A skunk waddles around the Northwest neighborhood nightly. Some residents of Foster Quad call her Petunia.
While she stays outdoors and has been generally well-received, not all campus animals have met such fanfare as Petunia’s hand-cut poster behind the residence hall center desk.
Mice were born in a sociology class last semester. A bat curled up for a nap in a newsroom last summer. A deer smashed into Jordan Hall about a decade ago.
These are only a few of the one or two pest control calls fielded every month by IU Facility Operations.
“People certainly shouldn’t try to get them out themselves,” Assistant Director of Facility Operations Greg Fichter said. “They should notify the proper authorities.”
If the system for removing animals progresses ideally, the people who notice the creature would contact the building facility representative.
Then, the building facility representative would contact Facility Operations, Fichter said.
Facility Operations would send one or both of the pest control professionals in the department with a live trap or a long-handled net, gloves and other safety gear.
Despite the protocol for restoring the human-animal divide, the process has not always worked smoothly.
Such was the case last year in the WFIU/WTIU newsroom.
Just before classes started in August 2015, reporter Claire McInerny worked at her desk in the Radio-TV Building.
A little black ball slept in the lighting grid above her.
A fellow reporter noticed the mysterious form and alerted McInerny.
It was a member of one of the 10 species of bat that call Indiana home.
“So of course we all freaked out — derailed for the morning,” McInerny said.
The reporters called Bloomington Animal Care and Control, who said an officer wouldn’t be available for hours.
Then they called someone in campus maintenance, who McInerny said referred them back to animal control.
While people on campus occasionally call animal control, doing so does not align with Facility Operations policy.
“We were on the phone a lot, and we could not figure out who would quickly come get this bat out of the room,” McInerny said. “That’s when we were left to our own devices.”
By the time the animal control officer arrived, the bat was long gone and had presumably gone to hide in the ceiling.
Days later, it reemerged.
“Don’t freak out,” someone said to reporter Barbara Brosher, who sat on a couch next door to the location of the first sighting. “There’s a bat above your head.”
That day, a WFIU/WTIU employee’s boyfriend came to the newsroom to remove the winged guest.
He prompted the bat to leave its perch and fly about the room until he caught it with a blanket, which he used to safely transport the creature outside.
Fortunately for everyone involved, the newsroom bat did not bite anyone.
If it had, another series of events would have unfolded.
If there were any possibility of a bite, people are expected to send the bat to the Indiana State Department of Health lab for testing, IU Public Health Manager Graham McKeen said.
According to the Environmental Health and Safety-Bloomington website, if immediate capture is not necessary, people should close all windows and doors except those leading outside and allow the bat to leave on its own.
