Bat Removal Information: One of the first recommendations we make to anyone that thinks there is any possibility that they have bats in their home, house, restaurant or commercial building is to do a complete inspection of the structure. Attention to detail is the difference between a successful bat removal inspection and failure to determine how the bats come in and go out of your building.
The entire outside of the building must be inspected. The larger populations of bats, such as the little Brown bat, are able to get inside a building that has cracks, slits or gaps that are only one quarter inch by one and one half inches and they will get inside a hole that is five eighths inches by seven eighths inches. Other bat species are able to get inside your house with even smaller openings.
While looking for building cracks and gaps, inspect and search the areas around the air conditioning and heating units on the roof for commercial properties, the family chimney, the edge of the roof, the roof overhang, the valley of the roof, roof eaves, the apex of the gable (the triangular part of the wall that is between the edges of a sloping roof). Inspect the exterior of the building's air conditioning ducts, attics, roof vents, dormers, siding and any telephone cable or television cable that has been attached to the exterior walls of the building. Remember that small holes are all bats need to enter the building.
Additional Information: We will suggest you continue your inspection of the building, but this time you are looking for bat droppings, also known as bat guano, as a sign of the possibility of a bat colony being inside your commercial property or home. Be careful but thorough in checking the roof and chimney for bat guano droppings. Also be on the lookout for Rub Marks made by bats entering and exiting the building. You are looking for a stained area that is yellowish brown to black brown in color, slightly sticky and will have a smooth polished appearance from high use. You want to give the outside of the building or home a thorough look and then you want to inspect the attic and air conditioning pathways.
The attic inspection is imperative for a proper bat removal inspection. A professional bat inspector will be wearing a respirator to protect their lungs from inhaling potential disease carried by bat guano droppings. These droppings will also help the professional bat removal expert determine the type of bats that are in the attic and help in the planning to do the bat removal humanely and protect the bat population from unnecessary harm. The attic inspection will tell the United Bat Control expert the size of the bat colony and where they are living in the attic - and highlight where the bats are entering the building or house, be it the building's roof, chimney, the roofs edge or the knot hole around the attic window.
Bat Information: Bats leave their living quarters, their roost, at dusk for a night of flight and eating. They help the environment by eating millions of insects that are often harmful to human beings. They carry seeds and help in pollinating flowers that benefit our ecology and environment. So usually our next step in our building and house inspection is to stand outside at dusk and observe the bats as they leave the building or home. What one expert may have missed with the close hand inspection of the building is caught and supplemented by the United Bat Control bat removal expert in observing and following the bats leaving the roost.
Equipment for Removing Bats: The installation of patented bat removal exclusion devices is the next step in the process of removing bats from your commercial property, house or business. During our dusk inspection and observation of the bats leaving your property, we determine whether one or more exclusion devices will best serve the needs of the bat colony. Once the exclusion device locations are determined and the best number of exclusion devices to be used is determined, our bat control, bat removal professional will re-enter the house or business and install the device.
A bat exclusion device is also known as a Bat Eviction Valve, One Way Mail Box, Bat Control Eviction Device and other bat removal and bat exclusion names are used. The United Bat Control patented device looks like a long rectangular mailbox that one sees on country roads or farmland. They have an opening on one side for the bat to enter and another door on the other side for the bat to leave. They are one way only devices that allow the bat to leave the building, but they are unable to return.
The installation of our patented One Way Bat Removal Exclusion Device is done so that the entire bat colony will leave the building. This is normally a one, two or three day process depending upon the size of the colony. You do not want to go to the effort of removing 99% of the colony; it is imperative that you get 100% of the bats out and do so humanely and safely.
Building Repair: Prior to, during and upon completion of the installation of the One Way Bat Removal Exclusion Device, it is imperative to patch up, repair and fix all of the cracks, slits, gaps and holes that were found during the bat removal inspection. Once you have given the bats a way to get out the building, you do not want them to be able to return to your house or business. It is in the best interest of all parties to make sure that you seal the gaps permanently so that the bats are unable to return.
Building Clean Up: It is imperative for the health and safety of everyone who enters your business or home for a thorough cleaning of the building grounds, attic, roof and walls to remove bat guano. Bat guano is a breeding ground for micro-organisms and in some cases will become a breeding ground for histoplasmosis, an infection that is able to cause harm to humans. Bat guano can accumulate in walls, floors and ceilings. What is in plain site is not always the true amount of bat guano that needs to be removed from your home or business.
Important Information about Rabies from Bats
One must always be careful with bats and bat guano when they are found in your home and business. There is always the possibility and potential that they are carrying rabies. Rabies is an infection that will affect human beings. We can get rabies from a bat if they are carrying rabies and they bite us. 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 a 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.
If you think you have bats in your home or business, call United Bat Control and let us come out and inspect the building. You'll be glad you called a professional bat removal expert. We've been doing this since 1998.
Bat Facts
If you have a bat control problem with a single bat or a bat colony, United Bat Conrol can assist you in the removal of the bat in the most humane way possible. We understand that bats are very important to our planet. We are doing everything in our control to make sure that once removed from a dwelling the bats are safe, healthy, find a new home and keep the ecological system balanced.
United Bat Control utilizes their patented devises that enables us to humanely exclude bat colonies numbering from a few in number to thousands in number! After a proper exclusion is performed it is necessary to bat proof a structure so that the colonies cannot return. The ecological materials that are used to bat proof a structure are applied in a professional manner so as to conform to the aesthetics of your structure and the ecology of the community.
All accessible Guano should be removed. After a Guano clean-up is completed, it is recommended to have an application of a sterilizer and deodorizer provided. This application is intended to kill the fungus that can cause Hystoplasmosis, as well as assist in providing a solution to the odor problem that is caused by bats and their colonies.
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.
