One step closer...

One step closer...

Last night I was in my closet getting ready for bed when I heard what has now become a familiar sound. It is somewhere between a flutter and a wobble, and I thought a bat was in the closet. I looked high and low and behind the shelves; my closet is under the eves so it goes from 8' high to 2' high over about 10'. No bat visible, but the flutter wobble was still there, and I realized it was in the ceiling!.

So the good news is I've found where they live. The bad news is that I know it is a they - there are a bunch of them. And I'm still not sure how they get inside my room. And I'm not 100% sure how they get into rafters. But I have more to work with.

I've been reading on-line and found an excellent post here about one guy's experience removing bats. This lines up with some other things I've read here.

Take home ideas:
The only way to get rid of them is exclusion. You have to seal the entries.
You don't want to seal the entries while they're in the building or they die in the roost.
To avoid this you install one-way valves over the entry so they can get out, but not back in. Leave those in place for a week or so so you're sure everybody is out for good, and then seal it permanently.
Here is the kicker - Don't seal anything between May and August because there may be babies that can't fly that would get stuck in the roost and die.

My plan now is to concede the rafters to them until mid-August and then go through the exclusion process. In the meantime, I'll try to keep them out of my closet and bedroom so I can get a decent nights sleep, and I'll try to find and isolate their entrance to the rafters.

This is beginning to look like a summer's long project!