Authorities have ordered an 84-unit apartment complex vacated after finding an estimated 2,000 bats in buildings, two of which tested positive for rabies.
The building quarantine and moving of about 300 residents from the complex may end up costing Lake Jackson $25,000 to $30,000, said Assistant City Manager Modesto Mundo.
County officials this week also authorized the district attorney’s office to sue the owner of Casa Del Lago apartments and his company. Owner Charles Pinter of New York City did not return phone calls for comment.
Officials issued orders to remove the bats, but one naturalist said plans to move them to another location at least 200 miles away might not work.
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“You can take those bats 200 miles away, and they’ll be back within a day,” said Merlin Tuttle, founder and president of Bat Conservation International.
“Texas bats cover an amazing amount of territory,” he said. “It’s nothing for them to fly 50 or 100 miles just to feed.”
Exclusion devices can be used to keep the bats from returning to their nests inside the walls and ceiling of the Casa Del Lago apartments, Tuttle said. Repairing the holes the bats use to get inside the walls will make them go someplace else, he said.
Tuttle said the situation should never have gotten so bad. “The thing to do is to keep bats out of human habitations,” he said.
Lake Jackson Mayor Bob Sipple said he saw Brazoria County Health Department Director Leo O’Gorman pull a piece of siding loose from one building and “bats flew out all over the place and four fell down dead on the ground in front of us.”