PUGGY'S HILL

Although previous experiments had failed to induce bats to leave their roosts permanently and take up residence in his first bat tower, Campbell was ready to try something else. He hypothesized that since bats located their food through a highly developed sense of hearing, certain types of sounds might prove disagreeable enough to cause them to move and not return. Noting that bats frequented churches and belfries with no apparent aversion to organs or bells, he further surmised that brass band music might provide the right measure of disagreeableness to sensitive bat ears. Since the home he had provided "in which all the conveniences any little bat heart could possibly desire" was only a few hundred yards away, he felt confident that the evicted bats would gratefully move in. ....

Beginning at four in the morning, the bats of the hunting lodge were serenaded with the "Cascade of Roses" waltz as played by the Mexico City Police Band. Cornets, clarinets, piccolos, trombones, drums and cymbals created a cacophony of sound that greeted the bats on their 5:00 a.m. return. Campbell reported that the astonished bats circled the building again and again before giving up and disappearing into the dawn. The concert was resumed the next morning, but the bats, likely knowing what was good for them, never put in an appearance. Campbell repeated the musical production number at a nearby abandoned ranch house occupied by bats. This time he drove the bats out with "the first fortissimo" an hour and a half before their usual emergence time.

The following evening he waited for the bats to leave his bat tower. The emergence that had only taken five minutes a month before now lasted for nearly two hours. The bats never returned to either of the two houses, and Campbell was convinced he had succeeded in concentrating his disease-battling bat forces.