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How to Get Rid of Bats

September 15th, 2006 by admin
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1. Holy Bats, Batman! What are Bats Anyway?

Bats are mammals, the only mammal that has evolved the capability of true flight. They are also a common object of phobias (For more infos on phobias, see The guide to Phobia list ), but of the more than 1,000 known species of bats less than 10 feed on the blood of other mammals. The vast majority of bats feed on insects and fruits. Most bats that live in the US feed exclusively on insects – in fact, every night a single bat can consume its body weight in insects making them a very useful and natural insect-control measure and a vital part of our ecosystem. If you find yourself in an area swarming with insects, you might consider erecting a bat house to attract these animals to your property. This will give the bats a safe-haven and help control your local insect population – but this article is about getting rid of them. If you would like more information about buying or building a bat house (Tips on how to make a bat house), check out the PDF documents available on this website: BatCon.org.

2. What Attracts Bats to Your Property?

Bats, like most animals, follow the path of least resistance. They flourish in areas abundant in food, shelter, and the absence of predators. If you live in an area that is uniquely habitable for any particular species of bat, don’t be surprised if they try and move in. Bats usually roost in dark, quiet, enclosed spaces where they are least likely to be disturbed by predators or inclement weather. Their natural habitats are caves and other such secluded areas and this is why your barn, shed or attic can be so attractive to a bat in search of safety. Some species are less picky and will roost in trees and dense foliage. Bats roost for three reasons:
  1. To digest the night’s meal: After a long night of feeding, it’s not uncommon to spot a lone bat hanging from an awning or off a tree as it digests the night’s catch. Technically this is resting, not 'roosting'.
  2. Hibernation: During the colder months, depending on your geographic location, bats will seek out secluded spaces with stable conditions to hibernate and wait out the cold season. They often roost in groups and make use of each other’s body heat to keep one another warm.
  3. Breeding: Bats will choose protected environments for the creation of nursery colonies. Nursery colonies are where female bats nurse their babies to self-sufficiency. It’s common for several hundred mother bats to share the same roost with each other creating a ‘colony’ of babies and mothers. Maternity season for bats in the United States and Canada is usually from late April to late August.
Bats can fit into openings as small as 1/2" making almost every man-made structure a virtual smorgasbord of potential hiding places. Some of the places that bats have been found in man-made structures include but are not limited to:
  • Attics
  • Storage sheds
  • Barns
  • Unused and open structures (Dog houses - Learn how to build a dog house, stables, etc)
  • Chimneys
  • Louvers
  • Soffits
  • Siding
  • Eaves
  • Roof tiles and shingles
  • Behind shutters

3. What to do if You Encounter a Bat

Bats are relatively timid creatures that normally go out of their way to avoid contact with humans. This is why you should be extremely careful if you encounter one up close and personal. Less than 1/2 of a percent of bats carry rabies, but those that do are more likely to become sick or disoriented increasing their likelihood of coming into contact with someone. Of the few rabies cases reported each year in the U.S., over half of them are caused by bat bites, so be very cautious when in close proximity and do not handle the bat with bare hands.

Bat Bites

Bat bitesBat bites aren’t always noticeable, they usually aren’t very painful so it’s possible for somebody to get bitten while they are sleeping or otherwise distracted. If you or anyone in your household has been exposed to a bat and you aren’t 100% sure that they weren’t bitten, it should be captured and brought with you to your doctor to be tested for rabies. This is especially important in the case of a child who is found with a bat as they may not admit to getting bitten or understand the potential risk. Don’t panic – rabies is still extremely rare, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, right?

Getting a Bat Out of Your House

If a bat wanders into your home through an open door or window, the best way to usher it out is to seal it off from the rest of the house by closing the doors to adjacent rooms and opening all of the windows in the room in which it resides. Just give it a few hours and it will usually leave all by itself. If it decides to stick around or you simply don’t have the patience to wait for it to leave, you can capture the bat and release it outside.

How to Capture a Bat

If you find yourself in a situation where you must capture a bat to either bring it to your doctor or release it outside of your home, the most important thing to remember is not to handle it with your bare hands. If you’re not particularly squeamish around bats then you can dawn a pair of heavy work gloves and use them to grab it and transport it out doors. A more agreeable method to those who would rather not get so close would be to take a small container such as a coffee can or shoebox, place it over the bat, and then slide a rigid piece of cardboard underneath to trap it in the container. You can then open the container outside to free the bat, or tape it shut (don’t forget air-holes) and bring it with you to your doctor if somebody may have been bitten.
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  1. August 16th, 2011 at 10:45 am    Charles Parker Says:

    Theres a free bat removal handbook at louisianawildlifecontrol.com in PDF form for those of you wanting to gain a better understanding of the process. After reading the handbook though you’ll probably want to hire a pro anyway due to the fact that this isn’t always as easy as folks make it sound. Every once in awhile you’ll run across a situation where its a simple single hole or “point of entry” but most of the time theres ALOT of sealing to be done first. Always use long lasting dependable products – foam breaks down within a year and then you’ll have bats again!

  2. June 25th, 2011 at 9:08 am    Bob Crole Says:

    Forget flashing strobes and high frequency pulsed. Fibregalss is the answer. Pack exits to hanging area tightly with fibreglass wool. Like humans it irritates the skin and they moove off to kinder resting spots.

  3. If you live in Michigan then getting rid of bats is a time sensitive matter. June and July then let them fly. Maternal colonies have there young towards the end of may and if you perform the bat exclusion work the the juvenile bats will be trapped in the attic. We get rid of bats by bat proofing and installing one way doors so the bats can get out but not return.

  4. [...] How to Get Rid of Bats – howtogetridofstuff.comBat Extermination, meaning to remove by lethal efforts is illegal, killing bats is un-ethical and a crime. Setting out bat poisons or glue traps is ineffective in trying to attain bat control, a pest control license only given by passed exam is mandatory to dispense toxic pesticides. [...]

  5. February 1st, 2011 at 9:21 pm    tina Oneonta, Alabama Says:

    We live in North Alabama in a log cabin with a metal roof, we have bat’s in our eve’s and front porch overhanging roof as well as the 2 “dog house” windows on the covered porch, We can hear them inside and it sound’s like there is a family of them in there chattering back and forth, we have tried a few suggestions, like Garlic and sprayed repellent on the area we believe there entering but, this hasn’t seem to help the problem , we don’t have the money to pay a proffesional to help with our problem, If anyone has a suggestion to help save our Log home from becoming a BAT HOUSE please help!!!Thanks!

  6. August 28th, 2010 at 6:31 pm    Bat 101 Says:

    With WNS or White Nose Syndrome recently killing millions of bats at a time they are more precious than ever. This fungus only attacks them when temperatures drop, and causes them to come out of hibernation at times they would not normally be awake, this causes the bats use stored fat cells eventually leading to death. Scientists are prediction that extinction is likely in the next 16 years unless a solution can be found to cure this rapidly spreading fungus.

    Bats are very unique, they are specialized sonar guided mammals that can fly and the only mammal at that, that can take flight. Couple that with the fact a lactating female can eat almost her body weight in bugs in a night, shows how remarkable they really are. Over 3 dozen species exist in the U.S. with some being threatened. Here in Illinois bat species have a few endangered species amongst the list. They do not have the best eyesight and the saying “blind as a bat” doesn’t come out of no where. When you have very poor eyesight and are so small you have to safe during the day, or get eaten by a predator. Unfortunately for you, sometimes this means bats in your home or chimney causing you to wonder, how do you remove bats! Do not feel intruded upon they just want to be safe just like you and I. I mean come on, who can blame a nearly blind animal that works all night keeping mosquitoes in line. The proper thing to do is relocate the bats to a new area unharmed and seal up your home from bats. And you can have this done with out touching a single bat.

    Just like skunks and even dogs, they can contract rabies. The honest truth about rabid bats is, although they are a carrier of rabies, only about 1% of the population actually has the infection. The reason the hype with rabies is so large is because it still is a threat to humans and the majority of people know so little about bats that is usually just the warnings that stick in their mind. Make sure your distance from them stays far enough so no accidental contact can happen and im pretty sure they will do they same. Histoplasmosis, a disease derived from histoplasma capsulatum is a fungal spore in bat guano, when kicked around or blown this airborne spore can cause lung disease, this is also present in pigeon droppings. Guano tends to fall apart at the slightest touch, so once its made into dust it doesn’t take but a small gust of wind to get it kicked up into breathing area. Bat guano removal has a very specific protocol for safe clean up and no air born stir up or fungal spores. Extracting guano should only be done by guano removal professionals with experience in removing bat feces. Bat bugs, a bug carried by bats is something like a bed bug, these bugs infest beds, hair and clothing if not specifically targeted and exterminated by a bat bug specialist. They can and will infest in a home if not killed. Just because they are “like” bed bugs, they are not bed bugs and will not die from bed bug treatments. They are a different type of pest that has to be tended to in their own specific way for total removal of bat bugs.

    There has never been a homeowner I’ve run across that has hundreds of thousands invested into a home and dont mind the the fact that they are a cause of loss of value from urine stains ceilings or roofs, guano stains, odor and disease such as histoplasmosis spores in their attic space or screaming and screeching of bats in home.

    When Illinois bat removal services are called for, as well as Wisconsin bat removal services, young at times can not yet fly and leave by themselves. So you don’t have dead bats in your home or dead bat odor in your home, bat control and exclusion is done the last few weeks of August when the young start to fly independently. Bat entry points into homes usually are high up into soffits, roof and peak vents, un-screened attic fans, opened eves, gaped chimney creases etc. All of these areas are time consuming, yet easy to close up for future bat colony prevention.

    They are all night loving nocturnal animals, the size of bats in Illinois and Wisconsin range from the little brown all the way to the big brown. Their wing span can be up to a foot in length. They munch on insects all night helping to drastically reduce mosquito numbers in some areas where bat boxes are places for just that reason. They can eat over 300 an hour. Bats breed in the fall months. Maternity colonies of pregnant females form until the spring time when the little babies are born. The babies nurse for several weeks until they are able to take flight on their own.

    Colonies are always found close to water. Little brown bats like to group in colonies while big brown bats are solitary creatures. A little brown bat infestation is a seasonal structure problem, while a big brown bat will enter the structure and stay all year if allowed to.

    There are a bunch of websites that break down what to do if you get a bat in your home and how to safely remove it with out injuring the bat of yourself. batcon.org is the best I have found. When the bat removal process is started, all entry points must be found and one way valve systems are put up over holes that let bats out of your house with out the ability to re-enter (again this is done when young bats can take flight). Once bat exclusion process has been done, all bat entry points are closed and sealed off to eliminate bats in the future from entering your home.

    Bat Extermination, meaning to remove by lethal efforts is illegal, killing bats is un-ethical and a crime. Setting out bat poisons or glue traps is ineffective in trying to attain bat control, a pest control license only given by passed exam is mandatory to dispense toxic pesticides. Bat repellents are also ineffective to bats. Exclusion and repair is the only guaranteed measure to bat removal.

    If you have questions regarding bat removal or have any questions please feel free to contact U.S. Wildlife Removal Service. If you are not in Wisconsin or Illinois, let us help you find an accredited bat management company with the proper experience to handle all bat problems. Bat management can be expensive because it is a specialized profession and must be done right as well as a big task protecting your heath and home value. Leave it to the professionals, you’ll be glad you did.

  7. July 17th, 2010 at 6:25 am    Cheryl MacPherson Says:

    For the woman in Mexico with bat problem…. while living near Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, we had a major problem with bats who were attracted to the hummingbird feeder – they would empty a full feeder before the night was gone… a local man advised us to string empty soda pop cans along the patio – they left and avoided the area after that. Easy, cheap and effective method without hurting the bats.

  8. July 14th, 2010 at 9:18 am    Luci Says:

    I took care of my bat problem on the patio very inexpensively. An exterminator wanted to charge a fortune. A rubber snake and a box of mothballs which I tied up in old nylon pantyhose did the trick. Voila! Once they spoted the serpent and their nesting place smelled like mothballs they did not come back. Halleluijah!

  9. April 19th, 2010 at 2:52 pm    john jacobson Says:

    United Bat Control can help to provide you with bat removal solutions. They are a nationwide company with years of experience in dealing with the most complex situations.

  10. December 17th, 2009 at 9:33 am    Charles Parker Says:

    First of all the best I can give is hire a professional wildlife control operator and seek out an expert. If you are in New Orleans, LA look for Parker Wildlife Control.
    To remove bats you must seal up the house after installing a one way door, where the bats fly out and cannot fly back in, it sounds easy and it can be under the right circumstances. Setting up a job properly can take even an expert awhile. If you have a metal roof the problem may be in the ridge cap or along every rise in the pleated run! All cracks and crevices must be sealed, before you can even think about removing the guano they leave behind, again – if you have a problem consult an expert!

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