TUPELO - Fourteen-year-old Logan Long had hatched a plan to build community bat boxes as a way to earn his Eagle Scout ranking.

But he had no idea the project would extend beyond the original goal.

Six months after launching his effort - and two months after cinching his Eagle rank - Logan continues to build bat boxes for family, friends and neighbors.

"I guess I'm not surprised," Logan said of the continued demand. "I actually thought it might happen because I was already making more of them than we'd planned."

Logan and his father, Ken Long, construct the boxes together at their North Church Street home with materials donated by Lowe's. Each wooden box features three narrow compartments where up to 100 little brown bats can sleep.

Little brown bats - also called Myotis lucigungus - are native to north Mississippi and notoriously feast upon the area's abundant mosquito population. Each bat consumes up to 1,000 insects per hour.

It can take bats anywhere from one day to one year to find the boxes. Once they do, they'll stay in the general vicinity to live and breed and raise their young. When a box fills to capacity, another can be mounted above or below it to grow the colony.

"The mosquito population is horrible downtown," Ken Long said. "We could use another 20 boxes down here."

The project began in partnership with the city of Tupelo, whose staff environmentalist Sherrie Cochran identified public spaces to mount each box.

Ten of them went up.

But word of the project spread. Neighbors wanted boxes near their homes. A golf course called and asked for one, too. So did friends and family members.

So Logan and his father continued building boxes and say they can handle at least another 15 or so orders this summer.

They mounted one of them - a double wide version - Friday morning outside the city's dog park on Veterans Boulevard. Logan fastened the final screws as his father supervised.

"Good, that's enough," Ken Long told his son, warning him not to wedge the screws too deeply into the wood. "All right. I think we're ready to go."

Logan and his younger brother, Landon, lashed one end of a rope around the box. They tossed the other end to their father, who waited atop a ladder leaning on a wooden utility pole. Ken Long slid the rope through a loop and tossed it back to the ground.

The boys grabbed it and pulled. The box lifted from the ground, rising to meet their father. Ken Long grabbed it and steadied against the pole as he mounted it in place with large screws.

"I prefer to do the climbing part," he said.

Boxes sell for $50 each, with proceeds covering some of the undonated materials and the rest funding Logan's Scouting activities, including a trip to Washington, D.C., that starts today.

When he's not building boxes, Logan earns money mowing lawns with Landon - "Long Brothers Mowing Company," their father jokes - and runs cross country with Tupelo High School, where he'll enter the ninth grade in August.

To order or sponsor a bat box, contact Ken Long at tupelo.bat.house@gmail.com.

emily.lecoz@journalinc.com