How to Get Rid of Bats
If bats have taken up residence in your home, you may have a bigger problem on your hands than noise. Invading bats often cause structural damage and leave behind droppings that slowly corrode wood and other building materials. Exposure to bat guano can also pose a serious health risk to you and your family if ignored. Bats are protected species in many parts of the world, so your first step is to find out what you can legally do in your country
Verify that it’s bats you’re dealing with. The occasional rustling in the attic may just be an old water pipe or the sound of the house settling. Make sure you’ve excluded all other possibilities before you begin spending time and energy on a bat-removal project. The best way to tell that you have bats in your home is to see one with your own eyes or come across their tell-tale droppings
Be on the lookout for droppings. Bat excrement (commonly known as “guano”) most often takes the form of small, dark pellets. These are round in shape and give off an overpowering musky stench. Should you encounter bat guano in any part of your home, there’s a good chance that bats have recently been roosting there
Research the types of bats found in your area. There are many different varieties of bats. Find out when maternity season begins for your local bat population. If you drive off the mother after she’s given birth, her babies won’t be able to survive. This will leave you with an unbearable stench and an attic full of dead bats to dispose of
Inspect for places where bats might be getting in. Bats gravitate toward dark, enclosed spaces because they most closely resemble their natural cave habitats. Take a look around your attic, chimney flue, basement or crawlspace and see if you can turn up evidence that bats have been roosting there. Pay special attention to areas accessible through small cracks and apertures, as bats often use these as entry points
How to Get Rid of Bats
Forget mothballs, aerosols, and ultrasonic deterrents. They don’t work, particularly if you have an established colony of bats in your house. The easiest way to get rid of bats is through a process called exclusion.
Bats love old houses: All those crumbling chimneys, cracks and holes, and vents with missing screens are open doors for little mammals that can squeeze through a 3/8″ x 1″ crack, or into a hole smaller than a quarter. A few bats during migration season may be a temporary situation and nothing to worry about. If there’s bat poop—guano—all over the place, you’ve got a problem
Bats are a critical part of the ecosystem, controlling the insect population. It’s impractical, inhumane, and probably illegal to kill them, so you have to go through a live exclusion. If the infestation is large or has been recurrent over years, call in a pro for both exclusion and cleanup. Every state has a wildlife or conservation department that can help you find a licensed wildlife removal specialist
Inspection
Where are the bats getting in? Do a sunny-day inspection to look for missing roof shingles, deteriorating eaves, holes in soffits, etc. Then watch the house (all sides) on a warm, clear summer evening, beginning just before dusk, noting any bat activity. Also, entry points may have “bat tracks,” or greasy brown marks, around them.
Exclusion
The process of exclusion involves using netting or tubes at entry points, which allow the bats to drop down and take flight but which confound re-entry. The excluders are left in place for a week, so that the bats give up. After they’re gone, the plugging and sealing and caulking can take place.
How to Get Rid of Bats
Bloodsuckers! Vampires! Dracula!
Those are some of the first thoughts people naturally tend to have when the subject of bats comes up. It’s understandable but entirely unnecessary. As it turns out, bats are some of the most harmless, inoffensive creatures on earth. Your cat or dog is more likely to bite you than a bat.
Bats aren’t related to rodents either, as many people suppose. The old trope of ‘flying rats’ is unwarranted. Nor are they blind during the day. They’re nocturnal, of course, but their eyes are perfectly normal and they can see just fine in daylight.
What Attracts Bats in the First Place?
The first step in getting rid of bats is to know what they’re attracted to and what kind of environment they prefer. Once you know that, you’ll know where to look for them and how to get rid of them if you have a bat problem.
Cave Dwellers
Bats in the wild are cave dwellers, hiding from the sun during the day. The rough surfaces of rocks give their clawed feet good purchase to cling to when they sleep upside-down during the day. A colony of bats in a cave are mostly females, taking care of their baby bats, called pups.
Food Sources
When the sun sets, bats quit roosting and fly out of their living space to go hunting. Incidentally, bats are the only mammals that can fly. So-called flying squirrels can’t fly. They jump then glide on the outstretched membrane between their legs but they don’t actually fly.
Getting Rid of Bats From Your Home, Property
If you have a bat colony living in your home or find a lone bat in your yard, here’s what you need to know about these creatures before you evict them yourself, or call a wildlife removal professional that has exclusion devices.
Problems Caused by Bats
Bozone says bats can pose some serious health risks to people if you get a bat infestation in your home, sheds and other areas of your property.
If you compromise the droppings without precautions, you can cause histoplasmosis. It is an infection caused by breathing in spores of the fungus often found in bird and bat droppings. Professional bat poop cleaners use respirators.
Getting Rid of a Single Bat Inside Your Home
Turn on lights in the house to see the bat. They can see you. The myth was wrong. Bats can see and are not afraid of the light. Close doors to adjoining rooms and open exterior doors and windows in the room to allow the pest to fly out.
Don’t Touch a Bat
Handling the bat with bare hands is definitely a no-no. It could bite you to protect itself, just like any animal. If it does bite someone or transfer saliva to someone’s open wound, eyes, mouth or nose, go to the emergency room quickly. Save the bat, too, to be tested for rabies.
How To: Get Rid of Bats
The good news: Bats are not aggressive. The bad news: If there are bats in your house, it’s only a matter of time before their waste begins to pose a serious problem.
Health concerns aside—and there are indeed viable health concerns—bat droppings and urine can actually destroy wood and other building materials, gradually compromising the structural integrity of your home.
So even if you are not skittish and don’t mind the idea of bats dwelling under your roof, there are very good, rational reasons to act fast. Follow the steps outlined below about how to get rid of bats and prevent them from returning.
Research local laws
Familiarize yourself with local laws. In most states, bats are a protected species, which means that it’s illegal to kill them. One humane approach is to install a bat house on your property prior to evicting your unwanted guests. Chances are that once barred entry to your home, the bats would take up residence in the new accommodations you’ve prepared. From there, you could count on the bats to continue their beneficial service of eating the insects on your property.
Identify the bat type
When you’re trying to get rid of bats, it’s essential to figure out what type of bat you’re dealing with. So the first thing to do is learn what types of bats are common in your neck of the woods. Next, try to get a good look at the bats, if you haven’t already, so you can compare your observations to your research. Vampire aficionados could easily guess that your best chances of seeing a bat are at dusk and dawn.
