That's Not a Halloween Decoration, That's a Real Bat in Your House!

There is no denying that bats are a favorite Halloween decoration. With their ability to stealthily fly through the night, and of course the vampire bats panache for blood, bats are known to cause fear in people both young and old. Bats have a pretty bad reputation, but they are an important part of our eco-system. Just one little brown bat can easily catch 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in an hour. Bats may be incredibly helpful outside but when they roost in places they don’t belong, they can cause serious trouble.
There are two major reasons that bats in your house can be a problem: their bite and their excrement. There are no vampire bats living in the wild in New Jersey. Bats in our area mainly eat insects, but if there is a bat in your home there is the potential for that bat to bite. A small percentage of bats are infected with rabies (bats are one of the four species of animals in New Jersey that are classified as a rabies vector species). Infected bats often do not show symptoms, so it is virtually impossible to tell if a bat flying around your home has the disease. Rabies can be transmitted when you come in contact with the saliva or the body tissue of an infected animal. You are unlikely to come in direct contact with a bat in an open area like your back yard, but like any wild animal, if the bat is caught in a confined area (like a room in your home), there is a much greater chance there could be contact that leads to a bite. 
It is obvious that a bat bite could cause you harm, but did you know that simply coming in contact with their excrement could potentially be deadly? Bat feces are known as guano. All animal excrement can carry some disease but bat guano is especially dangerous. Guano is known to harbor fungi that can cause the lung disease, histoplasmosis, which can be fatal. The simple act of cleaning up after a bat can make the fungi airborne and allow it to get into your lungs.
We know bats are beneficial, but we also know that they can be dangerous. So what does a homeowner do when they suspect there are bats in their home? First, there are three things you don’t do: don’t ignore it, don’t try to take care of it yourself, and don’t call just any pest control company. Ignoring a bat problem will not make it go away. If bats find a safe place they will likely return to that roosting area year after year. Taking care of a bat situation on your own can lead to serious problems for both your health and your wallet. Handling a bat or its guano can cause health problems and killing a bat could lead to fines (bats are protected by law in many areas).

What you need to do is contact a pest control company that specializes in humane wild life control, like Little Rascals Nuisance Wildlife Removal! We will safely return wildlife to where they belong - back in the wild and away from your home.