Boston Bat Removal Case Study
In this case study we profile a small cape-style house in the Boston area with a bat problem. In this particular case we had large brown bats entering through an un-secured chimney flashing.
In August of 2005 I received a call from a concerned homeowner regarding bats that were entering their living room through their fireplace. We set up an appointment for me to go out and conduct an inspection.
I arrived, and before I was even out of my truck I could see that the chimney flashing was lifted in the front of the house. Then I went around to the rear of the house and got up on the roof. Once I was on the roof I saw that the rear side of the chimney flashing was lifted off the roof significantly.
On the roof below the chimney there was a small amount of fresh bat guano. I knelt down next to the chimney, lifted the flashing and took the following pictures (as always, please click the thumbnails for a larger version of the image):
The bats were crawling up under the flashing and then dropping down along the chimney and somehow coming out in the living room. There were dozens of bats in this area when I first lifted the flashing, but I only managed to get pictures of the ones that didn't immediately crawl away. I showed these pictures to the homeowner and wrote up a quote that detailed what needed to be done. The homeowner accepted the quote and we scheduled the job for the next day.
I returned the following afternoon to begin the job. I purposely started relatively late in the day so that I would be there to watch the bats exit at dusk. I installed two bat valves, bat-proofed the rest of the house and than sat on the roof and waited for the bats to emerge. Shortly after dark I could hear the bats coming out, so I turned on my camera in order to further document the project, and the batteries died!
In this project all the bats were gone in one night. I returned to the house ten days later to finish the job. All bats were able to safely exit the house and the house is bat-proof. Another successful bat exclusion.
