Little Brown Bat
Description
Colors may be pale tan, reddish brown, olive brown, dark yellowish brown or dark brown. These bats are insectivores - food sources include gnats, beetles, crane flies, wasps and moths. They use echo-location to find insects. Breeding occurs during the fall, and in the spring, the bats come out of hibernation and fertilization occurs.
Why be concerned?
Medical concerns about bats are mainly the very small, but real, risk of rabies and the fact that their droppings are an excellent reservoir for the fungal pathogen that causes human histoplasmosis.
Little brown bats harbor fleas and mites, and may harbor trematodes, cestodes, and chiggers. In North America, 15 deaths due to rabies transmitted by different species of bats have occurred in the past 40 years. Rabies will only be found in a very few bats (less than 1%). Most bats infected with rabies become paralyzed and fall to the ground, and rabies transmission is usually only a problem if a human picks up a sick bat. Colonies that roost in attics can cause the owners of the house to spend unnecessary money on cleaning.
What You Can Do
The best way to prevent bats from entering a man-made structure is to shut the bats out. This is done by sealing with weather stripping, caulking, or screen any opening which they can enter. This includes cracks around window frames, chimneys, or other structures which vent warm air and attract bats. Bats potentially can enter holes as small as 3/4" in diameter or 3/8" by 7/8".
What We Would Do
Knowing the risks that are associated with performing this kind of specialty work, combined with the possibility of re-inspecting the site the following year, we are able to perform economical and state of the art bat control for our customers.
