how to remove bats from your home
Bat Removal Tips:
1: Do Not Touch the Bats
Bats are common vectors for the rabies virus, so you should avoid close contact with the animals. They will rarely attack humans unprovoked, but bats will frequently bite if handled. If you have any reason to think you have been bitten by a bat, or if they have been in the living space of your house, you should contact a doctor and arrange a rabies vaccination immediately.
2: Build a bathouse
Bats are likely to try and keep living in your house unless they have a good place to live nearby. Plus, having a local bat population is an effective way to reduce the number of bothersome insects in the area.
Bat Conservation International provides great instructions on where to acquire, how to build, and where to place a bat house.
3: Seal your attic and crawl spaces Bats will only live in a structure if they can get in and out each night for their evening hunt. If you can seal all the vents into your attic, fix holes in the roof, and seal spaces in the combing, you have a good shot of giving your bats the boot. However, it is essential to use bat extruder devices which allow bats to fly out of your house, but stop them from getting back in. If bats get trapped in your house, they will die, hurting the bat population and creating an even worse mess in your attic. There are several designs for homemade extruders, and many commercial options as well.
4: Contact Bat Professionals
Some local businesses specialize in removing bats from your house. Make sure you hire a qualified professional who is knowledgeable about bat issues including infectious diseases and bat conservation.
5: Live with the bats
As long as you are sure that bats cannot get into your living space, bats might not be as much of a problem as you think. The animals are possible vectors for the dangerous rabies virus. However, in small numbers at least, they do not pose any immediate threat to your structure. If you have any evidence that bats enter the living parts of your home, you should get rid of them and contact your doctor about immunization against the rabies virus. But generally, bats won't harm you if you don't interfere with them.
6: Contact the Simmons LabDuring the summer, we collect a small number of bats for use in our research on the neuroscience of sonar. During July and August we will visit a small number of bat infested houses in Rhode Island and catch bats. If you have bats in your house, you can contact us at 401 - 863 - 3012. However, we are only able to help a small number of individuals, and will only collect Big Brown Bats.
