How to Make Your Home Less Attractive to Bats
While the team at Elite Wildlife Services is happy to provide you with humane bat removal services, it's always nice when we can keep them out of your house in the first place. In addition, once you've paid for creature removal the last thing you want to do is see them return.
Here are a few tips for ensuring bats will want to find places other than your attic to build their next home.
Prevent Bats by Blocking Entry Points
The easiest way to prevent a bat problem is to block their access to your home. Bats can use relatively small holes to get into your space.
Start with window screens, chimney caps, and draft guards beneath attic doors. You'll also want to caulk electrical or plumbing holes. Yes, bats don't always get into the attic: sometimes they fly in through an open door or window, too!
Check out this page from Bat Conservation International to see all the surprising entry points that bats can use to get into your house.
Avoid Using Lights to Discourage Bats
Motion lights are a great security measure, as are porch lights and entry lights. We're not discouraging you from using those.
Some people try to shine huge spotlights on their attics to keep bats away though, and this is a bad idea. This is because the lights will just attract more insects. While the light may annoy the bats a little the concentrated food source will more than make up for the inconvenience.
As for the lights you have to have? Swap out white lights for yellow ones. They attract fewer insects, which means even fewer food sources.
Other Repellent Devices
Most repellents simply don't work very well. For example, expensive audio repellents don't always do a good job of keeping bats away. Scent-based repellents are more likely to upset the people who live in the home than the bats.
Fortunately, once you've closed off access to your home you should be safe. There's nothing wrong with having bats near your home as long as you don't have them in it. After all, they'll keep the mosquito population down in your yard, and they don't hurt anything so long as they're staying out of human habitats.
If you do get bats in your home, well, you know who to call. We'll help you get rid of that bat colony, and will take steps to ensure they don't come back ever again.
Is it OK to Leave Bats in the Attic?
Bats may seem outwardly pretty harmless, so you might be tempted to leave them alone when you discover them in your attic. Yet bats are one of the most common sources of pandemic-style diseases like Covid-19.
They also carry fungal diseases like Histoplasma capsulatum, which causes histoplasmosis, a deadly lung disease. They can be an incredible danger to your family.
They even cause structural damage to your home.
They can also cause your house to smell. Bat urine and droppings will ruin your home. So will dead bats in your walls. If you suspect you have bats in the home, you should take steps to get rid of them immediately.
Signs of a Bat Infestation
Do you see bats flying around the exterior of your home at sunrise or sunset? That means that they're going out to hunt and then returning. To your house! Your attic has become their nest.
Find a dead bat on your property? There's a good chance they're nesting in your attic.
You should also take note of any unexplained smells, or the scent of ammonia.
Hearing strange noises in the walls? Squeaking sounds or scratching sounds? These, too, can be a sign of rats in the home.
Handling Bats in the Attic
There are humane ways to remove bats from your home. You want to get them out without killing any anyway, because, as mentioned, dead bats are a nasty, unsanitary, smelly hazard you don't want to deal with. They are also state and federally protected and cannot be harmed.
That means they need to be removed by a professional, and the holes they're using to get into and out of your house need to be sealed up completely. You'll also want to get a clean-up company into your attic and home to make sure all urine, feces, and dead bats are properly handled. We can certainly recommend some local Houston providers.
Bat removal is generally inexpensive but depends on the size of the colony. We'll give you a quote after examining the size of your bat problem.
Note that you can't keep bats away or drive them away with pheromones, lights, or other methods. You have to trap them, block them, and get rid of them. Most DIY methods simply aren't very effective at ending the problem, and don't accomplish more than making you feel better.
Do you have a bat problem? Elite Wildlife Services can help you manage them humanely and quickly. Contact us today to schedule your appointment.
