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Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Alabaster, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today we wanted to talk about bats, it’s getting really close to Halloween. So just wanted to talk about benefit of bats. Not such a benefit of bats. The Good, the Bad, all that a bat. So Travis, elaborate for me,
Travis McGowin
I may have a very unpopular opinion about bats, to be really honest with you. Because I think they’re pretty cool. Well, I think that creatures really cool. I mean, they’re kind of creepy looking. You know, I remember as a kid, we used to go out in our yard at night, just you know, right before dark, and you would look up and you’d see the bats flying around. But what a lot of people don’t, you know, think about a realize is that bats are a very beneficial creature, you know, to the outdoor ecosystem, you know, where you live where the bats reside, mainly because they are one of the best consumers of insects, and they help keep insect populations down. So bats are, you know, are very good thing to have around. However, you know, of course, there’s, there’s a drawback to them, you just don’t want them inside your property that you don’t want them inside your attic. You don’t want them inside, you know, your barn or outbuildings or wherever they may decide to take up residence. So Michael, what are some things that people typically first start to notice? That may clue them into the possibility that they have a bat problem.
Michael Wienecke
So the first one would be seeing the bats, you know, we get a call saying they see bats flying in and out of their house. Or the the best indicator for us is always going to be the guano. So the bat droppings. We’ll typically get to a property, it’ll be all over the side of the siding of the house or the window ledge or the driveway. And that is 100% identification that you have bats. Bat droppings are interesting. The guano is interesting because it it has little flakes of bugs in it. So you can actually see it kind of with a light it kind of has a little sheen shine to almost like
Travis McGowin
I’ve still the ones that I’ve seen almost looked like, like the poop has glitter in it.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, like like it’s got glitter in it. So it looks like kinda like a distorted mouse droppings. So a lot of people think that they have mice running around their house, and they’re just just pooping everywhere. Because bats poop a lot. Because if you have a colony of upwards, you know, 500 to 1000. That’s a lot of droppings. So it’s always funny, because they’re like, oh, I have mice around my house, and they’re everywhere. And no, it’s bats. So,
Travis McGowin
Yeah, you know, it reminds me of a customer that I had the same problem. So this customer has a two story house. And they have a big gable vent on the side of the house. And, you know, the customer had never addressed this problem to me, I was actually just on site at their house just to do a quarterly pest control service. Just a standard service. And like you said, I looked down and I’m like, There’s poop everywhere. And you know, of course, you look up just like directly below this, this Gable vent. And then, you know, with a gloved hand, picked it up and looked at it as like, you know, this is bat poop like it does. But, you know, I mean, how typical? Do you see that as far as you know, in an attic, and in that kind of area? Is that kind of like the most common area that you see infested?
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so like you you’d stated, you know, they’re in barns, they’re in houses. I mean, their typical place is going to be caves, you know, dark areas in natural nature. But the best the second best place for them is going to be an attic. A barn, you know, perfect, perfect example, this image right here. You’ve got a gable vent, that’s wooden slat it’s wide open. And a back of fit to that no problem. Doesn’t take long. A lot of times we’ll see. You know, when we’re doing bat jobs, we’ll see the, I call it you know, basically, bat screen the roofer roofer, the contractor will put something called a bat screen and it’s just just a little bit of mesh over the inside. And the problem is, is that they can roost right between the screen and the gable vent. And then once they hang out there, they’re pooping, that poop is going to go right onto that screen right into the attic. And we definitely don’t want that the droppings in there because they can cause a lot of issues. One of the biggest thing is the it’s called histo plasmosis. And it’s a Pretty bad lung infection, so you have to be very careful when cleaning up bat droppings. And like we just stated they poop a lot. When you’ve got 500 to 1000 There are a lot of droppings I have seen just mountains of droppings inside of an attic. So definitely something to be careful you want to wear a respirator, definitely a respirator, you’re not going to want any kind of a dust mask or an n95 is just not going to cut it, you’re going to need that respirator.
Travis McGowin
Yeah, and you know, not even just dark places like caves and attics and things like that out buildings and whatnot. I’ve actually even seen and heard of some bats. Case in point. Locally, we have a baseball park that has a two story building and a concession stand. But over that first story, there’s an awning that wraps all the way around the building. And you know, of course with the baseball park, they display their banners and you know, who won what championship? Or, you know, who was who won state or what have you. And I’ve actually seen some bats try to kind of take up residence even against the building behind those, those banners on the side of the building. So I mean, they don’t always get it right. They don’t always get it right. But from a pest control perspective, let’s just say that, you know, take Case in point, take this picture, you come up to this house, you see this Gable vent, there’s droppings everywhere, you know, below the gable vent on the ground or carport or wherever driveway. What’s the process, you know, kind of go through for the customer, you know what it is that we at Peskies do to get rid of the bats because you know, you can’t just go in and just kill them. You know, a lot of customers just kill them just kill it. Well, you you can’t. So kind of go through what it is that we do to mitigate this problem for the customer in a humane and legal way.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, of course, like like you said, bats are protected. And of course they are beneficial. I mean, they they’re going to completely knock down the mosquito population, moth population, a lot of flying insects, and they are pollinators. I know a lot of people are very concerned with honeybees. They’re there multiple other pollinators besides honeybees. And bats are one of them. They actually, when they when they carry fruit seeds, they drop that and that can that continues that that pollination. So here at Peskies Pest Control, we’re gonna do a full inspection. Once we find either the droppings in the driveway or on the side of the house and we do find that you do have bats we’re gonna get in the attic, find out how big the colony is, if it’s if it’s a huge problem, if it’s a small problem, and then we’re going to seal up all of the home except for where they’re actually getting into or a note they’re gaining entry. So we’re gonna go throughout the house, look for any cracks crevices around the house that they could be getting into, leave that other entryway open, we’re going to seal up and leave a small hole in order to for those bats to be able to leave. So once the bats can leave, it’s a special it’s called a bat valve. So or sometimes you have to use a screen it just depends on the situation. But with the with the bat valve, let’s say they’re going to flap they’re going to crawl through that bat valve, they’re going to leave and then once they leave, they cannot enter back in that bat valve. Bats have to land on something and crawl up into a crack or crevice they can’t fly. So the bat valve hangs off the house and just in just the space so they can’t fly land in the bat valve and crawl back to the hole it’s not possible for them. After about a week or two we inspect the house again making sure you know we’re not seeing any more signs of bats no love bats are left inside of the house. And then we fully close up that that one area and then you will be bat free. And then you have the option of us coming in and disinfecting cleaning out the bat droppings. And that’s that’s pretty much it.
Travis McGowin
Yeah, definitely recommend getting rid of the problem before it gets worse before the population gets larger before their mounds of waste get larger and larger to just a health hazard that you don’t want. Definitely a very beneficial creature. But you just don’t want to live in inside areas of your house or your outbuildings are they definitely belong in nature. They have their place, they have their own job and they do a great job at it. However you just don’t want to live in in your home.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, and I’ll say to that, you know, another another scary thing about bats is they do they can carry rabies. So that’s a pretty big, big problem around here. I actually just found out last week that they’re carrying they’re dropping off rabies blocks in in Hoover, Birmingham. I don’t know if they’re doing that in Montgomery or not but found three in my yard that my dog is actually chewing on out of helicopters, they’re just dropping it because we have such a bad rabies issue right now with raccoons and all that and I’ll say too, and just I know we’ve preached this in our in our other podcast and vlogs and stuff like that. So sealing up your house is so important and if you just if you do it beforehand, you know a little bit of you know mesh around the gable vent on the outside is going to stop that that problem, it’s going to stop that squirrel problem. A raccoon, you know, any anything. It’s going to save you a lot of time and a lot of money with something that’s very quick and easy to do.
