By Susan Pierson
Link to original bat article: All About Bats | Bucks County Foodshed Alliance
Eastern red bat
In early July, I started to find young bats in my house, usually huddled up on the kitchen floor. I realized that once again bats had made their home under a section of the roof. In June, I had crawled up into that space to clean out the remnants of guano from when the bats lived there years ago and put up exclusions outside that allowed the bats to exit but not re-enter. I swept and vacuumed up a lot of guano, which surprised me since I thought I had gotten most of it before. Unfortunately, I hadn’t put back the plywood ceiling of the small closet that gave me access to the area under the roof. This must have been where the juvenile bats were getting out of the closet as they were venturing out into the world for the first time.
I took the first bat to the Aark Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center (531 Upper Stump Rd, Chalfont, PA 18914). After examining the bat, Leah Stallings, the director, said he was nice and plump and did not need their care. She told me that I should try to return it to its mother if I could.
Big brown bats
I asked them how I could humanly remove the rest of the bats from my roof. Leah called the Pennsylvania Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation and the director there referred me to Damon Vucovich (Bat Removal Specialist, 267-383-8911) who humanely removes bats after the babies have been raised. He came to my house that day, found where the bats were getting into the house and put the young bat close to the entry where he crawled in to find its mother. For the next bat I found, I was able to do this myself, even though it involved climbing on the roof.
Damon told me that the mothers and their single young form a tight bond and like many mammals, she can differentiate her baby’s cry from the other baby bats’. And… bats form tight family bonds as well. When a mother bat goes out to feed at night, her sister will babysit her youngster!
Fall is the time to install any exclusions to keep the bats out of your house. You can read more about this on this page of Pennsylvania Bat Conservation: https://pabatrehab.org/bat-removal/ Exclusions must be done soon before the bats go into hibernation. You can do some internet research to see if you want to do it yourself or use one of the professionals above.
A bat house, wikipedia
This is also a good time to put up a bathouse; plans are on the PA Bat Conservation website as well.
When doing fall clean up in your gardens, it is best to leave as much leaf litter as you can under the trees because not only do our native insects overwinter there but the eastern red bat does as well. So please, leave the litter alone!
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