Bats

WHAT WE DO FOR YOU

Bats are small, warm-blooded, mammals with the unique ability to fly. Bats use echolocation to find small insects and can eat up to three times their body weight in insects each night. Bats can roost in caves and cliffs, but most often form colonies in homes and buildings. Once inside, bats enjoy the consistent temperatures offered by walls and attics. Although colonies can vary greatly in size, bats can cause building damage and pose serious health risks.

Bats Hibernate Their Way Through Winter

Unlike other wild animals, bats are largely inactive during the winter season. Flying insects form the basis of their diet, and when those bugs die off bats enter hibernation – a deep sleep they will not wake from until early spring.

Bats will very often choose the warmth of attics and walls of homes to hibernate. These bats won’t come and go from the houses, but they can occasionally wake from their slumber and emerge into the living space of the home if they are disturbed by extreme swings in temperature during winter. Finding a bat in the living space of your home during winter can only mean there is a colony inside the attic and walls.

In many parts of North America, there are laws protecting the most common types of bats from being harmed in order to preserve their populations. For this reason, bats cannot be evicted from their winter hibernation, as doing so would cause them to be awake without any food sources, threatening their survival.

To remove bat colonies humanely, our technicians install one-way doors that allow bats to exit naturally, in search of food, without disturbing their behavioural patterns. If bats are hibernating in your attic, they can be safely removed only once the winter has melted into spring and they have become active once more.

There are steps we can take to guarantee your home will be bat free come spring. While the bats are sleeping away the cold winter days, we will survey your home for their original entry points, and install one-way doors to allow them to exit safely once they wake up, without the ability to return. This is the safest and most effective way to prepare you for a pest free home. Give Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control a call if you suspect you have a bat colony in your home!

Bat Facts

Although bats provide a very important role in our environment (a single bat can eat up to 3,000 insects, including mosquitoes, in one night), they can also be dangerous if they roost in buildings or come into contact with people. It’s a myth that bats in Canada fly in your hair or suck your blood, but there are many other problems they can cause, leaving many wondering how to get rid of bats.

FACT: Bats can bite you when you’re sleeping or if you attempt to catch them. If inhaled, bat droppings can cause histoplasmosis, which is characterized by flu-like symptoms. The very young, very old and those with impaired immune systems are at greatest risk for severe illness.

FACT: Bats hibernate when temperatures dip below 10°C (e.g. September to April) and young bats may be left to die if a parent is killed. They typically feed on a 24-48 hour cycle – removing the active bats from your house may mean you’re only catching half the colony.

FACT: A bat can fit through a hole the size of a dime. Simply closing holes doesn’t work. Bats will often find another way out (and back in again) and if they die in your house or business, they will cause odour and damage.

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