How Do Animal Control Services Remove Bats From Your Home?

If you find bats in your home or suspect they have taken up residence in your attic, then you need to call an animal control service ASAP. It's simply not safe for you to attempt to remove the bats yourself since they are known to carry rabies and other diseases. But what steps will the animal control service take to remove the bats and keep additional bats from moving in? While every company is likely to have a slightly different preferred process, you can expect them to follow these basic steps.

Detecting Entry Points

Before your animal control professionals take any steps to exclude the bats, they will go through your home and attic and identify all of the places where the bats may be entering. They may make a list of these entry points so they can come back and address each of them. Or they may use chalk or a similar temporary marking agent to mark the spots.

Inserting Excluders

After their initial inspection, the bat removal specialists will put special tubes in each of the entry points. These tubes are engineered so that they allow bats to leave the home but not come inside. (Most have some sort of angled flap, which the bats can squeeze under from one side but not from the other.) 

These excluders are left in place for at least a week and sometimes two weeks. The hope is that during this time, any bats in the home will leave through the excluders but then find themselves unable to go back into the home. 

Blocking Entryways

Once the one or two weeks have passed with the excluders in place, the pest control company will come back to remove them. They'll then permanently block off the holes through which the bats were entering. How they do this will depend on the material that needs to be blocked. They may nail a wood patch over a wooden area or stuff a brick structure with some steel wool. Sometimes, your animal control company may refer you to a building professional who can do more involved, intricate work in repairing the damaged structures that were letting the bats inside.

Once the entry points have been permanently sealed, you should be rid of bats! Then, all you'll need to do is make plans to have any guano and other waste removed from your attic. Some animal control services do this, and others may recommend a separate cleanup team.

To learn more, contact an animal removal service.

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