It's a long and somewhat dramatic story, but last week, we learned we have been colonized by both brown bats (somewhere between six and 60 in number) and gray squirrels. The exterminator says this is rare BTW to have both animals in the same place.
The first step was to set a body trap for the squirrel(s), but it hasn't yielded any bodies for five days, so it's likely the colony or nesting site has been abandoned, which means the holes they chewed can be patch. As an aside, the exterminator says it's generally better if you kill the offending squirrel(s) since they tend to come back to favorite places when they get pregnant again. This week, we're installing what are called bat valves where there's evidence the bats are going in and out of the attic which permit them to go out but not return. After this, all holes down to 3/8 of an inch will be filled in. So, we have a lot of bats here, you can sometimes hear them at night, and though I guess an occasional one contracts bat rabies, by an large they are a beneficial animal in that they eat lots of insects including I'm told, mosquitos. Given this, my wife andI are thinkig about putting up a bat house, on the theory that if they hav a good place to hang out, they might be less inclined to want to hang out in our chimney. Anybody on this list have experience with this? Am I thinking about this right? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
