On Sept. 2 phones rang throughout Creighton Hall to relay a message: be on the lookout for a naughty nocturnal friend flying through the hallways.
Shirley Spain, senior manager for the office of the president, was surprised when she peeked out of her office door.
“Here comes this bat flying down the corridor, about eye level,” Spain said. She then called Public Safety because it was alarming faculty and students.
But before Public Safety arrived, the misplaced mammal had got down to the first floor.
English department work-study students, Lauren Sepulveda, Arts & Sciences junior, and Aaron Redinbaugh, Arts & Sciences sophomore, saw the bat zipping past their doorway. Redinbaugh ran after it.
“I started chasing after it to see where it’d go in case it started flying off somewhere else,” he said. “All the girls were just freaking out, screaming.”
Public Safety officer Oscar Garcia responded to the call and came armed with a broom.
“We don’t have any equipment or training or protocol to deal with that,” Garcia said. “In the case of last Tuesday, we take matters into our own hands and try to smack it with a broom.”
After Garcia stunned the creature, Linda Bendorf, senior account specialist and Monthly Electronic Transfer plan coordinator, released the bat outside. A few years ago the office had the same problem.
“We do keep a pair of heavy electrician gloves in our office so that we can catch them and they won’t bite us,” Bendorf said.
Bendorf volunteered to dispose of the bat.
“Bats are just normal little animals,” she said. “They have little ears and little noses. I’m not scared of them at all.”
Bats, which live in Creighton Hall’s attic and in niches in St. John’s, sometimes escape to the lower floors.
“In a building of this age, and as many gaps as there are, it stands to reason it’d be populated with bats,” Spain said.
Public Safety had to take care of a bat in Lower St. John’s the week before, Garcia said.
“I think they’ve got a little condominium set up over there [in St. John’s],” Garcia said.
EMS senior Jon Kilstrom said he remembered Welcome Week his freshman year, bats were flying around St. John’s while they were having a ceremony.
“Freshman year there always was a bat hanging by the fire alarm in the back stairwell [of Creighton Hall],” Kilstrom said.
Ridding an old building of entry points for bats is hard to do.
Bats can squeeze through openings from grates, windows, cracks and vents only a half an inch wide, and other places like chimneys, doors and windows, according to the Nebraska Humane Society’s Web site.
“I think that if we found out where they were getting in, we’d certainly try and bat-proof it,” said John Baxter, director facilities management and environmental health and safety. “I don’t think we’re going to try and ignore it. We have an occasional problem. If facilities can find the hole, they will block it. It’s just that the holes are very, very small.”
The Humane Society only answers bat calls if the animal has already been caught, so Public Safety is your best bet to take care of a problem. And while they might not protect Gotham City from crime, they do rid Creighton’s oldest buildings of unwelcome guests.
“We’re the unofficial bat men,” Garcia said.