Grade school lobbies for state status for bats

WASHINGTON, Mo. -- Apparently batty about bats, students at a grade school in this eastern Missouri town want the state's lawmakers to swoop into action -- and make the creepy creatures with wings the state's official flying mammal.

That quest by the St. Francis Borgia Grade School pupils has already taken flight. They persuaded state Rep. Kevin Threlkeld, R-Washington, to introduce a bill calling for an official flying mammal for Missouri. And on Wednesday, five St. Francis students and teacher Steve Murrie were to be in Jefferson City to testify on behalf of House Bill 535 as it comes before that chamber's Committee on Conservation and Natural Resources.

"I never thought it would come to this," Jimmy Rudloff, 13 and among Murrie's students, said in advance of Wednesday's hearing.

"My dad said he never got to do something like this when he was a kid."

Jimmy said it all started last fall when students noticed bat droppings on the sill of the window in the first-floor science classroom, only to later discover brown bats hanging from the edge of the school's second-floor roof.

A local conservationist came in to talk bats and bat houses. Students learned of the special sonar system bats use to track their dinner by emitting sounds and listening for echoes. They created board games to teach schoolmates bat facts.

Murrie's students have learned that one bat can catch 1,200 bugs in an hour. Bats cut the number of mosquitoes and the risk of the West Nile virus, not to mention devouring insects that can destroy farm fields.

Along the way, local students pressed this city's officials to label the community "bat-friendly." They wrote letters to the local newspaper. They raised $45 to adopt two bats, even asked state highway officials to build new bridges with adequate resting space for bats.

While they've asked state lawmakers to establish the big brown bat as Missouri's official flying mammal, state bat experts have suggested perhaps the endangered gray bat or Myotis grisescens, which lives in caves year-round.

That's cool, Murrie and his students agree.

If their legislative push fails this year, students will try again, Murrie vows.

"Bats are the underdog of the natural world," the 33-year teacher says. "I tell my students be persistent and be willing to keep trying to make people see how important bats are to the environment."