recently found in the RM of Duck Lake<\/a>, according to Brighton Veterinary Clinic, while the province issued a reminder this week about safely removing bats from buildings.<\/p>\nBut Brigham said the perception that bats commonly carry rabies is misleading.<\/p>\n
\u201cBats have the reputation for all carrying it and it being very common. That simply isn\u2019t true,\u201d Brigham said.<\/p>\n
He stressed that rabies is an extremely serious disease and people need to take appropriate action if they are exposed to a potentially rabid animal, but simply having a bat fly overhead or nearby isn\u2019t a reason to panic.<\/p>\n
Brigham said he would rather have people recognize what bats are doing while they are swooping through the evening sky.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey do us a lot of good,\u201d he said. \u201cThey eat large numbers of insects at night that we would call pests.\u201d<\/p>\n
The province made a similar point in its safety message, noting bats help protect crops, forests, parks and gardens by feeding on insect pests. The Government of Saskatchewan is encouraging residents to support bat populations by maintaining healthy wetlands and native vegetation, reducing or better targeting pesticide use and installing bat houses where roosts have been destroyed.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t mean homeowners have to welcome bats as roommates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI totally get if you have bats in your building, they\u2019re not paying rent and they should be asked politely to leave,\u201d Brigham joked.<\/p>\n
September is one of the appropriate times to do just that. The province said May and September are ideal months to install one-way exits, which allow bats to leave a building but prevent them from getting back inside. Evicting bats during the summer can separate mothers from pups that are not yet able to fly.<\/p>\n
Brigham agreed with that advice.<\/p>\n
By around Labour Day, he said, young bats are generally capable of flying, making fall a better time to deal with a colony that spent the summer inside a building.<\/p>\n
However, Brigham did take issue with the suggestion that cooling temperatures mean bats are now actively looking for buildings in which to spend the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeptember is a time when, if you had bats over the summer, it is a good time to evict them, but it\u2019s not a time that bats are going to turn up in a building for you to have to think about doing something about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the most common conflicts with bats in buildings occur during warmer months, when females gather in maternity colonies to give birth and raise their pups.<\/p>\n
For people trying to remove them, Brigham said gimmicks aren\u2019t likely to accomplish much.<\/p>\n
\u201cMothballs won\u2019t work, smoke won\u2019t work, lights won\u2019t work, noise makers won\u2019t work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Instead,Brigham said, the entrances bats are using need to be identified and eventually sealed, something that can be challenging because he said bats can squeeze through a crack just a quarter-inch wide.<\/p>\n
The province requires free permits for bat eviction work and recommends property owners work with a wildlife control operator experienced in bat removal. Bats are protected wildlife in Saskatchewan and it is illegal to kill them.<\/p>\n
Brigham said there\u2019s good reason for that protection. In addition to controlling insects, he said many Saskatchewan bats can live for decades.<\/p>\n
His advice for people who don\u2019t have bats living in their attic is much simpler: look up.<\/p>\n
\u201cSit out on your deck and instead of looking at the person you\u2019re talking to, sometimes look up against sort of the darkening sky and you might see bats flying over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re doing us big favours by doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
And despite their reputation, he added, those bats flying overhead aren\u2019t particularly interested in the humans watching them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t want to have anything to do with you directly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bats may have a reputation for being creepy, disease-carrying creatures of the night, but a longtime Saskatchewan bat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-890762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}