Category Archives: Bats

Anything to do with bats

Bats

Bat in the House

Leave a comment

I recently dealt with a bat in the house, and had a whole adventure with it before finally calling Allstate Animal Control to get rid of the bat and make sure I didn’t have any more living in the attic or chimney or anywhere else.  Before this all happened, I had no fear of bats.  I saw them in the zoo.  I caught glimpses of them flying around the nearby park when I was running at twilight.  I know they keep insect populations down, especially mosquitoes, which are a real problem around here.  I know they are pretty amazing animals.  So, I never had a fear of them.

Until I stepped on one in my bare feet.

Yep, that was pretty awful.

It was mid afternoon.  I’d just come home from class and I was getting ready for work.  I’m trying to get my bachelors degree, and then I want a masters in business administration.  Between work, school and my social life, I keep myself pretty busy, and I don’t spend a lot of time at home.  So, I didn’t know I had a bat problem.  I had grabbed a bowl of cereal for lunch (don’t judge me), and was taking it back to my room so I could eat while looking for my shoes, since I didn’t have a lot of time before work.  I turned the corner into my room quickly and as soon as I stepped down, I knew something was terribly wrong.  Something hairy, squirmy and very angry was wriggling beneath my foot.  I pulled my foot up, and this black shadow flew straight up to the ceiling, bumped around up there, and then settled out of sight on the top of my book shelf.  I didn’t even have breath left to scream, and I desperately needed to disinfect my foot, make sure I didn’t have a bat bite, and probably hire a hypnotherapist to make me permanently forget the memory of stepping on a bat.

I certainly didn’t want to investigate to see whether the bat was still alive.  I pulled the bedroom door shut, washed my feet about twenty times, cleaned up the spilled cereal, pulled on a different pair of shoes from the downstairs closet, and headed out to work.  During my break, I called United Wildlife Control so they could send a professional out to get rid of the bat in my house, and check to make sure I didn’t have a bat colony lurking around anywhere else.

Now, of course, I’m terrified of bats.  I’ve gone running in the park a few times since then, and every time I see one out of the corner of my eye, innocently swooping around in the air to catch itself some dinner, I stifle a shriek, start to shake, and my foot involuntarily curls up.  I’m sure my reaction will lessen as time goes by, but in the meantime, I think I’ll join a gym and run on a treadmill.

Bats

Get Rid of Bat

Leave a comment

bat removal

“Myron, I think we need to get rid of a bat.”  I heard my wife call from the other room. She sounded so nonchalant, like it was the most normal thing in the world to yell to me across our home, starting a conversation about bats.  She might as well have been asking me if I wanted turkey or roast beef in my sandwich.  Admittedly, I was a little confused.  After nearly fifty years of marriage, we’d never had a bat in the house.  A mouse problem once, but that was a long time ago.

Maybe I misheard her.  “What’d you say, Jane?  Do you need anything?”  I called out.

“A bat.  A BAT.  I think we need to get rid of a bat!”  Her voice was a little more insistent and a lot more irritated.  She hates it when I don’t hear her correctly.  She thinks I ignore her sometimes on purpose.  If I’m completely honest with myself, sometimes I do.

Sighing, I put down my tools.  During my working years, I had dreams of my retired life.  It involved a lot of golf, a lot of time watching football, and plenty of time in my wood shop.  So far, I spent the majority of my time finishing the basement and turning it into basically a second home.   I’d built a kitchen and living room down there, a couple of bedrooms and an office.  It had been my wife’s idea, and so I grumbled about it a lot.  Truth is, I was enjoying myself.

But, now I had to stop, once again, and head back upstairs to where my wife sat on her easy chair, playing Sudoku.  Her health hadn’t been so good this last year, which meant she wasn’t able to spend her retirement years traveling, as she’d wanted.

I made it upstairs and saw her looking up at the wall above the mantle.  “A bat, Myron.  I said we need to get rid of a bat.”

Looking up, I saw the bat on the wall.  At first, it looked like a medium-sized smudge, but as I walked closer to the fireplace, I could easily see my wife was right.  We needed to get rid of the bat.  I was impressed that she was still sitting there, doing her Sudoku, in the presence of this creature.  She hadn’t been this calm when we had a mouse problem.  The years had mellowed us both out.

I had no idea how to get rid of the bat, though.  My mind went through the possibilities.  At best, I might scare it out of the house.  More likely, though, I’d end up scaring it into a witless flight pattern around our heads, and possibly hurt myself in the process.  Plus, I really wanted to get back to my basement project.  Then, it dawned on me.  Call Allstate Animal Control.  They’d send someone out to get rid of the bat for me, and my wife and I could go back to our respective retirement activities.  Good plan.

Bats

Bat Removal Salt Lake

Leave a comment

get rid of bats

We literally just moved here, and already I have to look for bat removal in Salt Lake.  Ugh.  Yesterday morning, we finished packing up the moving truck from our home in Lincoln, Nebraska, and sent it on its way to our new home in Salt Lake City, Utah.  We filled our car up with an expensive tank full of gas, stopped by to say a final farewell to some friends, picked up some road trip food, and started the twelve hour drive to our new neighborhood.  As usual, we left a couple hours later than we had planned.  The goodbyes took longer and were more difficult, filled with promises to keep in touch with emails and phone calls.  Then, we had to pick up our last paychecks and close our local bank account.  Once we were finally on the highway, it was bittersweet.  We were excited to get to the next chapter in our life, and sad to leave the place we’d called home since we’d gotten married.

We had struggled the first couple years of our marriage.  Money had been really tight, and we had tried to make ends meet by working ourselves to death.  I worked as a video editor for a local news station from 4 am to noon, after which I’d work at my receptionist job until 6 pm.  My husband was finishing up his bachelors degree in computer science during the day and worked as a security guard at night.  He didn’t get home until ten at night.  Since I had to get up at 3 am, I was already asleep, so I’d wake up just enough to mumble an “I love you,” before falling back asleep.

So, after he finished up his degree, he went job-hunting, and found this new job that offered him more than my two paychecks combined.  It was a no-brainer, even though it meant leaving home behind us and creating a new life in a different state.

We drove up to the cute little bungalow we’d found during a previous house-hunting trip late last night.  The moving truck is supposed to arrive here sometime in the afternoon, so we figured we’d just haul our sleeping bags up to our new bedroom and crash on the floor for what was left of the rest of the night.

Early in the morning, the sun came streaming through our east-facing window, and I woke up vowing to get the darkest window shades I could find as soon as I could find them.  Something felt a little “off” to me as I sat up in bed, but I figured it was just because I wasn’t familiar yet with the sounds of my new home.  Then, something small and wet dropped on my husband’s head.  I looked up, and saw about 20 bats hanging from the ceiling.  One of them had just dropped a nasty little package onto my husband.

So, instead of worrying about where I’m going to place the couch or which dishes will go into which kitchen cabinet, I get to find a good bat removal service in Salt Lake.  I’ve gone too long without a good night’s sleep with my husband next to me.  Salt Lake bat removal will get rid of those bats and let me finally, finally, have a full night’s sleep in the same bed with my husband.

Bats

Bat Control

Leave a comment

get rid of bats

I wonder how much bat control I need.  We’re buying a house, and the inspection turned up an attic full of bat feces.  Bat droppings are all over the place, but we haven’t been able to find a single bat in the attic, or anywhere else in the place.

I really love this house.  I researched the area with my agent, and we’re in a really good school district, we’re within walking distance to the grocery store and other shopping areas, it’s a quiet neighborhood with other kids who are close in age to my own two children, and the house itself is perfect for us.  After my divorce, we agreed to sell our old house and split the proceeds.  Of course, some child support came from my husband’s portion, but other than that, it was even-steven.  I was happy to get out of that old house, anyway.  It held too many bad memories for me, and the neighbors had been really good friends of both me and my husband.  It was getting awkward to see them or chat with them, because they either sided with my husband, or spoke badly of him in front of my kids, or they just looked at me with pity.  I had to get out and get a fresh start.  So, even though we ended up moving into this much smaller home, it is the perfect size for the three of us, and a new neighborhood, new job and new school for the kids were just what we needed.

The house is small, but it still has enough bedrooms and bathrooms to make all of us happy.  I love the style of it, too.  It has kind of a French country feel to it.  I was honest with my agent when we were putting in a bid.  I really, really wanted this house.  Of course, I also really, really needed it to be within my price range.

So, when the inspection turned up a few issues, like the fact that the house needed bat control, my agent and I decided to use it as a negotiation aid.  I’d pay for the bat control if the seller would pay closing costs.  The seller accepted, and we are scheduled to close on the home in a little over a week.

I’ve been calling around for bat control quotes, and finally settled on Allstate Animal Control.  They are nation-wide and have contractors right here.  Plus, they will clean up and sanitize the attic in addition to the bat control.  The guy I talked to was really knowledgeable about the bats in our area, and had some good guesses about which kind of bats had roosted up there.  He also told me that, when they came out to do the bat control and clean-up, he’d inspect the home, remove any bats he finds, and seal up the entrance-points.  All for one very reasonable fee.  I was really impressed with their bat control knowledge.

Now, I just have to focus on packing everything up, closing on the new home, and moving me and the kids in.  Fresh starts are wonderful, especially right after a difficult time.

Bats

San Diego County Exterminator

Leave a comment

“See?  This is why we should have called the San Diego County exterminator instead of trying to get rid of the bats by ourselves.  We had no idea what we were doing!”

“But, the internet said you could exclude the bats and the problem would be solved.”

I love my husband, but he’s a constant do-it-yourselfer, without a lot of expertise.  He has a huge honey-do list that he’s written for himself.  I don’t have to give him any projects to do, because he’s constantly finding them.  He’s great at changing the oil in my car, taking care of the yard, keeping hinges oiled in the house, and a thousand other little things, and I’m grateful to him.  However, he does have a problem.  He doesn’t know how to do a lot of the projects he takes on.  He loves to tell me, “I’ll learn as I go.”  And, that’s why there’s a crack in the pipe under the sink, a basement that’s been “nearly finished” for over a year now, and a partially reupholstered couch in our front room.

Occasionally, he’ll get instructions on some internet site or another, but he only skims the article and doesn’t read all the way through.  So, when we found bats roosting in the attic a few months ago, he wouldn’t let me call the San Diego County exterminator or anyone else to help us with our problem.  He got online, said “Hmm mmm” a couple of times, and went to work excluding a colony of bats.

Now, I did some research of my own, and quickly learned that we most likely had a maternity colony roosting in the attic.  If the bats were excluded improperly or at the wrong time, we could really harm the animals as well as unintentionally causing a bigger bat problem for ourselves.  Plus, I realized there were state and federal laws that protect bats and govern when and how you can remove them.  I didn’t read through the laws myself, but begged my husband to contact the San Diego County exterminator at least for some advice.  He told me not to worry, he’d take care of it.

Sure enough, over the last couple of weeks, we’d both noticed a smell that was getting stronger and stronger.  It took us a while to locate the source, and unfortunately my husband discovered some new projects he wanted to undertake while we searched.  Finally, though, it was clear the smell was strongest in the part of the attic where the bats had roosted.

It was worse than I expected, though.  A few baby bats lay dead and rotting on the floor of the attic.  Bat urine and feces hadn’t been cleaned up, so it had dried and stained the wall and insulation.  I didn’t look any closer – I didn’t want to think too much about maggots or anything else that was crawling over that mess.  I think my husband finally saw the look on my face, because he immediately went downstairs to call the San Diego County exterminator for help.

Bats

Get Rid of Bats

Leave a comment

bat removal

I have to wonder what bats must think, when we try to get rid of bats with tools that were meant for playing sports or cleaning the house.

Look, I know that sometimes entire bat colonies get in an attic, or bats roost in a chimney or people have bat colonies around their house.  But, a lot of times, it’s just one single bat that got curious or accidentally flew in a house.  Once inside, it finds a nice place to hang out, like high up on a wall, or in a fireplace, behind a curtain or on the back of a chair.  It might be a little bit worried about finding its way back outside again, but it’s pretty confident that it’ll be able to find its way back out, once it’s had a nap or pulled its wits together.

And, then, some human innocently walks into the darkened room and flips on a light switch.  Still, the bat might not move from its spot.  It’s comfortable, it’s safe, and it sees no reason why it should have to move.  So, it hangs out there for a while.  The person wanders around, doing whatever people do in that particular room.  But, suddenly, the person glances at a random spot on the wall, and sees a dark smudge just hanging there.  Somewhere, deep in that person’s brain, a fearful voice whispers, “It’s a bat,” and then there’s screaming, and running, and door slamming, and all of a sudden there’s several people all trying to get rid of the bat.

The things people use to get rid of bats, though!  It’s like, they grab whatever is at hand, whether it’s an empty box, a blanket, a tennis racket or the long, dusty, fluffy thing at the end of a pole that they use to clean off ceiling fans.

A whole chase ensues.  The bat flies frantically around the room, barely avoiding faces, heads and windows as it desperately looks for an escape route.  Objects are smashed or simply knocked over as the people alternate between trying to get rid of the bat to running away screaming to ducking and cursing.

And, what must the bat think?  It was happily minding its own business when it’s awoken and chased.  It is not a greased pig at a fair, it is not an escaped bull in a china shop.  It is simply a small bat taking a rest from looking for dinner.  Now, it’s trying to avoid getting its wings smashed in a butterfly net or by a cardboard box while flying around looking for a way out of this mess.

Let cooler heads prevail.  Call a professional to get rid of bats for you.  Tennis rackets are for playing tennis, blankets are to keep you warm, and ceiling fan dusters are for . . . well, you know.

Bats

Bat Control

Leave a comment

“What’s he doing?”

“He says it’s bat control.”

“Seriously?  He looks . . . he looks like he’s just crazy.”

“I know, right?  But, he says there’s a bat in his dorm room and he’s taking care of bat control by himself.”

The boy in question was a freshman, and was dancing, or jerking around, with a sheet in front of his window at night in a first-floor dorm room.  He’d opened up the window, which is gave all of us a nice view of what was going on.  So far, no one had seen a bat, but this was a lot better than the junk reality show playing in the common room, so a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk and grass outside his window.

“So, if he’s doing bat control, where’s the bat?  All I see is the dude and his sheet.  Weird.”

“No, no!  I see it.”

Bat hanging from a ceiling.
A bat hanging from the ceiling of a freshman dorm room.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

A bunch of us leaned forward, some squinting, trying to catch a glimpse of the bat in the room.

“There!  There it is!  D’ya see it?”

The freshman had stopped waving his bed sheet for just a moment, long enough for the bat to settle back down in the corner of the wall.  It was big enough to make some of the girls screech and fall back behind some of the guys.  Its pursuer realized he had an audience, and turned to address us, enjoying his moment.

“It’s just a big brown bat, is all.  Dunno how it got in here, but I’m gonna try to make it fly back out the window.”

At this, some of the more squeamish girls fell back even further.

“Dude, use a racket or something!”

“Do you have one I could use?”

“No.  But, I’m sure a sheet ain’t gonna do it.”  The boy just shrugged.

“What if it bites him?” someone asked.

“It’s not gonna bite me, unless I try to hold it in my hands.  I just want to get it out of my room so it doesn’t crap all over everything.”

“Ewwwww,” someone muttered.

Someone else gasped, and the boy whirled around to recommence his herky-jerky-sheet-dance as the bat swooped around the room.  He assumed a bull-fighter’s stance when the bat flew lower through the air.

“I’m tellin’ ya, a sheet’s not gonna do a thing.  You gotta have something like a tennis racket or something,” the self-proclaimed bat control expert asserted, though no one was listening to him.  Everyone was too busy shouting out pointers to the freshman dancing in the window.

“On your left!”

“Up, up, up, up!!!”

“Don’t try to catch it, just scare it out the window.”

This last piece of advice earned the speaker a withering glare from Bat-Boy, as he was now being called.

And, then, suddenly, it was over.  The bat finally swooped out the window and zoomed far out of sight.  Everyone, except for the racket-lover, broke out into spontaneous applause and the boy took a bow, closed his window and his shutters, and everyone drifted off, talking about that night’s excitement.

Bats

Bat Problems

Leave a comment

“. . . And that, girls, is the problem with bats.”  Mark wrapped up his scary story with the deepest voice he could muster and looked around the room at his daughter and her friends.  No one looked impressed.  One of the ten-year-olds even rolled her eyes, and his daughter looked mortified.  So much for throwing the perfect Halloween sleep over.

His wife, Lindsey, swooped into the room with her impeccable timing.  “Who wants pizza?!”  The girls squealed and ran out of the room.  She smiled at him, hugtged him, and sweetly said, “I told you they would’ve liked a ghost story better than a monster story.”

“Thanks for the moral support,” he said wryly.

“Well, let’s go feed these little monsters.  You can make it up to them by serving up your famous root beer floats.”

“So, I’m good for something, at least.  Scooping ice cream and pouring soda.  Whoopee.”

His wife laughed and they walked downstairs, hand in hand, towards the giggling group.  Soon, the girls were talking and laughing around mouthfuls of pizza and gulps of root beer floats.  His daughter had almost forgiven him the mortal sin of embarrassing her and boring her friends.  Everyone trooped into the media room to start a movie, and they were just beginning to settle down as it started when someone let out an ear-jarring high pitched screech.  “BAAAAAAT!!!”

Screams and squeals and running greeted him as he charged into the room.  Sure enough, amidst the flying ponytails and spilled soda, a bat was flying around the room.  It obviously desperately wanted to leave this gaggle of girls and fly free into the night.  But, the enclosed media room and frantic activity had it scared.

Lindsey shepherded the girls out of the room and up the stairs, calmed them down and began checking for bites or scratches.  Mark was left in the suddenly quiet room and faced the bat, which had now perched on a chair.  “Now what?” he muttered.  He closed the door to the room, shutting the bat up inside, and went to the garage to fish out his work gloves, an empty box and a thin piece of plywood from the garage.  Returning to the media room, he took a breath and closed the door behind him.  He was surprised the bat had not moved, but it was probably having a minor heart attack of its own.  Quickly, he set the box over it, slid the plywood underneath and, rather awkwardly, marched outside to let it free.

“How’d it get in there?” he asked himself, as he headed back into the media room to investigate.  It wasn’t too long before he realized what had probably happened.  When he’d put the media rom together, he’d cut a hole into the ceiling, just wide enough to work the numerous wires up through the attic and down into the room.  Were there more bats up there?  He was going to have to make a phone call to get someone out here to check it out.

He walked out of the room to make the call and was greeted by his daughter and her little girlfriends.  They applauded.  They hugged him.  They cheered.  He grinned and said, “And that, girls, is the problem with bats.”

Bats

Bat Trapping

Leave a comment

Bat Trapping as a family is usually not an organized, pre-planned event, and it certainly is a terrible thing to attempt in the middle of the night.

A family member wakes up in the middle of the night, and heads for the kitchen, visions of last night’s enchilada’s dancing in their head.  Leftovers sound pretty great at 3 in the morning when you can’t sleep.  A light switch is flicked on and he walks over to the refrigerator, grabs out the pan and sets it on the counter.  It isn’t until he turns to the silverware drawer that he sees it, a large black smudge on the wall that wasn’t there before he went to bed.  Then, the smudge moves, and he realizes it’s a bat.

His yell wakes everyone else up, and they come running into the kitchen, only to have mixed emotions when they find out what the yelling was about.  An older brother mocks him for being scared of something so little.  A little sister screams even louder than he did.  Mom shudders, wondering if it flew into any of the bedrooms while her children were sleeping.  Dad’s mad and wants to trap the bat so he can get back to sleep.

Of course, no one is thinking very clearly that early in the morning, so the family becomes a living, breathing Laurel and Hardy movie, running around, waving things, throwing things, bumping into each other.  Through it all, the bat just sits there on the wall, oblivious to everything.

Finally, Dad takes charge and calms everyone down as best he can.  He grabs up a towel, and heads towards the bat.  The moment he gets close, though, the bat is off and flying.  People scream, but no one wants to admit it was them.  Dad runs through the kitchen into the front room, following the bat with his trusty old towel.  Someone turns on the light to the front room, which just causes the bat to fly around more frantically.  More screams.  Big brother thinks he’s being helpful when he comes running in with a large plastic tote, waving it around, and bonking into Dad and his towel.  No one is quite sure what either Dad or big brother intend on doing with the bat, armed insufficiently as they are.

Finally, little sister brings in a butterfly net and waits until the bat has landed on a wall again. She hands it to Dad, who creeps up to the wall, intent on bat trapping.  He slams the butterfly net over the bat and Mom asks, “Now what’re you going to do with it?”  Slowly, unsure of himself, Dad maneuvers the net until the bat is trapped within.  He opens the door and throws his new bat trap, bat inside, out into the front lawn, and jumps back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

It took a while for everyone to calm down enough to go back to bed, for the rest of what was left of the night.  Everyone hoped that bat would find its way out of the net and back into the open sky, but no one slept very soundly until they could go out and make sure their bat trap had worked.

Bats

Get Rid of Bats

Leave a comment

get rid of bats 
            Mission: get rid of bats from the attic.  10-4, I’m on it.  Trust me to get the job done right.  I’m no professional, but I’m a teenaged gamer with hours and hours of experience at getting rid of all kinds of online monsters and enemies.  This will be a piece of cake.

            First objective: arm myself with the correct equipment.  Possible weapons: baseball bat, tennis racket, long straight stick.  I select the stick for its flexibility, length, tensile strength and the way it sits in my hand.

            Second: armor.  I need something that will protect me from bites but that will not inhibit movement.  A motorcycle helmet is selected, allowing me maximum protection vs. maximum visibility. 

            Third: select my tactical approach.  Move up the crawl space into the attic itself?  Negative.  Not enough room to retreat if needed.  Ah ha!  I shall sneak up on the enemy from below and from the outside.  It will give me the element of surprise necessary to strike fear into the heart of the bats, and they shall flee their den of evil on their own, believing there is an entire army outside.  It is a perfect plan.

            Carefully, I drag the A-frame ladder up to the house and prop it against the wall.  I don my armor, and with perfect stealth I creep up the ladder holding my weapon of choice before me.  I can’t help but smile with anticipation.  I shall arise victorious from this battle.  I imagine my experience points will increase exponentially as I successfully get rid of bats.

            Finally, I am in place and ready for battle.  I close my eyes briefly and control my breathing, calming my beating heart.  Raising my hand, I begin the attack!  Slam, whack, bang!  The stick falls relentlessly on the attic vent, creating a horrible racket intended to frighten the evil beasts from our castle.

            Nothing happens.  Cautiously, I make a second attempt to get rid of bats.  Whack, whack, bang! 

            I wait.  Nothing.  I listen, and hear them moving around, but they refuse to leave by the vent I have been banging.  How could they not know they are being attacked by a superior force?  How could they not flee in terror?  It is incomprehensible. 

            I descend from my position of attack, obtain a flashlight, and cautiously climb back up to my perch.  Peering in, I can see the vile creatures, rustling, leering.  They are restless, but well-ensconced.   One of them (their leader?) crawls across the wall and turns its head to look directly into my eyes.  We stare at each other across the battlefield, and I realize I am up against a formidable foe.  It is perhaps it is time to consider an alternate plan of attack?