3 Signs that you have Bats in your House

Are there Bats in my Attic?

In today’s modern world, there is an increasing zeal and desire for wanting to take care of the Earth and all that is in it, this can include anything from shifting to more renewable energy sources, using less pesticides when growing food, using more reclaimed and environmentally friendly building materials to reduce deforestation, and many more steps humans are taking to care for this wonderful planet we have been put on. The world we live in today is a wonderful place, full of life and life in such variety it is almost hard to comprehend at times, if you have ever traveled to different parts of America or to different parts of the world, you know exactly what we are talking about, Earth is a pretty cool place and we should desire to keep it that way. You may be asking yourself if we have made a mistake in titling this article, how does caring for the environment have anything to do with bats in a person’s home. Let me reassure you that we have not made a mistake and that understand animals and the role that they play in the world is a key part of learning and working in the wildlife removal industry.
Bats play are very important role in the environment, especially in the Melbourne Florida and central Florida areas, if we cannot understand what role the play and how important they actually are, we are doing them a disservice when we exclude them from a person’s home. Bats are much more common in Florida than you might think, they are nocturnal so you may not see them, but trust us when we say that they are everywhere and they are extremely hard working at what they do, which is devour mosquitoes on a nightly basis. Bats eat approximately their own bodyweight in mosquitoes every single night, that’s right, every single night when they feed. If you can imagine trying to eat your bodyweight in anything, you probably quickly understand that we are meant to do that, but fortunately they are. They provide one of the greatest services for people in the Melbourne, Palm Bay, Viera, and central Florida areas by massively controlling the mosquito population. Without bats and a few other animals, mosquitoes would quickly dominate this area through sheer numbers, making this one of the least desirable places to live on the planet. Imagine walking outside and being swarmed by 100x the amount of mosquitoes that currently exist in Florida, doesn’t sound like too much fun. Next time you are outside and get a couple bites during a warm summer evening, just remember how bad it could be if we didn’t have those wonderful hunters working for us on a nightly basis, and this is why we love bats.
Now that we understand the environmental utility of bats and the fact that we love having bats in and around our communities, let’s take the rose colored glasses off for a second and look at things from a more “human” viewpoint. We will just say it plain and clear, bats are dirty little animals that although have their place, can still be a nuisance to homeowners, and can even cause health risks for humans living in close proximity to them. Like any animal in Brevard County, bats need a place to stay; they need shelter during the day and protection from the elements. Unfortunately for us, our homes provide them with a place that meets all of their needs and much more which is why we want to educate people on how to spot bats living in your home and how to properly get rid of them without harming them or upsetting the delicate environmental balance that they help keep. In the next several sections, we will explore some common signs that you as a homeowner can look for on and in your home to help better understand if you are dealing with a bat related wildlife issue, and hopefully point in the right direction. Here are some signs that you have bats living in your home.

Noises coming from the Attic and Soffit Areas

The first and easiest way to tell if you are dealing with bats living in your home is to listen for them. They are living animals and they make a fair amount of noise, even during the day when they are inactive, they still often make noise in order to communicate with each other. The noises that they make you have probably actually heard at some point if you have ever seen them flying around at night feeding. Bats have incredibly poor eyesight and use echolocation as a means of navigation instead of traditional eyesight. This serves them very well and they are incredibly skilled flyers at night, they are able to catch mosquitoes in mid-flight in pitch dark and that skill should speak for itself. 

The fact that they use echolocation to navigate also has an effect of what type of noises they produce. Whether at night or during the day, whether hunting or communicating with each other, they use a high pitched “squeak” or “chirp” type of noise in order to see and to talk with one another. This “squeaking” is very high pitched but is still discernable to the human ear, so if you are nearby bats, you will most likely be able to pick up on these noises. Bats love to live in colonies, sometimes small, sometimes large, but they are definitely pack animals and love social interaction. This often results in several bats making noises simultaneously which only help us pick up on the noises. As mentioned in the introduction, our homes offer bats a wonderful place to nest and hang out…no pun intended, during the daytime. They either live inside the soffit areas or inside the attic space which connects to the soffit areas on a house; these areas provide ample shelter and airflow to keep them cool during those hot summer days. If you have a suspicion that you may be dealing with bats, we always suggest calling a professional wildlife removal company to come a perform an inspection, but you also have the ability to walk around your home and listen, either during the day or night for high pitched chirps coming from the soffits, you can even climb into the attic space and listen to see if you hear any noises coming from any part of the attic space. Again, we always stress that you must be careful when doing this and if bats are heard, please immediately call a professional to remove them humanely, so they can continue to eat mosquitoes every night, which is what we want.

Droppings and Oil Marks on the Roof and the Soffits

As mentioned in the above section, bats love to nest in the soffits of our homes and then gain entry into the attic spaces through the soffits. They do not enjoy being close to the ground and will naturally look for high places of entry to nest in, whether it is the trees, a bat house, or your home, they enjoy being elevated in their shelters, you will never find them nesting in a crawl space below a home and this is not their nature. But if we are unable to hear any noises, how else can we tell if there are bats living in the soffits? Well thankfully for us, bats are quite oily animals and they also produce a large amount of guano which is the term for their droppings. Most entry points on a home are not going to be very large, in fact, they can often be as small as the size of a quarter and that is all the room the bats need to squeeze into their new home above your head. This “squeezing in” as well as the constant flapping of their wings will almost always leave some sort of residue or oil/rub marks on the aluminum or vinyl soffit which is what most are made of. The most visible sign of entry are darkened spots of soffit around areas called roof returns which are the most common entry points for bats. If you have a white, or neutral colored soffit, you will often see what looks like brownish splotches that only show up in one or two areas, this is a clear sign that a bat or bats are consistently coming in and out of that area, leaving a buildup of natural body oils over time. Now upon entry, the bats very much enjoy the soffits due to airflow, as soffits commonly have pin holes punched in them to allow for attic ventilation. Like we said, bats produce a large amount of guano daily which tends to look like small black pellets. Over time after significant build up from a colony, these droppings will start to make their way through the soffit ventilation holes. This will become visible on the roof and will begin to pile up and may even begin to cause a strong odor if you are close or if the wind is in the right direction. Again, we must constantly stress that if you see any visible oil/rub marks, or begin to see guano dropping from the soffit and on to the roof, it is most certainly time to call a professional, as bat guano is harmful to breath in or be around, creating a health hazard. It is just better to leave this one to people who are trained and equipped.