(Video transcription below for your convenience)
A Batconservation International reminder: Always wear protective gloves when removing bats. Never handle bats or any other wild animal with your bare hands.)
[Video of Barbara French, from Batconservation International]
“It’s not unusual for a bat to sometimes end up inside of a room in a building. They commonly roost in buildings today, some species do.
And if you end up having a single bat inside, you can simply put a box or a can or any other type of small container over the bat. Simply place it carefully over the bat, where it’s roosting on the wall. Then take a piece of cardboard or a stiff envelope and gently scoot it between the box and the wall so that you’re securing the bat inside the box.
Once the bat’s inside the box, you want to make sure you secure this. Either take the paper or the cardboard that you used to capture the bat and tape it well so that it’s secured and the bat can’t escape; or you can simply take the top of the box and put it over the box and tape it shut. Make sure that there are no spaces between the top of the box and the bottom so that the bat could crawl out. Bats can come out through a very small area.
And if you want to add, for whoever is going to be the person designated to capture the bat, that they should use gloves when they are capturing the bat as an extra safety precaution, you can do that as well.
Sometimes bats will fly into the folds of a curtain. In fact, that’s very common. They want to get into some area where they’re sort of hidden. And a curtain provides a perfect roosting surface.
Again, we’re going to use the same procedure. We just going to put a box or a can over the top of the bat, but we want to make sure we push it up against a hard surface. So in this case, we want to make sure we push the box up against the window behind the curtain so that the bat can’t get out of the box.
Again, now, we have the bat secured behind the box and we’re going to take a piece of cardboard or a thick envelope – anything that’s stiff that will cover the entire top of the box – and put it between the surface the bat is on and the box. Gently scoot the bat … ok, we have the bat inside … and we want to make sure that we have this covering the entire top of the box before we take the box away from the curtain. And again, we can either tape it shut as it is, or if you have a box that has a top, you can just simply slide the top on while you’re taking off the other, and secure it.
Sometimes bat will end up trapped inside of a ventilation duct. They’ll end up coming through a vent like this, and you’ll find them roosting on the ceiling. Here we have a bat roosing on the ceiling tile. We’re just going to put the box over the top of him, just like we did on the wall, and again, we’re going to scoot a stiff envelope or a stiff piece of cardboard in between the ceiling tile and the box, and gently scoot the bat inside so that he’s uninjured, and then we’re going to tape this shut, again, to make sure that the bat is secured and not able to get back out.
Sometimes a bat will be found on the floor. They can run very fast, so that if you’re not the person designated to capture the bat, you want to at least be able to confine it until that person arrives so that the bat doesn’t move to some other room or some other part of the building. You can simply place a waste basket over the bat. You’ll want to do it quickly so that the bat doesn’t escape, but not slam the waste basket down on the floor taking a chance that you might injure the bat, particularly the brain, and you want to keep that intact in case the bat needs to be tested for Rabies.
Here’s a little bat scooting across the floor. We’re simply going to put the basket over the top of him and now he’s confined until the person who comes is going to actually capture the bat and remove him from the building.
What if you see a bat flying in a room and it lands and you don’t see exactly where it goes? First of all, shut the door to the room so that the bat can’t get out. Then look behind anything hanging on the wall – a wall painting, a photograph, a map, a chalkboard. Anything like that is something that a bat could easily go behind, and roost behind. You want to wear gloves when you’re doing this so that you can pull it out and look behind without worrying about having direct contact with the bat.
It’s always better to catch a bat when it’s roosting on a flat surface – it’s much easier than trying to catch a bat when it’s flying, they’re very fast. In fact, Mexican Freetail bats can fly as fast as 60 miles an hour with tailwinds. So capture the bat against a hard surface if possible. If that’s not possible, and you have a bat flying in a large area, and you need to capture it, use a net, like a butterfly net.
What I’m going to do is try to catch a bat while he’s flying in the room. I’ll just watch and the bat will tend to fly the same pattern over and over. And once I can anticipate the movements he’s making, as he comes towards me, I’ll quickly lift up the net and turn it real fast so that he’s sort of trapped inside.
[Barbara catches a flying bat inside the butterfly net]
OK, so now we have the bat captured inside the net.
You can also capture a bat that’s roosting on a surface with a butterfly net. If you put it over the bat so that the top of over the bat, it’s going to want to cling to the netting. It’s going to want to cling to any sort of a surface that’s netted or easy to climb on.
[Barbara demonstrates capturing a bat w/a butterfly net]
Place the net over the top of the bat, then very slowly start moving the net down. The bat will sort of scoot down – until you can tell that the bat is clinging to the net.
On the insides of buildings, bats often get through openings in ceiling tiles, or places where the wood has come loose or is not well-fitted into the rest of the ceiling. Again, an opening like this is sometimes found inside supply closets or maintenance rooms. It’s important that these openings are kept shut to prevent bats from getting into interior areas.
What about holes in walls? These are a problem. Bats that are already roosting in the building may not be a problem. But if they’re able to access an opening like this to get to the interior area, that is a problem. You need to make sure that these openings are caulked shut.
Where do bats get into buildings? One of the common places is in crevices that can form between the building and the chimney. Here you can see a brick building, and the chimney, and obvious wide spaces between the two. That a perfect place for bats to enter.
Here are screened vents along the underside of a roof. If the screen is in good repair, that’s not a problem at all. But if the screen is loose, bats could also get in through that opening.
Vents, another type of vent on the top of a building, if there’s screen on the inside, it’s not a problem, bats can’t get inside. But if there’s no screen, or the screen is loose, bats could easily get in through these openings.
Here you can see on the corner of the building that the flashing is loose – that’s one place bats can get in; and you can also see that there are openings between the wooden part of the building and the brick part of the building. All these little openings are places where bats could enter.
Here’s a section of a roof where you can see that the wood on the bottom does not meet securely up against the wood that is on the underside of the roof. That’s another place where bats could enter.
Here’s a small hole. This is sort of in the brick of the building, and there’s wood on top. This is another opening where bats could enter.
Here you can see that the building structure has a cement wall, and there are columns along the side. Again, there are openings between the columns and the wall, bats often will enter through there. These usually don’t have openings into the interior of the building, and bats will remain on the external side. However, there are sometimes openings that go from these external crevices to the inside. And if so, then this is another area where bats could enter into the inside.
Bats often enter buildings under loose flashing. So make sure that the flashing is secure against the building, and any openings that are open after the flashing has been secured should be sealed shut.
Here’s another hole that bats could use to get into a building. The best way to evict bats is to use something like this. [demonstrates a bat removal device] It’s just a clear piece of plastic that’s formed into a tube. It has to be smooth inside so that the bats can’t cling to it to climb back inside. Just put this over the top and then you can secure it around the outside. You leave this in place for 5-7 days to make sure all the bats have gotten out, then you remove it and permenantly seal the opening shut.
And here’s another option, here’s another type of tube that works well. [demonstrates another bat removal device] Again, just a piece of smooth tube. This one has a piece of plastic that’s pliable that you can use in case you’re in an area where the surface of the hole is not even. If the surface of the hole is uneven, then you can sort of mold this to make it fit and keep it secure.
Stone structures often have many places that bats could enter. For instance, right here, this is a very large opening. A bat doesn’t need an opening this large to enter. But there are many spaces in this brick structure where a bat could enter with no difficulty. These spaces would all need to be sealed shut if this was an exterior wall in a building where you’re evicting bats.”
[end of video]