Why People Attempt This Method Of Bat Control:
Some DIY guides online will claim you can get rid of bats from your home or attic simply by finding the entry point and blocking it up. When you think about it, it seems to make sense. However, due to a number of reasons, this is not only dangerous for the bats but it’s also dangerous for you. Blocking a hole without first performing the one-way exclusion process is very risky, and you should never put yourself in a situation where somebody could get hurt.
First off, if you block a hole the bats were coming out of, how can you be sure all of the bats have already left? There are usually several dozen bats in a good-sized bat colony, and not every bat would be coming outside every single night. So there’s the potential to block a few bats inside the attic with this method.
The Fun Part – Bats Inside The House!
If you block a bat from escaping your attic, and it gets locked inside, you are in for a real treat. Because the result is the bat will go down into your walls, trying to find any possible way out, and it will slip through a register or something so small you wouldn’t have thought it possible for the bat to fit through.
And now, all of a sudden, you will have a bat flying around inside your house. Some of you may have experienced a bat in the house before, since finding a bat in the house is a common symptom of a bat infestation. But, now imagine several bats flying around your house, all at one time.
Examples Of This Type Of Bat Removal Gone Wrong:
My Father is also a bat removal professional who owns a pest control company in Maine, and in the past, he drove all over the state of Maine doing bat work. Well, one night my father got a call from a customer who had bats in his home. When asked how many bats he thought there were, the customer responded: “maybe over 100.” My father drove 2 hours at 4AM in the morning to help this poor guy. Turns out this homeowner had hired his handyman who blocked the entry points with a rag cloth, and so the huge bat colony that was inside the attic came down and got into this man’s living room.
That is really a true story, and I was reminded of the tale when Lisa Ricigliano, who is the owner of a wildlife company listed on my website in Lakeland, Florida, told me about a recent call she had received from my website. And to my surprise, it was almost an identical situation she described to my father’s experience. Apparently, the client had hired some local guy that had no clue how to remove bats from an attic, and he went and ended up just blocking the entry points without even waiting for the bats to leave. Over the next few days, bat after bat kept showing up inside the home. A typical problem with bats blocked in the attic.
So, why should you never use the blocking method of bat removal? It’s inhumane, and pretty much, you probably get the picture at this point.