Bats are great for the environment, great to have around, and great to have in a bat house, but don't let anyone tell you it's OK to have them in your house. Can you imagine either of the above photos being in your place. If you're already at that point, see my page on Bat-Proofing.
There are 9 species of bats in Connecticut, but it's the Big Brown and Little Brown bats that get into people's houses. The others are more rare, and typically live in the forest. Bats only have 1 or 2 babies per year, so if exterminating was still allowed, it wouldn't take long for them to disappear from our state. Bats are a colonial species, which means that they can live together in large family groups. Typical big brown roosts may contain between 5 and 30 bats, while little browns congregate in the 100's, even 1000's. Bats are a true hibernating animal, and by mid November, the bats have left their summer roosts to join the others in their winter hibernacula, which around Northwest CT would be the caves and mine shafts in Roxbury, Sharon, Lakeville and Kent. Some will go other places, but they are not travelling to Texas. In the spring, after the trees have budded out and the insects have returned to the area, the bats will follow, and move back into the houses they occupied the summer before. Should you encounter a bat in your house in the winter months, that means that some of the colony has taken up hibernation in your house, and a bat-proofing may be in order when spring arrives.
Identifying factors are size, color, wingspan and by their guano. The big brown species usually has a 10-12 inch wingspan, with a body length of 3 inches. They are milk chocolate to rusty tan in color and their guano are a larger loose dry pellet about the size of cooked rice. The little brown bats are about 2 inches long with a 7-9 inch wingspan, are dark amost black in color, with smaller pellets of guano about like black uncooked rice.
When I walk into an attic that houses a bat colony, I can smell it the instant I get past the door. Pungent ammonia is how I describe it. Then you see the piles of bat guano (feces). I've been in churches that had 8 inches of compacted guano on the floor, and old historic houses that have been virtually ruined by the urine and guano from years of accumulation. It's no way to live. Bats themselves smell. Imagine that as they hang upside down, their urine runs down their bodies! When the bats are simply roosting on the outside under the trim boards, the urine eventually eats away at the paint, and the minerals dry out and make the wood impossible to paint again. When the guano is allowed to accumulate and compost in a moist environment, a fungus called
Histoplasma capsulatum can use it as a growing medium. The spores of this fungus are what is responsible for the lung disease Histoplasmosis, and when inhaled can bring on symptoms of respiratory illness ranging from Flu like to that of tuberculosis. Bear in mind, the fungus needs a moist growing environment, and is not usually associated with a dry attic. Clean up of bat guano is handled like a hazardous waste material, and can be very expensive. In addition to the urine and guano are the mites, fleas and other various parasites associated with bats. You wouldn't believe what's crawling around inside a bat's roost.
All in all, they are not welcome in my house anyway.
Secondly, bats can contract rabies, and you can get the rabies virus if you are bitten by the bat, or get it's saliva into an open cut or mucous membrane like your eyes, nose or mouth.
Thirdly, bats don't act "rabid" when they are sick. They usually are lethargic, and may be on the ground crawling. That said, not all bats crawling on the ground are sick.
By doing that, you will know if you need the post-exposure shots or not. Why take any chances with a potentially fatal disease. This capture and testing is one of the services I offer.
