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?

1. 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.
    
2. 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. 
   
   
3. 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.
   
   
4. 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. 
   
   
5. 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.