{"id":7117,"date":"2011-08-24T11:45:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T16:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/?p=7117"},"modified":"2011-08-24T11:45:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T16:45:24","slug":"bat-adventures-who-is-the-bat-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/24\/bat-adventures-who-is-the-bat-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Bat Adventures: Who is the Bat Man?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post continues our story about bats in the attic<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s time for the bats to go, but how does that actually happen? Who do I call to help me get them out? We keep a list of contractors and other service providers so that we have someone to recommend to our clients in any occasion. But there is nobody on the list for wildlife removal – somehow I don’t think the bug exterminators are right for this job.<\/p>\n

\"AtticIn situations like this it’s great to work in an office with other friendly and knowledgeable agents. Surely some of them have had to help their clients with bats over the years. I sent a quick note requesting information and received a number of helpful responses.<\/p>\n

The first thing I learned was that bats are a protected species, so the appropriate way to address a bat problem is to “exclude” them from a house rather than “exterminate” them. This made me feel bad about killing one years ago, but that was an accident (honest!). I guess it’s good that we didn’t get any in the traps we had set.<\/p>\n

I also learned that the people who deal with wild animals, like bats, have a separate license from the State. So they usually are different people than those who would deal with ants, termites, or other bugs.<\/p>\n

And, of course, I got the names of multiple people who I could call to help with my current problem. They have been added to “the database” for future reference.<\/p>\n

To end the suspense, the Bat Man is named Rich. He’s a very helpful guy, and knows quite a bit about how bats live and what they’re likely to do. For example, bats like to crawl into our houses on their belly (rather than fly in), so their fur leaves a little oil spot near their entrance. That’s one of the big signals that a building has a serious bat problem. <\/p>\n

Rich also told me that bats like to come out to feed on insects at dusk, and they’ll often return to just outside their access point to enjoy their food. This means that if there are a lot of bats in a colony, then there will be quite a mess below their access point from the droppings.<\/p>\n

The Bat Man’s professional opinion was that we only have a few bats in the house, maybe three or four. He also felt that their intrusion into our living area was more of an accident\/coincidence than a major problem – that was the good news. The bad news was that he didn’t see anything that jumped out as an obvious access point. And without an access point there isn’t much he can do.<\/p>\n

His recommendation was for us to try to figure out where they’re getting into the house. He could do a more thorough inspection, but that would be quite expensive and he seemed worried that he might not actually find it since there weren’t that many bats. That puts the ball back in our court. We have to figure out how they’re getting in on our own. <\/p>\n

Rich recommended that we stake out the likely access points at dusk. He said we should grab a cold beverage and set up our lawn chairs and just watch to see what happens. We should be able to see them come out for the evening and then periodically return with their meal. In addition, we’ve been assigned the responsibility to trying to count the total number so that none get trapped inside when we begin plugging the holes.<\/p>\n

Will this make me the Bat Man too? I think it will … I am the Bat Man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post continues our story about bats in the attic… It’s time for the bats to go, but how does that actually happen? Who do I call to help me get them out? We keep a list of contractors and other service providers so that we have someone to recommend to our clients in any occasion. But there is nobody on the list for wildlife removal – somehow I don’t think the bug exterminators are<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1579],"tags":[1732,3303,2081,2292,2332],"class_list":["post-7117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-maintenance","tag-attic","tag-bat","tag-exclusion","tag-home","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7117"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7135,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7117\/revisions\/7135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}