what's worse than finding a single bat flying around your house? (bats, part 2)
answer: discovering an entire maternity roost has taken up residence and they have squatting rights
This is Part 2 of a two-part story about finding a lone bat flying around my house one night and what happened next. Be sure to read Part 1. But before you do, subscribe to receive this newsletter in your inbox:
Where did we leave off? Oh yeah. We left off with the fact that we have, not one bat, but two bats descending from underneath the molding around our fireplace.
I wish I could display a picture of my face the moment I realized we had multiple bats.
There I was, sitting in the dim lighting of dusk—the time of day when bats and vampires wake, and I was staring up at the brick above our fireplace. My husband was preparing to trap the “one” bat so that we might relocate him or her outside and be rid of our bat problem.
“Oh, shit!” I said from my spot on the sofa.
“What?” He followed my line of sight to where he, too, saw the second dark blob just below the molding.
After a choice word or two, he backed away from the fireplace and stared up at the brick. The one bat was crawling across the brick, searching for an opening in the net so that he/she might fly and be free as he had the night before. The other was not moving just yet. Both were chirping.
“Turn the lights on,” my husband said.
The lights above our fireplace lit up the bats, and the two small mammals didn’t like it. Both bats began their retreat back toward the molding, clickety-clakety across the brick—a sound I won’t soon forget. As they retreated, I began my online research, reading aloud to my husband.
Remember from the first post, the question that came up in my Google search: If there’s one bat in your house, are there more?
One bat inside your house could be explained as having flown in when you left a door open. Or, as my neighbor suggested, hanging on to a seat cushion that we bring in and out from our patio.
Two bats coming down from a gap around your fireplace chimney? It was time to take a closer look at the situation. Especially since I was finding article after article about how bats scout out places to roost, especially in late May to early June. This is when female bats give birth to their pups and form maternity roosts.
I was starting to get a REALLY bad feeling about the situation we were in. Just how many bats did we have?
Let’s pause here to give you a few facts:
In late May to early June, female bats give birth to pups, usually one pup per bat.
Although it’s not known how, exactly, female bats typically form colonies or roosts and live together as they raise their young. (Male bats are more solitary or tend to live in smaller groups.)
It is against the law to disturb or relocate these maternity roosts from mid April to mid August when these young pups don’t yet know how to fly.
At some point in August, when you’re sure the babies are now flying, you can relocate the colony of bats and seal up the spot in your house where they had taken up residence.
It is against Federal law to intentionally harm or kill most species of bats. (All bats are protected in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which is where I am.)
You can find all sorts of numbers on the internet, but on average, these maternity roosts typically consist of 22 to 200 bats. (I also saw information that suggested a colony of bats can grow from around 100 to several thousand.)
Bats typically return to the same roosting spot year after year. That’s why it’s important to seal up your house to prevent reentry.
You can locate where your bats are entering and leaving your house by where they drop guano, or bat droppings. They typically drop waste as they leave, so a pile will form in that spot.
Bats CAN carry rabies. Don’t touch bats with your bare hands.
Bat guano, when disturbed, turns to dust. When these microscopic spores from the dried bat guano are inhaled by humans they can cause a serious respiratory disease called histoplasmosis.
It can be expensive to relocate a roost of bats, get the area of the house where they took up residence professionally cleaned, and seal up your house from top to bottom or risk the colony returning next year.
If you’d like to do your part to encourage bat colonies around your house, you can provide them with a bat house in place of the comfort of your home.
To say I was freaking out at this point about our new furry houseguests was a bit of an understatement.
As our two bats ascended, we listened to them chirp and move around. And we began to assume (worry) we had more than two bats—an easy assumption based on what we were reading and based on what we were hearing.
We began discussing how our house and chimney were probably built and asking questions. Could the bats actually be inside the chimney? Were they between the two floors? Were they actually in the attic, but two had fallen down into the walls?
We had so many questions and no real way of answering them.
Needless to say, we left the netting up and slept extremely poorly that night.
The next day, Mike searched the attic for any sign of guano or bats and found nothing. We didn’t think they were in the attic.
We walked around the outside of the house, and we thought we found where they might be getting in—a small gap in the flashing around our chimney.
We were still naïvely hopeful that we only had a couple of bats who had gotten lost and would find their way back out of our house, and not by entering the living space. Because we had heard horror stories about how expensive it is to get rid of a colony of bats that had decided your house was now their house, we were holding onto the hope that we could handle the issue on our own.
However, that unrealistic optimism was fading. Especially when we spotted the guano on the ground below the spot where we thought they were entering and exiting our house. Not a lot, but enough to increase anxiety.
Deflated, we decided on the next step. While the bats slept on that Wednesday, we scheduled cocktails with our neighbors for later that night so that we could watch the bats exit and count. (I’m sure many of you would agree, cocktails were in order for this occasion.)
Anyone been to Austin to witness the bats fly out from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge at dusk? At the risk of sounding dramatic, that was exactly what I was picturing as the day went on.
That night around 8:30—a little early, but we didn’t want to miss them—we poured a couple of fingers of bourbon and, instead of watching the inside of the house, we headed outside with our folding chairs as if we were preparing for a competitive sporting event. We did, however, leave the bright lights on over the fireplace and loud music playing to discourage the bats from descending along the brick of the fireplace on the inside.
Our neighbors joined us, each with their own fresh cocktail. We traded nervous looks and toasted to another neighborhood adventure. These particular neighbors have been our friends for twenty years, so it was fun to share this event with them.
Shortly after nine, my husband said, “Did you hear that?”
I closed my eyes and took a big sip of bourbon after hearing a small clicking sound, followed by faint chirping. “Yes.”
“They’re waking up,” he said with a little excitement in his voice.
Another ten to fifteen minutes passed by with little noises here and there. Then around 9:15 to 9:20, as the last bit of sun dropped below the horizon, the first bat exited the house, but not exactly from where we were expecting. They exited from a spot just under a soffit next to the chimney.
And we began our count.
There was a pause around 7, and I felt a bit of relief. Seven’s not bad. We could deal with 7.
Then another. And another.
There was another big pause when we reached 28.
TWENTY-EIGHT!!
It was also at this time that it became too dark to really see the bats exiting the house.
I will note here that my research told me that not all bats leave the roost every night or at the same time of night as the others. Also, remember, the babies probably aren’t flying yet. So it’s probably safe to double the number we counted.
If you’re keeping score, that that would put us at FIFTY-SIX!
It was time to call the pros.
In case you’re starting to think we were experiencing a bit of bad luck, which was how I felt at the time (not going to lie), let me just say:
I considered myself very lucky to have come downstairs to find the first bat. That enabled us to put up the net around our fireplace, to prevents bats from flying wild inside our house.
We were also lucky to have Steve next door who brought us that net and gave us really great advice that first night.
Steve also gave us the number of the professionals who we would be calling now that we knew we had a bigger bat problem.
The next day—Thursday—we did two things:
We called the professionals, who confirmed that they couldn’t relocate the roost until later this summer. But for a nominal fee, they would do a complete inspection of our home to alert us to any area where critters of any sort might be getting in. They could seal up everything, except where the bats were roosting. Eventually, they could relocate the bats and seal of their point of entry to discourage them from returning next spring/summer.
We purchased some clear silicone caulk, and we sealed up the gap between the crown molding and the brick around the chimney. Like, duh!!! Why didn’t we do that sooner? Once this was complete, we were ready for whatever might happy Thursday night. Or so we thought…
Around 8:00 pm, Mike and I finished up dinner. Our neighbors were planning to join us around 9:00 pm for #batwatch2022. We were enjoying a little television as we waited when we heard the first scratching noises followed by chirping.
The sounds were a bit different on Thursday. In hindsight, I think I understand why the noises were different, but at the time, they just seemed more prevalent? Louder? Scarier? More active, maybe?
As we listened to the sounds of the bats just above the fireplace molding, my heart rate picked up speed. The anxiety I felt in my chest was indescribable.
And then we heard a kerplunk—the sound of something hitting metal. That metal was the flue of the fireplace—the thin metal between the chimney and the inside of our house. It sounded like bats—the babies, maybe—had fallen on top of this thin metal inside the actual chimney.
We had sealed up the flue of our fireplace when we purchased the ventless gas logs many years ago, but how well did we seal this up? Remember, bats can fit through a hole the size of your pinky finger.
This is when we started to freak out a bit. More than a couple of bats were looking for a way in instead of a way out. At least that was what it sounded like.
Mike came up with the brilliant idea to tape cardboard around the fireplace opening. If they did get in, they weren’t coming inside the house, damnit!
As luck would have it, we had a cardboard box big enough for this craft project. So Mike quickly measured, and started to cut.
And the bat chatter and movement grew noisier. It was quickly becoming a scene out of the Walking Dead. I was convinced they were coming in. And I was yelling at Mike, “Cut faster!”
By 9:15, we had the cardboard taped to the entrance of the fireplace. I was completely stressed out. I was too stressed out to even have a cocktail for this episode of #batwatch2022. But we did meet our neighbors out between our two houses. Mike and I were a little late to the party due to our small craft project, but they were already watching.
Very shortly after we arrived, the bats began to leave their roost to feed. But on this night, we only counted 23 before they stopped or it became too dark to see.
Back inside, the bats were extremely active. I could hear them in the walls, just above the molding, and what seemed just above the flue of the fireplace. But none were getting inside the house. Our sealing up of the house appeared to be holding.
My main thoughts on that Thursday night were:
Are we seriously going to have to listen to these bats in our walls and chimney for the next two months?
What damage are they doing to our house? (In case you’re wondering, as I was, bats don’t chew through things. They wouldn’t be chewing through drywall or the silicone we used to seal up the molding. They aren’t destructive like that, thank goodness. Had we sealed up their exit, they would simply die inside the walls, which is why we had no intention of doing this. As anxious as I was, I had no desire to harm these animals. But we also didn’t want our home harmed.)
On Friday, after an active night of bats, I told myself over and over how beneficial bats are to our environment. While our government isn’t making any huge efforts to save the environment, I could do my part and let these bats be. I was mentally preparing for a long summer of bats.
“Bats play an essential role in pest control, pollinating plants and dispersing seeds. Recent studies estimate that bats eat enough pests to save more than $1 billion per year in crop damage and pesticide costs in the United States corn industry alone.” —US Fish and Wildlife Service
And remember: A single bat can eat up to 3,000 insects in a single night. 50 or so bats is better than an electronic bug zapper, I think.
And then, that night—Friday night—NOTHING.
No sounds.
Nothing in our walls.
Nothing above the molding.
And when we went to watch the bats exit a little after 9:15 p.m., nothing.
To say this was strange was an understatement. Bats don’t just pick up and leave after finding their roosting home for the summer. And they tend to come back to the same spot year after year.
We were 100% stupefied. Confused. Dumbfounded. It made absolutely no sense to us after everything we’d read and after everything we’d heard from the professionals.
The only theory we could come up with was that the bats liked the flow of air they got between their entry/exit point and the exit point into our house. And when we sealed up the inside of our house, the change of airflow confused and startled them.
When we texted the professional and told him of our theory, he offered, “It is unusual for a colony of bats to move out like that, but not completely unheard of.”
And there you go. A story that began and was filled with drama, mystery, and a touch of fear, ended abruptly with much ado about nothing.
And that, as they say, is that.
I’m dying to know what you think? Do you think my theory of why they left is sound? What are your thoughts on bat houses? We’re actually considering adding one to our property. Have you ever faced a bat issue? I would love to hear your stories in the comments.
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How strange!! Do you think they died in the chimney, hearing the kerplunk?? I’m not so sure I would be convinced they were completely gone. Have you been able to seal up the point of entry?