 |
|
| Bats and humans sometimes come into conflict at the end of summer. |
While bats are now widely recognized for the positive environmental benefits they provide with their insatiable appetite for insects, they still can cause fear in people, especially when they make their way into your home. No one wants a bat flying around the house, including the bat.
According to The Humane Society of the United States, these inadvertent drop-bys often occur this time of the year when young bats get lost and confused trying to make their way out of an attic where they have been raised, to join the rest of their colony in nocturnal foraging for insects.
Attics are great places for bats to find the high temperatures and undisturbed environments they need to rest during the day, give birth, and rear their young. Baby bats are born in late spring and become mobile and interested in braving the great outdoors around the end of summer—late August and September.
The young bats can sometimes take a wrong turn and end up flying into the living areas of your home.
John Griffin, director of The HSUS Wild Neighbors: Humane Wildlife Services program, explained, "Homeowners face two issues when it comes to bats. The first is the safe removal of a wayward bat, and the other is dealing with the colony in the attic and making sure the animals are humanely excluded."
Griffin offered these tips:
- Removal of a wayward bat:
When a bat, or any other wild animal, is inside a residence, local animal care and control agencies usually respond with immediate help.
Some homeowners may even take matters into their own hands and capture the bat themselves. This can be done with a container—Tupperware works well—placed over the bat when he or she is at rest on drapery or the wall. The lid is then carefully slid into place to contain the bat. Leather gloves must be used to do this. Never try to handle a bat with bare hands or cotton gloves. Once contained, the bat can be safely released outside, but be sure to put the bat on a tree limb or wall since they can't fly from the ground up.
If there is any chance that the bat was in the room of a sleeping or intoxicated person or young child, health authorities mandate that the bat be captured and tested for rabies—even if there's only a slim chance that the bat could have bitten someone without their knowing it. Bat bites can sometimes go unnoticed.
- Humane exclusion of the colony:
This is almost always a job for professionals, who can determine where and how the bats are getting inside the structure and properly place the netting, or "bat check valves," that let them out but not back in. Some bats will leave buildings to fly to sites where they hibernate over winter, and for those who won't, the netting can stay up until the weather warms next spring, and they will exit and not be able to get back in.
"This will solve people's problems with bats and still preserve these amazing creatures so that they can provide environmental services," Griffin notes. Many people may want to put up a bat house in conjunction with colony exclusion, which is a great idea to keep the bats around to do what they do best, but not inside your home."
The HSUS Wild Neighbors Program promotes non-lethal means for resolving conflicts between people and wildlife and cultivates understanding and appreciation for wild animals commonly found in cities and towns.
