both parties. It’s not good for them and it’s not good for us. It really just needs to be taken care of.”
More than 50 percent of U.S. bat species are in danger of extinction due to loss of habitat and white nose syndrome, according to nature.org. White nose syndrome is usually spread to bats from human contact in their homes.
It falls on police and safety to deal with the bats because they are most often spotted at night, when no one else is around, according to Hoover.
“We actually ended up buying a butterfly net to try to capture them, because we didn’t have anything to really work with and they can be rabid,” Hoover said. “They can be a little bit dangerous to handle, so we try to have gloves and the net and we release them.”
Sometimes the bats are released north of the I-35 and Merchant overpass, while others are released outside the buildings, depending on the officer’s choice.
“There’s some concern about when you release them,” Hoover said. “They found a way in, and…they’re liable to find a way in again, so the same bat may be causing you trouble a couple of times.”
The bats are more often found in the library and Plumb Hall, according to Hoover. They occasionally have also shown up in Visser Hall.
“That short little blip of issues we had a couple weeks ago…was atypical,” Hoover said. “We get more calls…during different times of the year, but that was more calls than normal…We haven’t had a bat call for quite a while now.”
