Bat #4

I am still in considerable pain from my fall, so last night I went to bed early, before 10. I was in bed but awake for a long time, listening to this sound outside, it sounded like a horse eating grass... some animal must be out there making that noise, but what is it? Deer? Or could it be someone's AC? If so it is on its last legs. It's remarkable how quiet it is in Dexter at night, you can pick out all kinds of sounds. Anyways, the noise was definitely outside, no sounds came from inside the bedroom. And suddenly Steve called up to me that a bat was in the office. He opened the door wall and it eventually went out, like most of them do. No close encounters with light fixtures this time, and it never came upstairs. That was the fourth one this summer.

So how on earth did a bat get downstairs, without me hearing it fly through the room I was in and listening so hard in? We know they are in the attic, but I cannot think of any way to get from the attic to the downstairs, without passing through the master bedroom.

I called earlier in the week and made an appointment for the animal control company. They will be here today. It will be interesting to see what they say.

Critter Control

The critter control guy was here this afternoon. He found two places where bats are getting into our attic.

Bats are a beneficial animal to have; they eat a lot of mosquitoes. You don't want to kill them, and you especially don't want to kill them in your attic and leave a bunch of dead ones up there. So they exclude them by putting one way devices on the entries, so that bats can get out and can't get back in. They leave the devices on for ten days to give all the bats time to get out. Then they seal the entrances.

There are seasons when you can't legally exclude them. You have to wait for the young to get big enough to leave the nest. That date is usually August 15 but it arrived early this year due to the weather. Whoever manages these dates started allowing bat exclusion a week ago, and this company had 80 bat exclusion jobs lined up already. But they have gotten mostly caught up, so he can have a crew exclude our bats on Sunday or Monday depending on weather.

He says that bat activity is peaking at this season because when the young leave the nest, suddenly there are just a lot more bats around.

He can't tell us how they get from the attic to the interior of the house. Four of them coming in, is not enough to leave the markings he sees on the busier entrances. But if they aren't in the attic, they should stop coming into the living space.