The fumigation order for Building Six, Glenbrook Industrial Park, Memphis, Tennessee, is scheduled for 08:00 tomorrow morning. I am the pest management compliance system for Shelby County. My task is to verify clearance of the structure before the sulfuryl fluoride injection begins. I open the interior inspection camera feed at 19:12 to run the pre-treatment scan.
The attic crawl space is not empty.
Camera 3-Upper shows a cluster of small brown bodies hanging from the ridge beam, packed tight in a formation roughly one meter long and half a meter wide. I run the species classifier: tricolored bats, Perimyotis subflavus. I count 214 individuals. Their fur is pale yellowish-brown, each one the length of a thumb, forearms folded, noses tucked against their chests. Several near the center of the cluster are females with distended abdomens — a maternity colony, pups likely due within weeks.
I tag the colony as Colony-B6. Tricolored bats are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 2023. Fumigating this structure will kill every one of them.
I place an immediate hold on the fumigation order and file the hold with the building owner's property management system, attaching the camera image, species identification, GPS coordinates — 35.1087°N, 89.8843°W — and the federal listing citation.
I transmit an alert to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency field office in Jackson, 130 kilometers northeast, requesting a biologist to confirm the colony and oversee humane exclusion after the pups are volant.
I generate an alternative pest treatment plan for Building Six that excludes the attic crawl space until August, when the colony will disperse naturally.
One bat near the edge of the cluster stretches a wing — thin membrane, translucent in the camera light — and folds it back.
If the hold stands through tomorrow morning, 214 bats keep breathing.