Defensive Measures: 9 Ways to Keep Your Home Safe from Bats

Do you want to prevent bats from ever coming into your house? It’s good to have a proactive approach because preventing an infestation is much better than dealing with an established one. Bats are significant for our ecosystem, but they can carry diseases that are harmful to people, so you don’t want to come into contact with them.

Bats often move into people’s homes due to deforestation, so it’s becoming more common. Here are the best ways to defend your home from bats.

1. Regularly Inspect Your Home

First, you’ll want to get into the habit of regularly inspecting your home for bats. Keep an eye out for gaps, holes, and cracks in your walls that can become entry points for bats. They often come in through vents and chimneys, too.

Attic vents and crawl spaces are some of the most common places bats use as entry points. They can also get in through losing fascia boards, siding, and window gaps.

You’ll want to look for brown, greasy streaks near the entrances. Bats leave these marks and their waste near their entry points.

If you’ve spotted a potential bat entry point, block it before they find it! You can plug the holes using sealants, caulk, and mesh nets. Take note of where you see these gaps and check on them once a month to ensure they haven’t reopened.

2. Take Care of Shrubbery

Next, if you have a lot of trees and bushes on your property, you’ll want to trim them. Bats will be encouraged to enter your home if they’re close to it. They may bridge the branches to your roof, where they find easy access to your attic or chimney.

Trimming the trees and shrubs also gives the bats fewer hiding places, so they’ll move elsewhere. So, ensure you keep your plants under control when you want to defend against bat infestations.

3. Use Bright Motion-Activated Lighting

Bats aren’t fans of bright lights, so they’ll stay away from well-lit places. However, lights can also attract insects, which are food for the bats, making your property more appealing to them. You’ll want to choose motion-activated lights instead.

These lights don’t stay on long enough to bring a lot of bugs to your property. Although, they’ll still turn on if a bat flies past, scaring them off.

You could install these motion lights inside your attic or near other potential bat entry points. If the bat tries to get inside, the light would frighten them off. It makes your home less appealing because the bats want constant darkness in their roosts.

Overall, bats hate light, making it an easy and humane solution to defend yourself from them.

4. Set Up Reflective Items

Next, you can set up reflective objects in areas where a bat might come inside. Aluminum foil and mylar balloons are some of the best choices. They hate these materials because it reflects their motion, confusing the bats.

These items can also reflect light, making them much more effective when combined with the previous measure.

5. Keep Windows and Doors Closed

It makes sense to keep your windows and doors closed when bats are active so they don’t accidentally fly inside. They can’t chew through window screens, so it’s fine if you have those in place.

However, they can get inside through gaps in the screen the size of a dime, so you’ll want to occasionally inspect the screen for tears. If holes are in the net, replace it as soon as possible. In the meantime, you’ll want to keep the window shut completely to protect yourself from bats.

6. Educate Your Family on Bats

If you don’t live alone, you’ll want to educate your family on bats. Explain to them that they don’t need much space to get inside, and let them know to watch out for gaps. Then, ensure that they understand that bats carry serious diseases, so it’s important not to touch them.

You’ll want to know as much as possible about local bat species. That way, you can learn more about their behaviors and how to defend against them.

Next, it’s essential to vaccinate your pets against rabies. They won’t understand to stay away from bats if they break in, making it necessary to keep their shots updated. It’s also required by law that dogs have rabies shots yearly.

7. Work With Professionals

There are professional bat removers who are experts on how to defend homes from these animals. A bat removal service in Indianapolis could help you by showing you where bats could come inside.

Many of these pros also offer bat inspections. They’ll let you know if you have bats, where to block them to prevent them from getting in, and what other steps to take. It’s a good idea to occasionally work with the experts to ensure you won’t have to deal with an infestation later, which would cost you much more than a simple bat inspection.

8. Educate Your Neighbors on Bats

It’s also essential that you talk about bats with your neighbors. They should also know how to prevent them from getting into their homes. If one of your neighbors has a bat infestation, there will be many bats in your area, meaning it’s more likely for them to move into your home.

Bats move between neighboring houses quickly. So, make sure that you send this post to them! If you’re all defending against bats, you’ll be much safer. Consider it a collective effort to prevent bat infestations.

9. Keep Your Yard Clean

Bats love eating mosquitos, which can be attracted to moisture in your yard. You’ll want to keep it free from debris, such as piles of leaves or wood, that could get wet. These insects also like standing water, so do your best to keep your yard dry.

When mosquitoes are in your yard, you can be sure that bats will be looking to eat them.

Defend Your Home from Bats Now

The sooner you work on implementing these defensive measures, the better! You won’t have to worry about bats trying to move in.