What if a bat got inside my house, bedroom, kitchen, etc.?

Bats are wildlife animals that have the important function in nature of feeding on insects and keeping their population under control. However, when bats get inside a human area, they become a nuisance – and they also can't function normally if living among people. However, don't think of getting rid of bats by the means of using poison or other termination methods, because poisoning bats and killing them in any other way is illegal and you can face a huge fine or even jail time.

How to get rid of bats safely and effectively? Of course, the best solution is to contact wildlife rehabilitators to do this for you. Wildlife rehabilitators are professionals that know how to safely remove bats from your home, without causing them any unnecessary harm. Wildlife rehabilitators will exclude bats from your home using one-way exclusion funnels, i.e. devices that have an exit but don't have an entrance, so once a bat has exited your house, it will not be able to enter back in. However, when excluding bats it is important to make sure that there are no bat babies inside the house. Bats mate in early spring and have babies between May and August. Babies are unable to fly in their earliest days, so if you evict the mother, in no time you will have the very nasty smell of dead and decomposing bat babies in your home. This is one reason why it is important to first inspect the entire house to be sure about the location and size of the bat colony.

After the size and population of a bat colony has been established, the wildlife rehabilitator will begin with the already mentioned exclusion of bats. This is always performed without the use of aggressive methods and definitely without the use of poison or other substances that could harm bats. Any action to exclude bats is usually performed during the evening hours because bats are nocturnal animals, i.e. they are active during the night. Once they activate to fly out to find food, they will get inside the one-way exclusion device and get trapped in a net. They can be safely removed from the net and put in a box so that they can be removed to another location, in the wilderness, far from your home.

After a bat colony has been completely removed from your home, it is important to safely shut all the possible entrances into the house or bats could return.

Go back to the How to Get Rid of Bats page or email us if you have any other questions about What if a bat got inside my house, bedroom, kitchen, etc.?