What should I do with a bat after I catch it in my house?

One of the most common things that can occur, more commonly than you may think, is for you to find a bat in your home. You leave your front or back door open, there is a window open or the doggy door is cracked enough and the bat simply flies its way into your home. You look over onto your wall or into the framing of your home and there it is, plain as day, hanging around like it owns that place. This just will not do.



You knock it down and capture it with a blanket and take it outside. Now the real question comes: what do I do with it now. That is a good question and one that depends upon what you want to do with it.

The easiest thing to do would be to go outside and flip open the blanket and let it go. You want to make that you do a few things before you do this. First, make sure that you have gloves on whenever you handle the bat, even if it is inside a blanket. It can still bite or claw at you and you do not want to risk your health by being bitten.

When you go outside, make sure that you close the doors and windows behind you. The last thing you want is to let it go and it turns around and comes right back into your home. That would be terrible. Lastly, don’t open the blanket right by you. The bat could turn directly on you. The best option is to set the blanket on the ground a hundred feet from your home or more, and loosen it so that the bat can get out and fly away. Also keep your pets inside until the bat is gone. A curious cat or dog may get bitten as well.

Of course if you do not want to preserve this animal, you can simply take it outside and hit it with a broom or some other object until it is dead. This may not seem like a nice thing to do, but bats can be quite dangerous, and so it may be to your advantage to simply end the animal’s life.

Your choice of what to do is totally up to you, but should be done with great care no matter what. Do not let the animal to have the opportunity to turn on you.

Go back to the How Do You Get Rid of Bats in Buildings home page or email me for more information about What should I do with a bat after I catch it in my house?

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