Perhaps some pillow talk took place with Violet, resulting in getting Honest Ernest read into this story. It doesn’t sound as if he was specifically hired, so much as he is volunteering (once again). But why is Jules Rivera redoing the bats in the recital hall plot? Perhaps she has a “Some people never learn” moral she want to promote. It does seem odd that the characters act like this is not a story replay; especially Honest Ernest, whose last attempt at bat removal sent him to the ER to get anti-rabies shots from a bat bite. Now, if he gets too close to Cherry, she might wind up biting him.

But Cherry’s response in panel 2 is ambiguous and sounds like it is more a personal choice than obeying an existing law. She could simply have said “The law says we can’t move the bats until the babies can fly!” Not sure that Ernest is that much of a law-and-order kind of guy, but at least he would know the situation better.