A stock whip isn’t an obvious choice in the quest to deter a colony of bats from making a home in your trees.
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But that’s exactly what Weston man Paul Crawford resorted to after months of sleepless nights listening to up to 100 noisy flying foxes in the paperbark trees in his front yard.
He knew he needed to make an impact to convince them to flee so he cracked the stock whip out the front of his house.
He did this on the hour, for several hours, over four days.
He started at 8pm each night and continued until the early hours of the next morning.
“I cracked it out the front of the house and I gradually moved over to the tree and cracked it under the tree,” Mr Crawford said.
“As soon as I did it they fled instantly and after a few times as soon as I went out there with the whip they would take off. “They knew what was going to happen.
“On the fourth night I only had five to 10 bats in the tree and they took off once I cracked the whip.“None of them have been back since.”
The bats have relocated in bush land one kilometre from the Crawford’s home and peace has been restored for two weeks.
Mr Crawford learnt the art of whip cracking from his grandfather and used to practise the technique as a kid on his family’s dairy farm.
At one point he could crack two whips at once.
Mr Crawford urged Singleton residents to give whip cracking a try to entice the bats in Burdekin park to move on.
Singleton residents have been battling with an increasing bat population in the town for the past 16 years.
It is estimated there are at least 50,000 bats residing in the park and while most of them are Little Red flying foxes, a small percentage are the endangered grey-headed variety.
The weight of the Little Red flying foxes has seen branches fall to the ground. The park had to be closed for safety reasons in March.
Two heritage trees in the park were cut down last week and many other trees had some branches removed.
It comes after two hundred residents held a rally in March to speak out about the problem.
Singleton council has asked the state government to let it remove 40 trees in the park in a bid to try to entice the colony to relocate. Meanwhile, Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon has called for a Senate inquiry into the region’s bat population.
Mr Crawford said it was sad to see the bats destroying the park. He said the creatures were smart enough to evacuate when the whip cracked and knew if they came back it would happen again. “It might work for them too,” he said.
