By Pat “The Wildlife Guy”

First, the Low Down on Bats in Elizabethton

I receive a surprisingly large number of bat removal calls out of Elizabethton Tennessee, considering the size of the town.  This is probably because Elizabethton lies in a large natural floodplain made by the Watauga River.  This increases the quality of the bat habitat in the vicinity dramatically.  Bats benefit from the river and love to feed on aquatic insects during hatches.  Aquatic hatches are well known to the fly anglers on the Watauga.  Aquatic insects float on the breeze like snowflakes in a strong storm.  This creates an abundance of food and leaves a relative shortage of natural roosting sites for Elizabethton bats.  Female bats combat this problem by roosting in attics.  I would suspect that, if surveyed, Elizabethton residents would be found to have a disproportionately large number of houses with bat colonies and guano in the attic.  I have also had a large number of people call for bat removal from Elizabethton asking about the best way to get the bats out. 

Some of the largest bat colonies that I have seen in the Tri-Cities area have been in Elizabethton, TN,   especially in larger buildings like churches. One church northwest of Elizabethton on Highway 91 had about an inch and a half of guano accumulated over the entire floor of the attic with small volcano-shaped piles here and there.  It was a relatively large church too.  I didn’t count the bats, but I am guessing that there had to be at least a hundred.   Years ago, I actually removed a colony from the Elizabethton courthouse itself.  The courthouse isn’t far from the confluence of the Watauga and Doe River.  This probably creates double jeopardy for buildings in the area.   The bat colony had probably been there for decades.   There were actually stalactites of crystalized urine hanging below the favorite roosting spots. 

Why I Decided to Write this Blog

I have friends and family who say “well, what happened this week”.  They really enjoy the stories of my crazy wildlife adventures, so I decided to add a blog page to log these into so that customers could enjoy them too.   Some of my adventures are totally off the wall.  (In this case that is something of a literal term….bats hanging off the wall.)  Some of the stories are just good lessons for every homeowner to heed.   Anyway, these are good stories for anyone who has, or might have, bats in the attic.

This blog also gives local homeowners a look into what is actually happening in their region.   After growing up here and working in wildlife in the Tri-Cities for almost 30 years, I have built an understanding of the region’s ecology, social fabric, and natural rhythms.   I have a lot of stories and knowledge that local people could benefit from.

The Customer’s Story

Well, enough about myself and Elizabethton, and on to the heart of the story.  I received a call from Ryan C. out of Elizabethton, TN.  Ryan had found a bat in the living spaces of his home.   He had a child with a disability in the home that had trouble communicating and I was afraid that there could be potential for a bite from a bat that could go unnoticed.  Undetected bat bites are a leading cause of rabies in people in the United States.

He could also hear bats in one of the exterior walls of his home.  At night he could hear the bats rustling inside the wall just behind his headboard.    He was undoubtedly accumulating guano inside the wall each year and that creates a potential health risk.   He found that these noises made sleeping hard and wanted the bats removed.   Bats are super cool and I love them, but I really couldn’t blame him for wanting them out.

Bats at the Neighbor’s House Too

The home was a normal ranch-style house in a neighborhood with many similar to it nearby.  When I arrived, I looked across the driveway and saw guano splattered on the wall of the neighbor’s house.  They had also been visited by bats.  I later talked to the neighbor and let him know what was happening in his attic.  I suspect that I could have found more homes with the same problem nearby.   I go into lots of attics each year inspecting for other problems and find bat guano.  Bats go undetected for years and it is only after something tips the homeowner off that they call me wanting to know how to get the bats out of their attic.

Looking Around Outside for the Entrance

It was not hard to tell the location of the bat entrance because I had seen this a hundred times.   The opening was in the gable vent on the end of the house   Louvers on the gable vents were stained a deep coffee color from body oils that had rubbed off the bats.  This only occurs when there is a large number of bats that have used an entrance for a while.  It takes a lot of bat visits to lay down that much body oil.   It was obvious that this was a substantial colony.   This sort of staining is present where there has been heavy, long term activity and the staining was darker than I had seen in a while.  There were two vent entrances and the one over the bedroom was obviously the favorite.   A climb up to the vent confirmed my suspicions.  The distinct odor of bats hit me in the face.

How Were the Bats Getting Downstairs?

Because of the rabies risk, the first thing that I did was inspect the home by looking for interior passages that were bringing bats into the living spaces of the home from the roost area in the attic.  There were several possibilities.  I inspected behind missing ceiling tiles in a drop ceiling downstairs, the fit around a bathroom vent fan, and a HVAC closet with an opening in the ceiling.   It was hard to totally rule out all the possibilities because all of the potential passageways were not visible during inspection.  I couldn’t check behind the drop ceiling without taking down the entire drop ceiling. 

After some thought, I decided that the most likely avenue was the HVAC closet because it was closest to the roosting area of the bat colony.  It would have been difficult to find and seal the actual holes that the bats were coming through to get into the living spaces, so I suggested packing under both the door to the basement and the HVAC closet.   This wouldn’t keep the bats out of the house, but it would keep them from showing up in the primary living spaces like the kitchen, bedroom and living room.  It was late summer and likely that bats he had been finding were juveniles that had wandered from the colony and not rabid, but who wants to take that chance?   Fortunately, no more bats were found inside the home after the doors were packed, but you can’t be too careful.

Inspecting the Attic for Bats

I also inspected the attic.  It was a long, tight, difficult crawl with very little head space.  I had to “crouch walk” on the rafters the full length of the house.   The main trunk line to the HVAC ran through the center of the attic and cut the amount of space I had to walk.  The trunk line grew in size as I approached the colony and walking got more difficult.  I had to balance myself by holding on to the vertical rafter supports.  It was steamy hot in the attic and sweat was pouring off my face and dripping from my respirator.   Nails protruded through the roof above my head and threatened to stab me if I lost my balance.   A single misstep would send me through the insulation and drywall into the room below.  I was performing a high wire act in the dark where I couldn’t see the ground.  I kept watch to see if a bat would fly by my head as I got closer.

Finding the Colony

I had to traverse the entire length of the attic to reach the area where the bats were roosting.  When I got there, I saw a large colony of at least 50 individuals.   There was a mix of juvenile and adult bats and they were chittering and scrambling down the screen behind the gable vent into the exterior wall.  There was about a gap of about one and a half inches between the back of the brick and plywood.   This was a perfect gap for bats to roost in.  It was exactly the same size as the slots between the roosting panels of a bat house. The suns heat was retained in the brick after sundown, keeping the furless baby bats warm…a perfect roosting site.

Removing the Bats

Fortunately, the size of the colony doesn’t make removal harder.  If it did, this would be a harder-than-usual removal job.  Removing the colony is done by sealing all the alternate entrances and adding a one-way door over the primary entrance.  This way the bats can leave, but can’t return.   It is as easy to remove ten bats as it is a hundred.  Things get more complicated when there are multiple entrances and they are hard to reach.   This house was simple. 

I caulked the gap between the soffit and brick.  The gaps weren’t large, but a quarter of an inch is enough to get a bat in.   I didn’t think that the bats were currently entering between the brick and soffit.  Sometimes though it can be an entry point.  I wanted to make sure that this problem was solved, and that I wouldn’t be called back. 

After caulking the brick/trim joint, I cut screen for both the gable vents.  The screen has to be cut very precisely and completely cover the vent.  As I mentioned above, it only takes a quarter of an inch to get a bat in, and the bats were sure to test these vents because they were used to entering this way.   Once the vent screens were added, a temporary one way door was added to the screen over the primary entrance.  

Why This Tends to Happen

In late summer, calls for bats in the attic start to really heat up (please excuse my pun).  This is because the new pups are learning to fly, and like baby birds leaving the nest, they make mistakes.  They fall off the screening into the insulation below where they may die or find a way through a passage to meet the people below.   Bats are also excellent at detecting drafts.  Wind is life for bats (think breeze blowing through a cave).  If they detect a breeze blowing through a hole from below, they may decide to explore it, especially if they see light at the other end.  This can bring the bats directly in to meet homeowners.

Bat removal calls also tend to ramp up late in the summer.  This is because there tends to be a bit more activity in the roost with the additional, nearly mature, bats.  Bats may also decide to shift their roosting locations.  The old ones are badly infested with bat bugs and are probably biting the bats more.  I have had colonies shift their locations to the other side of the house or move to another nearby building.  After they were gone, the bed bugs showed up on the outside of the building looking for a meal.  I suspect that they had gotten hungry once the bats left.  Bat bugs prefer to stay inside in the dark roost areas in the attic. 

 I think that mother bats are much more likely to move the colony once the pups are on the wing.   I suspect that there is some difficulty and risk associated with moving a “nonflighted” pup.  As a result, of all this activity, homeowners are more likely to notice their problem in late summer.     

Local ecology and Its Influence on Attic Bat Colonies

As mentioned above, local ecology can definitely influence the likelihood that a colony will take up residence in the attic.   The river systems in Elizabethton definitely make it more likely that bats will show up in that area, but just because you don’t live near a river doesn’t mean that you won’t have bats in your attic.  Bats will do quite well in forested habitat with a somewhat broken forest canopy.  They will also do pretty well in open farmland and urban situations.    Bat colonies in attics are much more common than most people know.   In fact, in the latter half of the summer most wildlife control companies in this region focus heavily on bat removal work because the demand is that high.   I have even heard of some that do bat removal work exclusively.  

This is the reason that I suggest Elizabethton residents (and all residents in the Tri-Cities, TN region for that matter) have a wildlife controller do a home inspection once in a while and make sure that their home stays sealed against wildlife.   The longer that a bat colony stays in your attic or walls, the greater the accumulation of guano.   If the habitat in your area includes two large river systems and the food base is good, the colony could be much larger.  If this is the case, this problem will be even greater.