The stink about Selma's resident creatures of the night recently reached the Town Council, which took a look at possible solutions. But this month, they decided not to spend $80,000 to rid downtown of bats.

Town Manager Richard Douglas said he and other town leaders don't think evicting bats from private buildings is the job of government. "There's some concerns about doing work on private property," he said. "If we undertake it, there's some liability concerns about pushing the bats from one building to another building."

Then there's the town's budget constraints. Wildlife experts say it would cost between $3,800 to $5,800 to remove bats from each building and make sure they didn't come back.

Town leaders think that's a cost better shouldered by property owners.

At the town's request, Dan Glover of Trapper Dan's Wildlife and Pest surveyed the downtown bat problem. He checked out 15 buildings, and he said eight or nine had become home to bats - enough to be noticeable along Anderson and Raiford streets.

"When you walk into the downtown area, you can smell the odor of bat guano; you can hear them," Glover said. "The odor associated with them is a pretty disgusting odor."

What brought the winged visitors to town? Most buildings downtown are a century or more old and have plenty of cracks and crevices around the roofs. Glover said bats need only a hole the size of a 50-cent coin to get inside.

Once in, the bats make their way into other areas of the building, including storefronts, and they can leave a mess.

Just kicking the bats out of each building isn't good enough, Glover said. "Bats are kind of migratory - they return to the same area over and over again," he said.

To keep them out for good, a building's owner needs to plug up every crack and crevice.

But without treating every bat-infested building on a block, bats are likely to wind up a few doors down, Glover said.

That's why Selma considered a town-led effort. Several individual businesses have already called in bat-removal crews, but that hasn't solved the overall problem. Another option is to set up bat boxes on the edge of town and hope they move there.

Glover said he's seen an increase in bats in recent years. In addition to native brown bats, he's noticed more Mexican free-tailed bats - including in downtown Selma. "They're able to colonize at a faster rate," he said. "What that means is larger populations."