Bats in Walls

How to Remove Bats from Your Walls

Bats usually enter a home searching for a safe place to give birth and raise their young. The space behind your wall provides an ideal location for bats to roost. The ideal conditions for a bat roost are dark, secluded, and humid.

How Do Bats Get Inside the Walls?

Bats find entry points around the roof. They can squeeze through a gap as small as 3/8ths of an inch, about the size of a dime. These gaps can be found at soffits, attic vents, gable vents, ridge vents, fascia boards, window sills, and eaves. Once the bats are inside the attic, they enter wall cavities.

Signs of Bats in Walls

The most common signs of bats behind the walls are noises. You might hear chirps, scratching noises, or rustling.

Another common sign is a strong odor of ammonia. Bats defecate where they roost so bat droppings will pile up inside the wall. This can also lead to stains seeping through your walls.

Problems with Bats in Walls

Bat infestations aren’t a direct threat to people. Bats won’t fly into your hair and rarely fly into the living space. But you should not ignore them! A colony of bats can return to the same roost year after year.

Bat noises can disrupt your peace of mind, but guano can cause problems to your home and your health. Bat droppings can destroy the wall. The acidity will eat away at the wall. The feces can impact your health and carry disease. Histoplasmosis is a respiratory condition from a fungus that grows in guano.

Dead Bat in the Wall

A bat in the walls may become stuck. This is especially common for young bats, who fly after three months. If left alone, trapped bats often starve and die in wall voids, attracting rodents, cockroaches, and other pests with the smell of decay.

Maternity Colonies and Juvenile Bats in Wall Voids

In Minnesota, bats tend to establish maternity colonies in late spring. Female bats give birth, and juveniles are totally dependent on their mothers. They cannot fly until about three months after birth. It is not safe or humane to install bat removal exclusions in maternity colonies until the young are old enough to fly on their own. Depending on the weather, maternity colony exclusion can begin in August.

How to Get Bats Out of the Walls

The only consistently successful bat removal method is permanent physical exclusions. Attempting to seal entrances without removing all bats first can also push the pests into other areas of the home. Bats without an exit route are more likely to find their way into living spaces, looking for a way out.

Bats in Wall Removal

A one-way bat door allows bats to exit your home but not re-enter. Since each bat removal is unique, our specialist will use or create a bat door specifically for your home. At Wildlife Management Services, our bat removal service starts with a full inspection of the entire home to identify any possible entry points.

Once the bat door is installed, all other bat entry points will be sealed, allowing bats to exit only through the one-way door. The technician will check on the door weekly until they don’t see any further evidence of bats in the home. At that point, they will remove the door and seal the final entry point, leaving your home bat-free.

What Not to Do During Bat Removal

We do not recommend DIY bat control because of the threats to bat populations and specific laws and regulations. If you choose to try and remove the bats yourself, here are some recommendations on what not to do.

• Do not poison bats! Four of the seven bat species in Minnesota are listed as threatened or of special concern. Penalties for killing an endangered species could be up to $25,000.
• Use inappropriate methods for exclusion. It can increase the chances for humane contact.
• Do not hold a bat with your bare hands. Bats are covered in their feces and are the leading rabies vector in the United States.
• Do not try deterrents or repellents. No products on the market have any proof they effectively work at getting a bat out of your house.

Wildlife Management of Minneapolis Service Area

Minneapolis, St. Paul, Maple Grove, Champlin, Brooklyn Park, Coon Rapids, Apple Valley, Eagan, St. Louis Park, Stillwater, Woodbury, Mound, Eden Prairie, Edina, Minnetonka, White Bear Lake, Plymouth, Wayzata, Burnsville, and Their Surrounding Areas

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