Birch-Welch-Roberts roommates Peter Chidister and David Hansen received two unwelcome visitors in their dorm room. Hansen was jilted awake by a bat that landed on his bed covers around 2 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 27, on the fourth floor of Birch Hall. He lied there frozen, watching the bat fly around the room. “I didn’t react,” said Hansen, freshman in electrical engineering. “I knew what it was, so I laid in bed and watched it for a minute. They were flying around so fast, and I was waiting for a chance to jump down from my loft.” Once he got down, Hansen flipped on the lights, opened the door and watched the bat fly around while Chidister, freshman in English, continued sleeping. Chidister said he didn’t wake until a group of students noticed the commotion in their room. Hansen and Chidister said one of the guys ran into the room, killed one of the bats with a sandal and then left with the bat in a bag. The two men went back to sleep while the second bat, Chidister said, was hiding in a fan directly above his head. He didn’t notice the bat was there until it flew into the moving fan and injured itself. “I took it out, killed it with a sandal, and threw it away in the bathroom,” Chidister said. B-W-R Hall Director Ryan Gildersleeve said the Department of Residence has been handling this case and others like it and has taken measures to get rid of the bats in the building by spraying or capturing them. “[B-W-R] is a very old building,” Gildersleeve said. “There are spaces that can’t be filled that the bats are slipping through. Also, we’re having our roof renovated this fall, so there are parts of the building that are exposed sometimes.” The first reported case occurred the weekend of Aug. 26, Gildersleeve said. Killing the bats is not an option because they are a protected species, he said. If students see a bat, they should “contact the [resident assistant] on duty or the student center. They will come out, capture the bat and test it for rabies,” Gildersleeve said. He stressed that if students locate bats in their rooms, they should avoid contact with it. “Students shouldn’t take them on by themselves,” Gildersleeve said. The bats that Chidister described were brown bats and had an estimated wing span of 9 inches. Gildersleeve said a person could contract rabies from these bats only if bitten by a bat carrying the disease. Although the bats are protected, Chidister said he wasn’t punished for the death of the two bats.