Can You Believe It? Shreveport Demolition Delayed Due to Frisky Bats

It was barely ten days ago that we got the good news. The eyesore that is Shreveport's Fairgrounds Field would soon be gone. The legendary field had been abandoned for years and passersby on Interstate 20 have watched the one-time jewel of Shreveport sports slowly deteriorate, becoming, over a decade of disuse, a home not to wooden bats, but thousands of flying ones.

A plan was in place. The money was set aside. A contractor had been hired. All the rules and regulations regarding the relocation of the federally protected creatures would be followed.

And best of all, out-of-town fans coming to the city for bigtime football games would no longer make fun of us.

And now it's all on hold. Again.

So, What Went Wrong This Time?

A recent story at the online Shreveport Bossier Journal details how the wait to demolish what one Indy Bowl visitor described as "post-apocalyptic" isn't over just yet.

Because it's mating season for the bats. Seriously.

“We’re in bat-mating season,” SPAR Director Shelly Ragle told the Journal, referring to the protected-species rules,  “You cannot do anything with the bats. You cannot disturb that process.”

More Bats at the Stadium than People in Ruston

The flying mammals have been the stadium's sole inhabitants for years with their numbers being estimated as high as 30,000. And as the state learned with the barn swallows nesting at the Jimmie Davis Bridge, EPA regulations are nothing to be trifled with.

So when will the job, estimated to cost about $500,000, get underway? It would appear mid-August at the earliest.

"The mating season began last Friday," Ragle tells The Journal, "and lasts four months."