Yikes

[jul2873]

So, over the last three weeks, on my nightly strolls around the house, I've seen, on three different nights, small black flying creatures cruising overhead. Small birds? Large insects? No, bats! Yikes! We have a bat guy coming on Wednesday to investigate the problem but we live in an old house with a slate roof, and it turns out that is not good for keep out bats.

Anyone with experience? Advice? I've never liked much having to get up in the middle of the night but now I like it even less. Very creepy to be walking around under flying bats.

[Rustsmith]

Inside the house - NO! But I realized the other night when I was outside walking along our local riverwalk that the black things swooping down along the water were not the swallows that I see during the daytime. It was bats and there were a lot of them. Fortunately they are just using the river as a source of water and also something that attracts flying insects. So in my case, I welcome having flying around because they help keep our summer mosquito population in check.

[Polar Bear]

In my last home we quite literally had 'bats in the belfry (attic)'

At dusk we'd see them swoop as they hunted for insects and saw that they'd go up under our barge boards edging the slate roof. In my naivity I thought they were just having a wee rest. Yeah right !!

Called the Council to come check and the environmental guy got up into the attic. At the gable end wall the bats were nested on the outside of the house under the barge boards. Even though there was access for them to get into the loft they hadn't troubled themselves, probably because there was nothing to attract them, no food.

Bottom line was that they actually do no harm and indeed it would have been an offence for us to try and get rid of them. Come September/October they moved on and came back to visit the following year. I guess, in their absence, we could have sealed up access to under the barge boards but they didn't bother us enough.

[ViewsAskew]

I had one in my house when I lived in the country. I called a rescue company and a woman came out and removed it to the outside. That doesn't help you at all, though!

[sleepdancer2]

One year bats started coming in and we found out a plate covering some sort of vent in the basement to the outside had come off. Unfortunately their entry to my living quarters was where a piece of floorboard was missing - under my bed. In the wee morning hours I heard flapping and scuffling under my bed - my cats had found the intruder. They played cat-and-bat all through the kitchen - it looked like a crime scene. I grabbed the garbage can and trapped it and the next day released it, and using precautions washed down the walls and floor. I was a bit concerned because our area was known to be a hot spot for rabid bats. In the end, there were no further problems. I was not allowed by law to put a screen over my chimney until it was past the nesting season, as they are protected by law. Any time in the past I'd just thrown a sheet over them or opened the door and shooed them out. Daggone cats.+ I'm a bit of a country girl so they don't freak me out too bad.

[Yankiwi]

When I was a teenager a bat came into my bedroom at night. My brave mother came upstairs with a broom and a shower cap on her hair and somehow got it to go back outside. I'm sure she wasn't really feeling brave, but just doing what mothers need to do.

[jul2873]

Well, the bat guy (batman!) came and went through our house with a fine tooth comb. He couldn't find any evidence of a nest of the bats, but he did find an opening in our cellar where they were probably getting in. He said it was probably young bats just learning to fly who flew in the house instead of out doors where their insects are. And then they just flew back out. So we're sealing up that hole, and I'm starting to relax again on my nightly strolls.