Do you have bats in your belfry? Biologists at the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission are asking people that think they have bats living in their homes to relocate them responsibly before they start having babies around May 1.
Bat scat, called guano, is the most obvious indication that bats may be living in the gable vents, behind a shutter or in another nook around the outside or inside your home.
Bats hibernate or migrate south during the winter, which is why biologists say people may only start to see them now.
They provide free pest control as they nearly devour their own body weight in insects nightly, and wildlife agents say their appetite increases even more during pup-rearing season, which runs May 1 – July 31 across North Carolina.
If a homeowner is unable to remove bats from the house before rearing season, it is best to leave them in their roost until the end of July.
“Eviction methods rely on a bat’s ability to fly out of the roost, then measures are taken to prevent reentry. Young bats are initially flightless and are totally dependent on their mothers, so when adult bats are evicted, the young perish because they can’t yet leave the roost or survive on their own. To make matters worse, mother bats may end up in the living space of a building trying to seek alternate ways to get to their pups. By August 1, young bats are mature enough to fly, so eviction methods are safe to resume at that point,” said Katherine Etchison, wildlife diversity biologist with the Wildlife Commission.
If they’re getting inside, a licensed Wildlife Control Agent can safely evict them for you. You can find a list of licensed professionals on the Wildlife Commission’s website HERE.
If a bat does get into the house and human exposure occurs, or might have occurred, biologists say the county health department should be contacted immediately.
