Americus, Ga. – The grand historic mansions of this Southern town have become infested with millions of bats – so many that the sky turns black with each sunset. So many that not even the neighborhood Batman can help.
“This town is in bad shape,” said George Perkins, a bat remover who often makes public appearances in the caped crusader’s costume and drives his own Batmobile, a retro-styled Chrysler Prowler with bat emblems.
Homeowners are not laughing. The bat problem began about a decade ago and got steadily worse as the number of animals grew.
Perkins alone cannot do the job anymore, and now the state has promised to help, proposing a year-long program to capture and move the flying mammals to “bat houses” where they will no longer be a nuisance.
“They’re perpetual crap machines,” said Tripp Pomeroy, who spent $1,500 trying to evict bats from the attic of his 96-year-old home in Americus, a town of 17,000 people about 115 miles south of Atlanta.
Many of the bats have settled into the town’s historic district, known for its antebellum and Greek Revival mansions built in the 1800s, and Victorian homes from the early 1900s.
Residents are not allowed to kill the bats because they are protected under Georgia law. Killing even one carries up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Homeowners try to keep them out by plugging openings in their homes. But that is often a futile task, since bats can squeeze through holes as small as a dime.
Those who can afford professional help call Perkins, who founded his company, Bat Busters, in the early 1990s, when a young woman died from rabies after she touched bats that flew into her office. Perkins calls his offices “Bat Caves,” and callers hear the theme from the “Batman” TV series while on hold.
