As UF moves forward with plans to fix and replace its crippled bat house, hundreds - perhaps thousands - of displaced bats have found new homes in buildings on campus.
A day or two after the roosting fins fell to the ground and crushed about 80 bats last month, people in the psychology department noticed they weren't the only ones using their building, located on Center Drive north of Shands at UF.
One night, a graduate student leaving the building around midnight decided to take the elevator and got dive-bombed by bats, said Neil Rowland, chairman of the psychology department.
The next day, a number of people in the building reported seeing bats, Rowland said.
"The ones I saw were all basically lying down on surfaces, like they were pooped out," he said.
"[It's] hard to see them if they're on a desk," he said, noting their brown color. "It's like, 'Hmmm, I wonder what this is on a desk. Oh, it's a bat!'"
So they placed a call to UF's Physical Plant Division, which determined that between 1,000 and 2,000 bats were living in the elevator shaft.
They had likely entered through an inch-and-a-half hole in the roof, said Ken Glover, UF's pest management coordinator.
"We called 'em the psycho bats," Glover joked, speculating as to why they chose the psychology building. "We gave them the proper counseling and now they're OK."
He said hundreds of the bats were removed by placing them in boxes and released into the wild, and the rest flew out through a one-way tube that ran from inside the shaft out through the roof.
Other buildings that likely saw influxes of bats include Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and one of the Veterinary Medicine buildings, Glover said.
He said UF's bat house should be fixed in about a month. The repairs will likely cost about $10,000. Plans are also being drawn up for a new bat house, he said, which might cost in the neighborhood of $60,000.
UF is currently seeking donations and looking at other possible funding options, like the University Athletic Association and the UF Foundation, which handles donations to UF.
Lubee Bat Conservancy, a nonprofit organization, has raised about $1,500 for a new house and has another received another pledge of $1,000, said director Allyson Walsh. Donations can be made at lubee.org.
The organization also plans to hold a fundraiser at its annual Bat Festival on Oct. 10.
