Bat colony takes up residence between family's screen, storm window

HUNTERDON COUNTY, N.J. -- Some unique visitors have taken up residence around a house in New Jersey, and they've been hanging around for quite some time.

A colony of bats is now living between the screen and storm window inside a bedroom where two little boys sleep every night.

And rather than trying to get rid of them, the Williams family, of Hunterdon County, is embracing them and even streaming live video of the bats.

The shy warm-blooded mammals huddled together on a rainy Monday are brown bats living peacefully in the window after they got a warm welcome and stuck around.

"I don't feel at all scared," Matthew Williams said. "This is like being at the zoo. And you're just on the other side of a window."

A camera is set up to offer the view of bat life for the world to watch how they behave. Williams also makes a daily YouTube posting of bat activity, which reaches its peak of 30 bats during the summer months.

Mother bats often drop off their babies before they hunt at night. It's an up-close teaching tool.

"One of the neat things I've discovered is they have hands like people," Williams said. "And you can actually see almost the relationship between our hand to the bat wing, up close."

The bat haven is in the room where family's two sons sleep. But they don't go batty over the bat invasion.

"Sometimes they'll squeak and they'll wiggle around, and the boys love it," Williams said. "For us, it's like having pets."

Matthew's wife isn't hanging onto a yuck factor.

"Yeah, we had babies in the springtime, two babies," Sharon Ingarra said. "One survived. And they were just adorable. I mean, for bats."

Wildlife experts say the bat droppings, or guano, at the base of the window is very valuable because its nitrogen rich. It's an unusual spot for bats to call home, but they are important for the state's pest control.

"New Jersey bats are all insectivores," said Stephanie Feigin, a wildlife ecologist with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation. "So a single brown bat can eat up to 3,000 mosquitos in a night."

Since 2009, some 6 million bats have died from an illness called White Nose Syndrome. That's why everyone is excited to see this colony survive.

Click here for the YouTube bat channel