Bat Removal & Exclusion in Kent, OH

Bats in your Kent home

The bat of the Kent attic is the big brown bat, and the older housing stock around downtown and the university suits it: high attics, complicated rooflines, and decades of small gaps at vents, trim and flashing. Colonies raise pups in those attics through summer, and big browns are hardy enough that some hibernate in the same attic rather than leaving for winter, so a colony can be present in every month of the year.

In Kent, bat timing collides with rental timing. Leases turn over in late spring and summer, which is precisely when the maternity closure bars most exclusions. Owners who inspect at turnover — or better, in early spring — learn about a colony while something can still be scheduled cleanly. Everyone else learns about it from a tenant, mid-lease, mid-closure.

The closed seasons and the working windows

Ohio Administrative Code 1501:31-15-03(H)(5) bars bat exclusion from May 16 through July 31 when five or more bats are present, because pups cannot fly, and from October 15 through March 31, because bats may be hibernating in the structure. Either closure can be lifted only with prior written permission from the Chief of the ODNR Division of Wildlife. The working windows are April 1 to May 15 and August 1 to October 15. A call during a closure is still the right move: inspection, mapping and scheduling happen then.

Big brown bats overwinter in Ohio attics

Do not assume the bats left with the leaves. Big brown bats commonly overwinter inside buildings in Ohio, settled singly or in small groups into cold, quiet corners and wall voids. A midwinter sealing job planned on the assumption of an empty attic can entomb live, sleeping animals — exactly what the winter closure exists to prevent. Winter bat work begins with a deliberate search for hibernators.

Entry gaps on converted and older houses

A bat needs a gap about as wide as a finger. Kent's older and converted houses offer them at gable vents, behind shutters and corner boards, at chimney flashing lifted by ice, and along porch-roof seams and conversion joints. Droppings collected on a porch floor, a walk or the ground beneath a gap are the surest sign of which entries are active, and in a rental they are often the first evidence anyone notices.

Guano, rabies and a bat in a tenant bedroom

Droppings beneath a long-used roost can carry the fungus associated with histoplasmosis, so cleanup is work for proper protective equipment. Bats are also the most frequently confirmed rabies species in Ohio. If a bat is found in a room where someone — tenant, child or guest — was sleeping, do not handle it and do not simply wave it out a window; close the room and contact a doctor or the local health department for guidance, because the bat may need to be captured for testing.

How a scheduled exclusion runs

Inside a working window, the crew seals every gap on the building except the active entries, fits those entries with one-way valves, and lets the colony exit at dusk over successive nights. Checks confirm the attic is empty before the valves come off and the final gaps are sealed permanently. Colony size and the number of gaps on a many-part Kent roofline decide the visit count.

What not to do while waiting for a window

Do not caulk the entry gap. In summer it traps flightless pups; in winter it traps hibernating adults; at any time it can drive bats into walls and living space — a worse problem for tenants than the attic colony was. Mothballs, sprays and ultrasonic devices do not clear a colony. Inspect, schedule for the window, exclude one-way, then seal: that sequence is both lawful and effective.