Bat Control

Picture this nightmare. You're walking down a dark road at night and hear the flutter of hundreds of flapping wings. You look around and can barely make out a huge black cloud of what look like birds, but they don't sound like birds. You hear screeching and realize, these are bats, and while you aren't quite scared, you can't help but think of those stories about Dracula and his horde transforming to fly off into the night. In reality, the vampire bat does feed on blood, and luckily, humans are not their typical fare, and they are only in South America.

They are found worldwide, with nine species living in New Jersey, six of them year-round. The six permanent residents are the little brown, big brown, Northern long-eared, Eastern small-footed, Eastern pipistrelle, and the Indiana bat, which is endangered on both state and federal levels. The three species that come and go are the Hoary, the red, and the silver-haired bats. They migrate south during the fall to enjoy warmer climates for the winter. This is a small fraction of the over 1,200 species globally, making up roughly a quarter of all mammals on Earth. They are the primary predators of night-flying insects, and it is believed they developed their nocturnal lifestyles to avoid predators.

Bats are unique in a variety of ways. First off, they are the only mammals capable of true flight, and their wings are very similar in structure to a human arm, except for the thin layer of skin connecting the flaps. Their wings are thinner than a birds, and the bodily differences make bats much more agile. This helps when it comes to avoiding obstacles in the dark and for catching insects. Being so small, you might be surprised to find out just how much these freaky-looking flyers eat. One little brown bat has the potential to eat up to 1,200 mosquito-sized insects in just an hour and over 3,000 over the course of a night. While nursing, mothers can eat 4,500 insects nightly which is more than their own body weight. This amount of bugs per night is even more impressive when you consider that bats have extremely poor vision and use echolocation, a kind of sight-by-sound, to pinpoint the exact place their prey is located.

Bats may not destroy your home in the same way that termites or carpenter ants do, but the damage they do can quickly rack up. Just one can become an entire colony before you know it, and after feeding on so many insects, where they roost ends up covered in bat droppings, which can degrade and deteriorate structures over time. They are also known carriers of rabies and other zoonotic diseases. 

If you have a family in your attic in Bergen, Essex, and Passaic counties, you're in luck. New Day Pest Control has the experience and the tools needed to get those funny-looking bug-eaters out of your home as soon as possible. Contact us today for an estimate for removal as well an exclusion plan to make sure they don’t return.