Bats in the Belfrey

I wish I had pictures to share.  I really, really do.  Unfortunately, as this story unrolled, I ended up dropping the camera, and running away screaming.  Since the husband had the hose on and there were bats everywhere - well... at least the camera wasn't toast, but I also didn't want to get any closer.

We live in a brick rancher.  Do you know those roof vents over the ends of the house?  We have three of them.  One over the carport, and two over the "T" at the other end of the house.

The vents are screened on the inside to keep out birds and other beasties.

I park on the pad next to the carport.

This time last week, as I was getting out of the car, I looked down at the ground and saw lots of tiny little black things.  They looked like hamster pellets, in a way.  There were tons of these things.  I ended up backing up my car so that I wouldn't walk through it and track stuff through the house.

Bravely, I looked up into the vent and saw lots and lots of little black things.

Bats.  The stuff on the ground (and all over the siding) was bat guano.  Not a good thing.

When husband got home, I mentioned it to him.  He got the ladder out, got close enough to look inside and said one word "bats".  He climbed up into the attic to verify that there were no bats inside of the attic.

After he changed clothes, he went to Home Depot and picked up some fiberglass netting.

He came home, and began spraying water from the garden hose on the parking pad and siding, attempting to get the guano off.

The bats really didn't like that.  They left.  Over 2 dozen of them flew out, all over everywhere.

Husband then decided that he would spray up into the vent in order to get any other bats out of the vents.  A couple dozen more flew out.

Yeah, by this point, I was long gone.  I actually took off once the bats started flying out.

Once he was certain no more bats were coming out, he climbed up onto the ladder, and measured the vent.  He cut the fiberglass netting to fit over the vents.  He used the staple gun to attach the netting on two sides.  He has left the bottom open - so that it's an exclusion net.  Just in case if any more bats were hanging out in there, they can get out, but not get back in.

Last night, he climbed back up the ladder with a flashlight to verify that all of the bats were gone.

He then stapled the bottom of the netting across the bottom of the vent.

We still have another vent that is loaded with bats.  Absolutely full. 

We have plans to put up a couple of bat houses on the property, before we work to get them out, so that they can have a new home to go roost in.

But where do these houses go?  They like to be up high.  We have an elm tree that's high, but that tree is sick and will have to come down within the next five years - so we don't want to put it there.  And we really don't want them roosting inside of the house or the attic.  With the amount of bats we have in this particular vent, if any more move in, it is possible that they could pop the screen out and take up residence in our attic.  And that would be a bad thing.

Now, if we could just get the telephone company to come in and install a couple of poles for us in the back yard, I would know exactly where to put the houses!