Bat Removal from Inside the House-

If a bat is circling inside your house you need help fast. Bats are excellent at crawling into small spots and disappearing. Once this happens it may be much harder to find the bat. If the bat has made contact with anyone it may need to be tested for rabies. If the bat cannot be found, it is standard practice to give rabies shots as a preventative measure. You don’t want to loose that bat.

If you have a bat you should:

• Call us quickly if you are afraid to handle the bat. Waiting may give the bat time to crawl away and hide. Wildlife Company LLC phones are staffed 24/7 by staff that has handled this problem many times and know what to do in this situation. If you want to attempt capture please read further for important pointers.

• Be aware that the bat will bite if touched and they have sharp needle like teeth.

• Think carefully before you toss the bat out. Many people have doubts after they toss and end up getting rabies shots.

• Try to keep an eye on the bat to make sure that it does not just crawl under something and hide.

• Close and block under doors to keep the bat restricted to one part of the house. Block under the door to make sure that the bat does not crawl under the door into other parts of the house.

• Do not smash the bat’s head. This is the part of the bat that will need to be tested.

• Release the bat outside if you know for absolute certain that it has not made contact with someone in the house.

• Call you doctor or health department if there is anyone in the family that was asleep, intoxicated, young children or otherwise unable to account for what was going on while the bat was in the room with them. Bat bites can be very small and difficult to detect with the eye.

• Keep the bat frozen if it was killed during capture and you plan on having it tested.

• If the bat disappears, and it cannot be tested you will need to contact your doctor or health department for possible rabies vaccinations.

Until we arrive

Though the incidence of transmission to humans is low. Bats can transmit rabies. Try not to be bitten (bats will try to bite if handled and have a mouth full of needle-like teeth) while you wait for the wildlife biologist to arrive.

If the bat has been in a room where there were there were small children, people that were sleeping, someone was intoxicated, or the people in that room were in a state of mind not to clearly tell you that they have not come in contact with the bat, or you are not absolutely certain that no one has made contact with the bat then you will probably need to have the bat tested for rabies.

DIY Tips

1. Keep track of the bat. Bats will often hand in an obvious spot, but if they disappear, they can be very hard to find again.

2. Capture the bat with a net or wait for the bat to land on a wall.

3. If you didn’t use a net, use a small cardboard box (shoe box size or slightly smaller) to clamp over the bat to capture it. Gently slide a piece of cardboard between the box and the wall.

4. Very slowly slide a piece of cardboard between the wall and box trapping the bat inside the box.

5. Carry the bat outside and place it on a wall or tree trunk to leave when it is ready

6. Release the bat outside on a wall or tree trunk. Be careful as you remove the bat from the net. They can be injured easily.

7. Again, consider carefully whether or not the bat has made contact with someone in the house before releasing the bat. If the bat bites someone, has been in a room where someone has been sleeping, has been in a room where children have been sleeping, or otherwise been in a room with a person who can’t tell you if they made contact with the bat, you should contact your physician or the health department.

8. Bats need textured surfaces to hang on. Drapes, brickwork, rough woodwork, etc. have enough texture to hang onto. Drywall does not. If you loose the bat, this may help you find it

Once we capture the bat

You will probably need to contact either your physician or your local health department. The bat should be handed over to the health department as soon as possible. If the bat was killed it should not be allowed to begin decomposition. The numbers for local offices are:

Sullivan County Tn. Health Department - (423) 279-2777

Washington County Tn. Health Department - (423) 975-2200

Washington County Va. Health Department - (276) 676-5604

Carter County Tn. Health Department - (423) 543-2521

Home Inspection

A home inspection is recommended for anyone who has found a bat inside the home. If you have had a bat inside your home it is very likely that you have a sizeable colony somewhere in your home. This is especially true during the warmer months. Summer colonies that I find in the Bristol, Johnson City, and Kingsport areas range from a couple of individuals to over a hundred. Summer colonies are nursery colonies mostly composed of females and young. Twenty to thirty individuals is probably the average for a nursery colony. When I inspect homes that have had a bat finding a hidden colony is the norm. Bats that live this colony may become lost or decide to explore their home (your home) and find themselves in living areas. Anyone who has found a bat inside their home should have their home inspected for a colony.

Bats Inside the House in Winter

Bats found in the winter months are hibernating and are looking for a spot with the right temperature regime. Wintertime bats are likely to be found in lower halves of the home where temperatures are cool yet stable. They are less likely to be found in large numbers and more likely to be individuals. However, you still need to find where the bats entered the home. They will stay there through the winter, but will come and go feeding on bugs during warm spells. Hibernating bats are also likely to be associated with summer maternity colonies.

Regardless of the season or circumstances, it is highly recommended that a full inspection be implemented after the initial bat problem is resolved. The home needs to be evaluated for entry points and an exclusion plan needs to be implemented to remove the bats from the home. If you need to schedule an appointment, please give us a call. If you would like to know more about bats in homes, please check our pages on Need to Know Info - Bat Removal Services for Bristol, Kingsport, and Johnson City.

We try to triage emergency customers and give them priority. We always try to get to these customers as fast as possible. Customers with a serious bat emergency generally want to know how quickly we can get there. So, I have listed drive times from our home location. These times do not include loading truck with special tools or equipment.

Bats inside the house - why and how

A bat in the house call can come at about anytime during the year; but it is much more common in late summer. At that point, juveniles that have been just hanging out quietly in attic areas become much more “adventuresome” and start to move about. When this happens, they sometimes take a “wrong turn” and end up in living spaces. Adult bats probably occasionally “explore” their environment at this point looking for a parasite free area and end up in living spaces too. I tell customers that “juvenile bats are a lot like teenagers. They don’t do what mom tells them and they get into trouble”. Undoubtedly, bats do occasionally fly into living spaces through open doors and windows. But, in my experience, if someone reports a bat circling the living room or other space of the home, it is a sure sign that they have bats roosting somewhere in the home. If it is in the summer, they are probably in the attic. If it is winter they are more likely to be in the lower half of the house. If you have this, it is time for a home inspection and possibly a bat watch.

But I haven’t had bats before

Some homeowners go for years and develop huge colonies of bats and never have a bat enter the living spaces. I had a great example of this in Johnson City near Appalachian Christian Village. The customer had 50 bats in the attic and never had one inside. The only way they knew what they had is that the neighbor saw them coming out. Other homes have very small colonies of bats and have semi-regular visitors. I believe that the cause of this is often differences in the “geography” of the interior of walls and ceilings. A hole located in the right spot with light on the other side or a draft pulling through it will provide a false escape route to the bat and can bring them into living spaces.

On the other end of the spectrum, other homes can have very small numbers of bats and have regular visitors inside the house. I once inspected a home in the Chilhowie area. This home had little guano and probably only had one or two bats that were “occasional visitors”; but it had bats showing up twice a summer on average. I found that this home had a small hole cut through the floor of the attic for electrical lines. This hole was located just under the primary roost site. Any bat that happened to fall and land near this hole was likely to end up finding its way down this hole and into living spaces.