Bats are beautiful. At least that was the name of the class I used to help teach at Calloway Gardens in Georgia. It was there that I learned to appreciate bats and what they do for us. Pictured is a cage that I found attached to the soffit on a Metairie home inspection. It took me awhile to figure out what it was for. At first I thought it was for catching squirrels but I was wrong.
The cage that I found on a Metairie home was designed to try and live catch the bats living in the attic. Nothing was in the cage at time of inspection but the owner informed me of the use of the cage. I didn’t see any bats in the attic either but I didn’t have much access to it anyway. Little or no access to an attic can be problematic. If I can’t get in the attic then it is likely that most others cannot either (I’m a thin guy). If nobody can get to an area, you can bet there might be some problems. In this case, it’s a bat problem. I have this same issue all the time in crawl spaces. But in the crawl space it can be a more serious problem because then we are talking about termites and structural damage from underneath. This is usually a bigger deal than structural damage from up above.
Here is a little more about the bats. Bats help us in a few ways: A single bat can eat up to 2000 mosquitoes in one night. Some bats also help to pollinate fruits and trees. Very few bats actually have rabies but there are other things that you can catch so it is advisable to get them out of your attic if you have them. It’s always a bad idea to touch a bat on the ground or in a tree. If you can approach a bat then that means it is likely sick and in no condition to fly. That means it could have rabies. Bats that are happily flying around catching insects do not really carry rabies. They are very, very reclusive creatures and not out to cause anyone harm. So don’t kill the innocent bats. The full inspection of this Metairie home revealed some other more serious problems so the bats were the least of the concerns.
