How to Live With Bats in Texas
Bats are an important part of the ecosystem here in Texas. They even contribute to local tourism.
When they stay outside of your home, bats are a boon. They eat insects, pollinate plants, and disperse seeds. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that bats eat enough pests to save more than $1 billion yearly in crop damage and pesticide costs. They aren't aggressive and are largely misunderstood.
So we can't live without them, but we also don't want to live with them. When bats get into a home or business, they do an incredible amount of damage. They spread disease, infest buildings with bat mites, and cause both structural damage and a mighty stink with their powerful guano.
A bat colony only has to live in a home for a short time to devalue the property or chase away customers or tenants.
So What Can You Do About These Texas Bats?
- Don't waste money on gimmick control methods. You can't chase bats away with sonic systems or cayenne pepper. There isn't enough peppermint spray in the universe to chase bats from a building once they decide to be your permanent tenants.
- Avoid attempted bat murder. Bats are protected in the state of Texas, so resist the urge to invest in traps or poisons. Aiming your gun at them won't help much, either.
- Erect some bat boxes. Bat boxes can help you divert bats to a more favorable location. Alternatively, you can add an owl statue to your roof if you don't want a bat box. It won't chase away bats if they're already inside your home, but it might make bats think twice about nesting in your attic. You'll have to move the statue once every three months to keep them afraid of it.
- Call us to schedule an inspection. We'll be looking for entry methods. Bats can get into a ⅝" hole. While you probably could spend your entire weekend seeking out every hole, letting us do it for you is probably a better use of your time. Plus, if we find anything, we've got infective commercial-grade exclusion methods ready for deployment, and you won't.
- If bats are already in your home, trust us to remove them and exclude them from future entry. Our methods are humane and effective.
You'll want to invest in some clean-up once you've chased bats out of your home. We recommend several excellent removal and abatement companies here in the Houston area, and we'll be glad to refer you to one of them when we're done trapping your bats.
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Our goal is to take time to evaluate each customers situation and customize proven results to solve it. If you are looking for a professional solution for your Bat Removal needs, please contact us today.
3 Bat Prevention Tips
If there's anything Texas has plenty of, it's bats. They've even become a local tourist attraction.
We love to see them in the night sky, but nobody loves to have them in their home. Here are a few ways to keep bats in nature where they belong.
#1) Enlist Help from a Scare-Owl
Mount a fake, plastic owl as high as possible, somewhere on or near your roof. Bats want to roots in your attic, so making them think a predator is nearby can help.
Here's the catch: they'll eventually ignore a stationary "owl," so you'll have to move it once every season to ensure they stay afraid of it.
#2) Swap Exterior Lights
Bats eat bugs. So if you can attract fewer bugs, you can attract fewer bats, too.
Regular white outdoor bulbs will bring plenty of bugs. Yellow ones attract less.
Don't go with a bug zapper. The blue light draws the bugs in for zapping. That's great for killing yard mosquitoes, but anyone who has ever seen one can tell you they're coated in dead bugs. It's like advertising an all-you-can-eat bat-food buffet.
#3) Keep Egress Holes Plugged
A good half of the work that we do involves finding tiny egress holes and plugging them. Bats only need a hole that's ⅜" in diameter to squeeze through, so this can be a challenge.
You can stay on top of it by plugging any you happen to find yourself. Anybody can miss one, but there's no need to leave one that you've already located.
If you have a chimney, install stainless steel chimney caps with a wire mesh covering. The chimney serves as a sort of bat superhighway straight to your attic. Don't leave it open for them.
If you want to be absolutely sure you're getting them all, you can watch the house at dusk to see if bats are entering or exiting through any point on your home. If you realize you've got bats in your attic, though, it's time to call us.
Have You Already Lost the Bat Battle?
Just call us. The team at Elite Wildlife Services has expertise in finding every nook and cranny that bats use to enter a Texas home and heavy-duty bird netting that keeps them away.
We also know how to get bats out of your home humanely, safely, and in accordance with Texas law.
Why be driven batty when you can call us to schedule an inspection?
REQUEST A FREE INSPECTION
Our goal is to take time to evaluate each customers situation and customize proven results to solve it. If you are looking for a professional solution for your Bat Removal needs, please contact us today.
Are There Bats in Your Houston, TX Home or Business?
Bats are one of the worst infestations you can get in your home or business. They’re gentle, and will never attack you, but they’re still problematic.
Continue readingA Whole Colony of Bats takes Over a Corpus Christi Parking Garage
Imagine trying to park your car only to see thousands of bats crowded up in the rafters. They swarm like a big black mass in every corner they can find.
If you go to Sunrise Mall in Corpus Christi, you won't have to imagine it. That's exactly what's happened.
While these bats aren't likely to attack they are no doubt an unsettling sight. The real danger has little to do with attack anyway. It has everything to do with guano and rabies that are a threat to the health of business owners and customers alike. Nobody's using Sunrise Mall right now, according to news sources, but not every business is lucky enough to be so deserted before bats move in.
And yes, when a colony moves in, there tend to be hundreds, even thousands of bats to contend with.
The last thing your customers want is to have to scrape bat guano off their cars! The strong ammonia smell and piles of poo in your garage aren't going to endear you to your clientele, either. Keep in mind that inhaling minute spores found in bat guano causes histoplasmosis as well, so if you've got bats you've got a serious liability problem on your hands.
There's a reason why we strap on respirators when we decide to start dealing with bats.
Why are bats attracted to parking garages?
Because they're just like caves in the wild. They're dark. They're cool. They have lots of places for bats to get into and out of. They block out the light during the day. They're full of crevices. Water even tends to pool and puddle in them after rainstorms, which means they're a good source for two things bats need: the water itself, and the insects that are attracted to the water.
Bats - An Endangered Species
Bats are an endangered species and are protected under Texas law. They may not be hunted, poisoned, killed, possessed, purchased, or sold. However, they may be moved or trapped, and that's where we come in.
Our Bat Removal Process
This is anything but a small job when dealing with a parking garage. We have to seal up every point of egress, save one. We use nets at first so we can get rid of the bats fast; later we'll get in there and seal up those little openings permanently.
We then find the main roosting point and install a valve above it. That's a one way door. Bats can get out to hunt, but they can't get back in.
Once they realize they can't get back in they fly off, and because all of the other openings are sealed they eventually disappear. It's humane and it's easy; they are perfectly capable of finding more suitable lodgings on their own.
Then you can get on with the business of hiring a commercial cleaning company to get in there after them.
It's a tough job, but it's gotta get done. Don't let bats ruin your Houston, TX business. Contact Elite Wildlife to get help today.
Bat Removal in The Woodlands
There are ten species of bats inhabiting the Woodlands area:
- The Eastern Red Bat
- The Seminole Bat
- The Hoary Bat
- The Northern Yellow Bat
- The Big Brown Bat
- The Evening Bat
- The Eastern Pipistrelle
- The Silver-Haired Bat
- The Free-tailed Bat
On certain nights in the area you can see hundreds of them taking flight, off to look for food. With so many flitting about it's little wonder that they eventually end up in our homes and businesses.
When they get into buildings they are not harmless. Instead, they cause disease and a great deal of damage to almost any structure they get into. It's important to protect your investments by handling bats the right way.
Here's what you need to know.
Bat Houses Don't Help Prevent Bats
Sorry: you can't keep bats out of your home by building them a more attractive habitat.
Bat houses are certainly a good idea if you want to help threatened bat populations. Bats just can't exercise any discernment that might make them say: oh, that house is for me, so I'll stay out of this person's attic.
Instead, some bats will roost in the bat house and then other bats will arrive. If your home is accessible, some of them will go roost in your attic.
In fact, you should be very careful about putting up a bat house or encouraging bats in any other way if you have not yet taken steps to make your home inaccessible to them.
They Are Gentle and Beneficial When They Stay Outside
You don't want to go the other extreme wherein you start murdering bats with traps and lures and poisons. Bats have a lot going for them.
They eat insects, including mosquitos. They are seed-dispensers and pollinators, which means they're vital to our food-bearing ecosystems. They are gentle little animals and are about as clean as any wild animal ever is.
They're also endangered because a lot of people kill bats thanks to old superstitions that say they're dangerous, aggressive, or evil animals.
We don't want to contribute to their endangerment. We just want to prevent them from doing damage to your home.
Humane Bat Removal Solves the Problem
Here at Elite Wildlife Services, we help the home and business owners in the Woodlands seal off the areas that bats might use to access their homes. We then trap and remove bats safely, putting them somewhere they can do some good while preventing them from doing any more damage.
If you think you might have bats in your home, don't panic, don't reach for poison, and don't waste your money on "bat deterrents" that don't work.
Call us to take them out of your home or office so that you can get back to living a happy, bat-free lifestyle.
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Our goal is to take time to evaluate each customers situation and customize proven results to solve it. If you are looking for a professional solution for your Squirrel Removal needs, please contact us today.
Wildlife Removal in The Woodlands
Many people enjoy living in The Woodlands because it puts them right next door to the 1800-acre George Mitchell Nature Preserve. While you might enjoy being able to spot various creatures when you visit the Preserve, the last place you want them is in your home or business.
It's not unusual for bats, raccoons, grey squirrels, rats, opossums, snakes, bees, and armadillos to become major issues for property owners in The Woodlands area. Each of these creatures threatens your investment in a variety of ways.
They Spread Disease
Every one of these animals carries some form of disease. Bats carry deadly upper respiratory fungal infections. Raccoons carry rabies. Rats carry just about every plague you can think of.
Wildlife in a building poses a severe health and safety risk that you need to address right away.
They Ruin Your Property
Properties in the Woodlands are often beautifully built and appointed. Yet you stand to lose all that if you let wildlife run rampant in your home.
First, there's just no getting around it: animals leave urine and feces everywhere. Bats and rats don't politely go outside or in litter boxes. That means stains, smells, and other damage that can be difficult and expensive to clean up.
Second, many of these creatures like to chew on wires, walls, roofs, soffits, and insulation. It just so happens that our homes and businesses are filled with ideal nesting materials.
Third, pests sometimes attract other pests.
Got rats? Snakes are right behind them, because the snakes feed on the rats. Got bees? Rats and roaches are ready to eat their honey.
They Threaten Your Safety
Sure, most of the snakes that might be found in your Woodlands home are unlikely to be venomous, but snake bites still hurt. Rats will bite, scratch, and spread disease when they feel threatened, and so will any other animal.
Honeybees? Swarms and stings can be deadly if you or anyone on your property is allergic.
The longer you leave these creatures on your property the more likely it is that you're going to have some kind of an encounter with them that could result in someone getting hurt. As they grow more invasive they push further and further into the spaces where humans live and work.
Humane Wildlife Removal Services
There are no DIY solutions that work well for chasing these animals away. The only ways to handle the problem are to find out how they're getting in. Then we have to seal those spaces and remove the animals that are already there.
Killing those animals comes with its own set of problems, including the fact that corpses can become trapped in walls or hard-to-reach attic spaces, creating their own smells, health, and safety issues.
Instead, we trap them and take them off to a place where they can live their little lives in peace while leaving you to yours.
If you know you have a problem, don't delay and don't wait. You've worked too long and too hard to secure your Woodlands property to lose it to these representatives from the great outdoors.
