Few people want to have bats within their belfry. Fewer people desire to have them buzzing around inside their homes. Many people think that bats are strange animals. They are the only mammals with the ability to fly. Even with these fascinating facts, there will still be panic if a bat accidentally enters the house.
Bats are unintentional travelers; they are not interested in being in your home. Your property could be a great hunting spot or a place with resources. It could be a perfect place to roost because it’s warm and protected from predators.
You can adopt some removal methods that pose no risk to people or harm to bats or contact a bat removal service in Ohio. The objective in this situation is to end their invasion peacefully. This article will show you how to remove bats from your space safely.
Table of Contents
Inspect and Identify Bats’ Location
The first thing to do is locate where the bats are hiding. At dawn or dusk, scrutinize your home to determine where the bats enter and exit it. Remember that a bat colony typically has multiple entry points, some of which can be as tiny as a half-inch. There could be several locations.
Doing so should give you a broad indication of what region of your home they are nesting. However, you should explore the area around the probable position with a flashlight to see if they have moved on to another spot. Whenever species-specific laws are applicable, this inspection can also assist you in determining which species of bats are present.
The most frequent entry points bats enter a home are chimneys and ventilation holes to nest or gain entry to other areas. The roof crest, openings on the house exterior, vent of the attic space, and the fascia panels on the underside of a property are additional typical entry points to inspect.
Furthermore, bats can enter a house through damaged external components like warped boards, faulty siding, or shattered window panes.
Research the Local Laws on Bats Removal
You can usually get assistance from county or regional wildlife departments to determine if it’s a safe and practical time to remove bats. Your attempts to exclude bats during the breeding, inactivity, or courting seasons may not work.
Based on regional bat life cycle calendars, you want to ensure that all bats nesting in your homes are thriving adults.
Install One-Way Doors
You must prevent bats from getting back inside once they leave your home if it is a safe period to remove them after consulting the local laws on bat removal and identifying the entry points.
This is a labor-intensive step in bat removal that may involve using one-way doors and sealing the gaps where bats can enter using building supplies. Before making any permanent seals, take caution to prevent trapping bats indoors.
Construct one-way doors once you have found the bat entries. One-way doors are openings covered with mesh or screens to create a long sleeve or canopy.
These doors will let bats leave and keep them from coming back in. Since bats use their organ of smell to find their entryways, this technique works. They will leave the bottom of the mesh tent and attempt to re-enter by landing on top of it close to the hole.
Never install one-way doors until the young ones are old enough to avoid getting trapped in the nest without their moms. Never set up a one-way door from May to August; otherwise, baby bats will become trapped and perish inside.
Build Bat Houses
There is no more excellent humane thing to do when removing bats from your home than building a bat house near your home. Exclusion can be stressful for bats because you are taking away their home, where they nest, feed, procreate, and hide from predators.
Without a new place to go after leaving your home, bats may have to invade another nearby house where they will equally face exclusion. As a result, it may lead to their extermination (which local laws in the area may not permit), thereby reducing the regional bat population.
On the other hand, you can maximize the bats’ benefit of controlling insects while contributing to the security and continued existence of these advantageous mammals. Design and incorporate a bat box near your property. Also, you can buy one online or at a nearby home improvement store if you are not so handy.
Thoroughly Clean Invested Area
Once you are sure you have removed all bats from your home and sealed all entry points, now is the time to clean up the infested space thoroughly. Before you start the cleanup process, wear safety equipment. It is necessary because any contact with bats or bat droppings and urine causes several diseases, such as rabies and histoplasmosis.
Wear protective gear such as a nose mask, hand gloves, and easy-to-clean clothes, or that won’t be a problem to jettison after use. You want to add moisture to the droppings to prevent the spores from getting into the air. Gather the bat droppings and discard them in a sealed polythene bag.
The next thing to do is to wash and disinfect the area, dispose of all contaminated insulating materials, and buy new wood to replace the damaged ones.
Remove Food Sources
Taking away anything that can attract bats to your home is crucial to prevent re-entry. Limit the food and water sources near your property. Use exterior bright lights to chase bats from your home (since they are most active in the dark). You may want to consider putting the lights off to limit their activity at night if your garden has a reasonable population of insects that might attract bats.
Remove nectar feeds and drain standing water where bats can drink as they often attract them. Doing everything to reduce the comfort of bats around your property prevents them from finding a way to your home.
Making Your Home Free of Bats
It might sound overwhelming to remove bats from your home, but with the tips in this article, it can be an effortless process. Ensure your methods do not deviate from local laws, protect yourself and your family from contracting diseases from bats and their droppings, and be thorough with all steps to remove bats from your dwelling safely.
However, contacting a bat removal service can be your best bet if the process is too much to handle for you.
