When You Find Or Suspect You Have Bats Where They Shouldn't Be

Summer in the Tucson, Green Valley, Oro Valley, Catalina, Saddlebrooke Ranch, Picture Rocks, and other areas of the Sonoran Desert is a time when bats by the 10s of thousands help reduce the insect population and keep homeowners, visitors, and pets, pretty much protected from mosquitoes.  We are blessed to have over 2 dozen species of bats that help us in the summer.

In the evening, if you have the time to park and watch the area around major bridges-over-washes, you will see thousands of bats leave on their evening hunt.  If you are sitting on your patio or in your courtyard at dusk, you may also see a few or a group of bats suddenly drop from rooftop, sofit, or patio overhang hideaways and fly off to feed for the night.

Bats in and of themselves, avoid contact with people, pets, and major objects, using sound to navigate and find their food. (Using a technique called echolocation-much like ultrasound).  Unless a bat encounters netting, is sick, gets lost by inadvertently entering an open garage door, or is one of the species that feeds on grasshoppers, scorpions, centipedes, and crickets on the ground and gets stranded, one rarely sees a single bat isolated and/or away from a common roosting area.

Each summer, 1^st Response Wildlife receives calls about a single bat in a business, a home, or from a homeowner that has discovered significant amounts of droppings (guano) beneath a tiled roof, 

Here are some examples of droppings you might see

Viga joints  (Heavy round timbers/beams that protrude through exterior walls of Santé Fe style homes), or the joints of a wall and exterior ceiling become convenient roosting locations around busiensses and homes. 

Here is an example of an entry point bats may use.

One of the reasons for calls is that it is pretty common knowledge that bats carry disease-of primary concern, rabies.  Since only a licensed Animal Trapper, a representative of Animal Control, or the Arizona Game and Fish Department should deal with bats, it is extremely important that a homeowner or business owner, have bats dealt with professionally.

When you see an isolated bat, as seen below, in your home/business or, as you see here, a bat hanging outside of a grocery on an overhang, you should consider giving Josh, at 1st Response Wildlife, a call.

1^st Response Wildlife has years of experience helping homeowners and businesses deal with bats.  In many cases, after an evaluation of the situation is completed, education on what the options are to deal with a bat issue is all that is needed.  If, however, there is a lone bat in a business or home, or if a homeowner has a significant guano problem, then 1^st Response Wildlife has equipment, materials, and techniques that can help remove a single bat and/or encourage a family of bats to find another place to call home.

Here is a single bat in a business that found its way into the business overnight and, the employees found it the next morning hanging from the ceiling.

 If you encounter a bat in your home, business, or see a bat on the ground in the day time; please remember it is best not to touch it!  Since bats do carry disease, primary among them, rabies, make sure you get your pets vaccinated regularly.  Rabies can be spread by saliva, not just from a bite.  Remember, many of the bats we have here in the summer have extremely small mouths and may not be able to actually open their mouth wide enough to bite a medium or larger animal.  However, if that same animal finds a sick bat and plays with it, the saliva from the pet’s mouth can mix with that of the bat and, rabies can be transmitted.

Please call 1^st Response Wildlife if you have bats that you find in your home or business, guano under eaves or overhanging roof tiles or Viga.

Thanks for considering 1st Response Wildlife 

Josh's Cell (24/7 Hours): 520-345-3814

Josh Waling is a humane Licensed Animal Trapper who catches and releases wildlife, removing animals including bobcats (lince), snakes, rattlesnakes (serpiente de cascabel), raccoons (mapache), pack rats, gila monsters (monstruos de gila), rabbits (canejo), owls, bats, hawks, ducks, squirrels (ardilla), peacocks, coatimundi (gato solo), skunks (mofeta), exotics, and domestic cats and dogs. He delivers service that is professional and fast and he is available 24/7.  Give him a call the next time you hear unusual noises in the attic or crawl spaces in your home or if you see wildlife eating your vegetation, creating nests, and raising their young too close to your pets or children or have an exotic sighting in your neighborhood.