TAKING WING AT THE AIRPORT

There is no belfry at McCarran International Airport, but the bats don't seem to care.

For the past 15 years at least, a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats has lived peacefully in several choice nooks at the airport's employee parking garage.

The habitat is so ideal that these flying mammals appear to have abandoned their natural tendency to migrate south in the winter. Instead, they live year round at McCarran, where they crowd together by the hundreds and sleep away the day behind concrete slabs warmed by the sun on the south side of the garage.

If you stand nearby and listen closely, you can hear their tiny squeaks amid the squeal of tires and brakes.

At dusk, the squeaking grows louder as the bats begin to stir.

When the time is right, they slip out from their concrete crevices and take to the sky to feast on insects drawn to the bright lights of the airport and the Strip.

Officials at McCarran decided long ago not to disturb the colony. Aside from producing a bit of guano, the bats cause no problems for planes or the public, said airport spokesman Chris Jones.

A study commissioned by the airport in 1994 concluded that eradicating the bats and sealing off all potential roosting areas "would be extremely costly, labor-intensive and probably futile."

UNLV life sciences professor Brett Riddle co-authored the report, and his feelings haven't changed in the 13 years since.

"My primary goal with that report was to convince the airport not to get rid of them," said Riddle, who used to take his mammalogy students on field trips to see the bats. "I don't see any reason at all to try to get rid of them. They don't bother anybody, and they're beneficial."

Jones said the presence of the colony may help keep away bigger pests such as pigeons by keeping the bug population under control.

Conservationist Robert Locke is glad to hear such an enlightened attitude.

A lot of people hate and fear bats based on pervasive myths about the animals, which are often wrongly accused of aggression and being major rabies carriers, he said.

"The first response is, 'Oh my God, bats!' Very frequently, they'll decide (later), 'Well, that's not so bad,' " said Locke, who is director of publications for Bat Conservation International, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving bats and their habitat around the world.

"Bats are the primary predator of night-flying insects. There is absolutely no logical reason to drive them off, and to actually exterminate them would be criminal," Locke said.

In their favorite spot on the garage's third floor, McCarran's bats have dusted the railing beneath their roost with a black layer of guano.

Glenn Gardner, assistant safety officer for McCarran, said the bats have staked out smaller roosts in a few other spots, but "this is really where they gather."

This time of year, the area smells faintly of animal urine, sort of like the monkey house at the zoo.

"In the summer, it's just strong," Gardner said. "It gets kind of nasty down here."

Their main roosting spot is not easily accessible to the public, but it is almost directly above the sidewalk where travelers wait in line for taxicabs.

Gardner said the area around the taxi stand is swept daily. Droppings right around the roosting areas are cleared away two or three times a year during a thorough cleaning of McCarran's parking garages.

An airport maintenance crew was in the process of cleaning the garages this week, Jones said.

Also known as Brazilian free-tailed bats, the warm-blooded bug eaters have a 12- to 14-inch wingspan and a coat of fur that generally comes in brown or gray.

They are considered one of the most abundant mammals in North America, with a range that extends as far north as Oregon and Nebraska and as far south as Chile and Argentina. They can also be found throughout Central America and the West Indies.

Like other bats, they use their wings like the webbing of a baseball mitt, scooping insects out of midair, said Cris Tomlinson, wildlife diversity supervisor for the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

"I liken them to more like a jet," he said. "These guys fly high and they fly fast, but they're not as maneuverable" as other bats.

The Mexican free-tailed is one of 23 different bat species found in Nevada.

No real effort has been made to count the bats at McCarran, but Riddle guessed there are anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand of them.

As Mexican free-tailed colonies go, that's comparatively tiny.

The colony that roosts in Bracken Cave, north of San Antonio, Texas, is thought to include somewhere between 20 million and 40 million bats, making it the single largest concentration of mammals in the world. Each night, the bats emerge in thick clouds to eat an estimated 200 tons of insects.

"That's not a bad thing if you live in Texas," Locke said.

UNLV's Riddle said there are small groups of Mexican free-tailed bats that roost throughout Southern Nevada, but the colony at the airport is unique because of its size and the fact that it's here all year.

The concrete slabs on the side of the garage must absorb enough heat from the sun to keep the bats warm and happy during the winter, Riddle said. Or maybe it has something to do with the name of the place.

Each summer, a colony of at least 100,000 Mexican free-tailed bats takes up residence beneath the East McCarran Boulevard bridge over the Truckee River in Reno.

From June through September, the animals roost and raise their young in the bridge's concrete crevices.

"We're trying to develop that as a watchable wildlife site," said Jenni Jeffers, a Department of Wildlife biologist who studies the state's bat species. "There's a whole ecosystem going on down there."

The colony is especially interesting to watch at sundown, when the bats fly out from beneath the McCarran bridge in hungry clouds. "It takes them as much as 20 minutes to all emerge because there's so many of them," Jeffers said.

There is usually at least one red-tail hawk and one kestrel waiting to pluck an easy meal from the steady stream of bats. Jeffers said she once saw an overzealous hawk flying around with a bat in each claw and no way to land to eat them.

Beneath the bridge, she has seen mink and skunk lying in wait for bats that get knocked to the ground or into the river during the nightly scramble to hunt bugs.

Jeffers said an effort is under way to put up a few informational signs about bats near the bridge, which could emerge as a minor attraction for eco-tourists in Reno.

Expect no such treatment at McCarran's employee parking garage.

Though members of the public are free to walk through the terminal, take an elevator to the third floor and make their way to the spot in the garage where the bats tend to roost, airport officials will do nothing to encourage the practice, Jones said.

"We're squeezing more people through here than the building was ever designed to take as it is," he said. "We have to focus on the people who are coming to the airport for travel."