Do you hate flying insects that bite? If you do, you should love bats. Bats can eat as many as 8000 insects in a single night. Talk about pest control!
While we may love having bats around to help ward off flying pests, that doesn’t mean we want to share our homes with them. You may be attracting bats and without any such intention.
If you have asked yourself the question, “How did I attract these bats to my house?” it may be time to call in a professional.
At CP Bat Mitigation, we pride ourselves on our safe and effective bat removal techniques. We practice live catch and release methods which do not harm the bats. We know how essential bats are to their environment, and their continued survival is a priority for us.
Before we can catch your bats, we need to determine if you have a bat infestation. If you have found more than one bat in your house in a short period, chances are you have a family of bats sharing your home.
How Did The Bats Get In?
Most bats are small enough to fit into even the tiniest cracks in your home. Even a half-inch crack can attract a high volume of this flying animal.
Bats have two things going for them that allow them to enter your home undetected.
- They are nocturnal
- They are quiet and elusive
Because of these two facts, a colony of bats can live in an attic or roof crawlspace for years before the homeowners notice their presence.
Bat colonies in homes often start with just one or two bats. They find a point of entry into your attic, roost, and have babies. Bats are mammals, and they typically only birth one or two pups a year.
The colony grows slowly, but it does grow. Each year, new babies are born, and the family expands. In fact, most people notice the guano droppings before they notice the bats who produced them.
When you do find a live bat in your house, it is often one who has become disoriented or lost. Perhaps it is a young bat who is new to flying, and it missed the passage to the outdoors.
In rare cases, that bat you find flying around your living room has become confused and flown into your home by pure happenstance. Typically though, that bat who is more scared of you than you are of it has been living in your home most, if not all, of its life.
Bats are sensitive to air currents. The difference in temperatures that flows between a small crack in the interior and exterior of your house causes a perceptible current, perceptible if you are a bat, at least.
These small cracks become a highway for the bat colony as they enter your home in the early hours of the morning and leave each evening for their nightly hunt.
Bats do not want to enter your home. They have no food or escape. Any entrance is more than likely an accidental one.
Let’s look at a few of the reasons a bat might accidentally find its way into the main parts of your home.
Weather
Bats don’t like rain. It interferes with their ability to hunt and fly. If you have experienced days of rain and poor weather, you are likely feeling cooped up, anxious, and stuck inside. Imagine how the bats in your attic or walls feel.
They get stir crazy just like you. When they become too hungry or desperate, they may end up exploring other means of food. That exploration may lead to an unwanted confrontation.
Rapidly transitioning temperatures can also tend to confuse bats. The transition periods between seasons are often marked with schizophrenic weather that just can’t seem to make up its mind between hot and cold.
Those rapidly changing temperatures disorient the bats, and they may unintentionally find themselves in your home.
Youthful Naivete
Because bats are mammals, they go through gradual growth patterns much as humans do. After their infancy, they go through learning periods of childhood and adolescence.
When young bats are first learning to fly, it is a definite learning curve. As with any other skill, it takes a lot of trial and error. One such error may lead them to a joyride, or joy-flight, around your living room.
Colony Growth
When the bats first make a home out of your home, the space is typically more than enough for the small colony. As the colony grows, the space becomes too confining.
Once the bat colony outgrows its roosting place, the smaller and weaker members are often forced out. This requires them to find new territory in which to nest.
They may explore lower and lower parts of your home to find what they seek. But bats prefer to be up high, so if you find a bat in the lower parts of your home, you may be dealing with a large infestation.
A common place for lost or disoriented bats to end up is in your basement. They will follow gaps in the walls or pipes to their logical conclusion. A bat in your basement pretty much guarantees a much larger contingent higher up.
What Do I Do If I See A Bat In My Home?
Rule number one, never touch a bat with your bare hands. We do not recommend anyone try to catch a bat. While it is rare, bats may carry rabies. A bite from an infected animal is very serious. Avoid this potential danger.
Check out our tips for investigating a bat infestation.
Beyond danger to you, if you try to catch a frightened bat, you will more than likely cause injury to the creature. An injured and scared bat is more likely to attack in defense of its life.
If you suspect a bat infestation, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Contact CP Bat Mitigation for your free estimate today and get started on our residential bat removal services in Omaha.