Bat Removal - Greater Birmingham, Alabama

The Bats of Alabama

The Eastern pipistrelle, (Perimyotis subflavus), also known as the tri-colored bat, is common in Alabama.

A lot of people are afraid of bats. This is unfortunate.

The truth of the matter is that the bats of Alabama are overwhelmingly beneficial animals who are an important part of our natural environment, making bat removal an job that needs to be treated with respect and care. It's important to manage bats in such a way that keeps the bats out of our homes and buildings, but doesn't harm them in the process.

Let's take a few moments to talk about these these fascinating creatures.

First of all, bats are not rodents or birds. They're mammals of the taxonomic order Chiroptera. The Latin word roughly translates as "winged hand," which is a pretty good description of a bat's forelimbs. They have membranes between what would be the "fingers," which form wings when the bat stretches their "hands" out.

Unlike the "wings" of other mammals that can "fly" (such as flying squirrels), the wings of a bats allow them to take off and fly to higher altitudes, not just glide from high altitudes to lower ones. That makes bats the only mammals that can truly fly.

Why do Bats Fly, Anyway?

The reason why bats fly is also one of the reasons that they're so beneficial.

Bats go out every night and fly around looking for insects to eat, and they're particularly fond of mosquitoes. They eat hundreds or thousands of them every night, in fact, making electric bug zappers seem wimpy by comparison. Bats are like bug zappers on wings. Better yet, they don't burn electricity.

Bats are such good mosquito-eaters, in fact, that that some people even build houses for them to live in, just to keep the mosquito population down. The USDA even publishes plans for people who want to build their own bat houses, which you can download here. (We also provide bat house installation as a service, if you want the mosquito-munching benefits of having bats around, but would rather not build a bat house yourself.)

Bat Removal and Exclusion in Alabama

Rid-A-Critter has the staff and equipment to handle any bat-removal job.

Of course, the main reason why people put up bat houses is because we'd rather they didn't live in our houses.

The fact is that although bats do us a big favor with their ravenous mosquito-eating, they sure do make a mess when they get inside homes, barns, commercial buildings, bell towers, and yes, belfries. They're not the neatest tenants you could ever hope to have.

Bat guano (poop) contains organisms that cause diseases like histoplasmosis, and many of their parasites like ticks, fleas, and bat bugs can also transmit diseases. In addition, bats can transmit rabies (although they seldom get close enough to us for that to happen). Finally, they just make a huge mess of things. We've had jobs where we had to remove whole truckloads of guano from the house after sealing the bats out.

What all this means, of course, is that as much as we may love our Alabama bats, we draw the line when they move into our houses. No worries, though: Rid-A-Critter has the personnel and resources to humanely handle any bat control job -- no matter how big or how small.

Our bat-removal and bat-proofing program is built around respect for the bats and an understanding of how important they are to our ecosystem. So we don't "exterminate" bats. We use various ways to get them out of buildings (such as one-way doors that let them out, but not back in), and then we seal every single crack, crevice, and hole in the building to keep them out.

Finally, we clean up after the bats, removing the guano, replacing the insulation if needed, and just generally tidying up. (Please note that guano removal and insulation replacement, if needed, are quoted separately from bat removal and exclusion.)

The bottom line is that when you choose Rid-A-Critter to help you with your bat problem, you're choosing a one-stop solution that's guaranteed to solve your bat problem.