Bats – Wildlife Management

Removing and Preventing Bats from Living in Your Home

 

Bats play an important role in nature. They eat thousands of mosquitoes every night, but they are not meant to live in the same dwellings as us humans. The caves and rock formations the bats once called home have been replaced by Toronto condominiums and houses.

There are a lot of different species of bats throughout Ontario. Species known for colonizing are typically the ones causing headaches for home owners. Bats are usually very harmless and non-aggressive. The problem is the high amount of bodily waste they produce. A bat can produce 20 pellets of excrement in a day. It doesn’t take long for attics to collect dangerous amounts of bat guano. Bats can carry rabies, but generally they do not transmit the disease to humans. A more concerning issue is Histoplasmosis, a lung disease you can get from exposure to bat guano.

Having bats in your home can also result in damages to your house.  Guano can rot the wood and drywall in your home and cause harmful mold issues. In addition to harming the materials in your home, guano will produce a very unpleasant odour throughout your residence.

It’s important to stop bats from getting into your home in the first place and to quickly identify if you do have a bat problem. This will save you a lot of stress and will ultimately save you money.

Take a look around your home and search for gaps, cracks and holes in your house. It’s important to pay special attention to your roof lines, gable vents, soffit and eaves gaps, fascia boards and any other potential weak points. Bats typically will need an opening of 1/2 to 1 inch to get into your home. Eliminate any potential bat entry paths with polyurethane or chalk sealant.

Bats have gained a bad reputation throughout history. There are a lot misconceptions out there about them. Typically, bats are not aggressive and do not bite people or wires. They prefer to live in attics because they are high above the ground, safe from predators, and have easy entry and exit points. Basically, an attic resembles the caves that bats are programmed to inhabit and raise their pups in.

It’s also important to realize the important role that bats have in our ecosystem. The goal of any removal should be to ensure your home is bat-free, clean and that the bats are relocated in a humane fashion.

Hiring a reputable pest control technician is the best way to deal with a bat problem. The first step will be a full inspection of the home, during this time the technician will install special that will allow bats to exit your home, but not allow them to enter again. After a few days the one way doors will be removed and any entry points in your home will be properly sealed. The cleanup process will follow and any mess left behind by the bats will be professionally removed.