When removing bats and other animals from your home, office or manufacturing plant, never handle a dead animal without gloves and never attempt to clean up the bat mess they made without gloves because it could contain disease matter. When you come across a bat removal situation where you know they are in your house or business, give them a chance to leave quietly, rather than shout, scream or yell for them to get out of your home. As professionals we have found that one of the most successful ways to make a bat leave is by installing a one way bat door over their entry and exit holes that they are using as front and back doors to your house and business.
Bat removal doors look like a long rectangular mail box that you see on country roads across the United States. We recommend that you are always very careful with these bat removal devices and that you never ever touch them without wearing gloves after one of our professional animal control experts has installed them. The nice thing about these bat removal doors is that you never have to see the bats that are being removed from your home.
Interesting Facts about Bats
Bats are part of the mammal family, which means they are warm blooded vertebrae with a hair covered skin and their children are born alive. They have the ability to fly. Bats have webbed forelimbs, which are the equivalent of human arms, and they have real flying wings that makes them the only mammals that are capable of flying in the air without the aid of an airplane or a kite. There are lots of mammals that glide for a short distance like squirrels and possums, but only the bat is a flier capable of keeping itself in the air.
Most of the bats that we find in the United States emit high pitched sounds (ultrasound) that we as human beings are unable to hear, but bats use ultrasound like navy sonar in order to avoid obstacles that might knock them down. They use these high frequency sounds to locate and then capture insects they are hunting. They also use these unique sounds to communicate with each other.
Bats are very important for humans and our way of life because they provide a very important environmental service for us. Wherever they live they pollinate flowers, they carry fruit seeds to new places and they eat a lot of insects that are often hazardous to us as human beings. So the purpose of bat removal is to keep bats out of your house and places of business where they are not wanted because they can be a health hazard to you and your family, and at the same time we want the bats free to live in the outdoors and the wild and to have a nice home where they can raise their family while providing the environment a safe condition to survive.
Bats usually get married in the fall and winter months of September, October, November, December, January, February and March, but the female bat holds on to the male sperm in their uterus until spring, when the real baby making process completes itself. Pregnant female bats will gather together in colonies within safe and secure locations in business buildings, behind chimneys, underneath bridges, as well as in tree hollows, caves, mines and other areas that are dark and feel safe. Bats generally have their baby births between the months of May through July. The baby bats will grow up quickly and are able to fly within three to four weeks. The baby bats will be on their own to find their own insects when they are two to three months old.
Bats are able to get inside your home or business through a a gap in the outside wall of the building that could be as small as one quarter of an inch (1/4") opening. The very first thing that a United Bat Control bat removal specialist is going to do when they visit you is inspect the outside exterior of your house, your restaurant, commercial office building, fire house or any other building that is housing bats. The bat removal exclusion specialist is going to find all of the entry gaps and exit holes in the building because that is how the bats living in the building are entering and exiting. The bat exclusion expert is going to take a slow walk on the building roof before the inspection is complete and make sure there is no bat guano droppings or bat openings there as well. Once the inspection is complete, the process of filling and blocking the gaps will begin. There are a variety of different action steps that the animal removal expert might take, including but not limited to installing bat doors, vent screens, sealing up the construction gaps, replacing rotted boards and even repairing the brick chimney.
It is a well known fact that bats go out of their homes from dusk to dawn when finding food and feeding themselves and their families. Our bat removal specialist will have installed one way exit doors when sealing up the building to insure that the bats cannot return to their former home once they leave. They are locked out of your house, your home, your office site and they will find a more suitable home to live in an environment that is friendlier and safer for everyone. Do not handle bat guano, bat droppings or bat excrement without wearing gloves for protection.
One way of knowing that you have a bat removal issue is when you are able to smell bat excrement. Bat guano produces a very unpleasant odor as it dries and chemically breaks down in attics, wall spaces, and other areas where they are living. The distinctive robust acrid smell is often detected coming from a building as one is walking near it and often this smell is an indication of a large group of bats, also known as a colony, living there. The same smell is detected when small animals die inside walls of a building.
Bat guano as the excrement is called is a place where tiny micro-organisms grow, and in some cases leads to the breeding ground for diseases like histoplasmosis, which effects humans. Guano droppings can accumulate in such a way as to get between walls, floors, and ceilings. When it is in plain sight, it can be a safety hazard on the floor and steps where it is found.
Bat Information about Rabies
One must always be careful with bats, bat guano and droppings when they are found in homes and businesses because there is the possibility and potential for them giving us rabies. Rabies are an infection for human beings. We can get rabies from a bat if they are carrying rabies and they bite us. It is a must, it is imperative that if you have been bitten by a bat with rabies, you must get a vaccination within two (2) weeks of getting the bite because once you start getting sick it is fatal. However, you do have 2 weeks to get the vaccination and if your dog, cat or horse has been bitten by a bat, there are vaccinations to protect them too.
While 99% of all bats are rabies free, they still rank in the number three position behind raccoons and skunks for giving human beings rabies. It has been reported that during the past 20 years, there have been more human rabies cases that began with a bat bite in the United States than of any other wildlife group.
