Stay calm, close interior doors to confine the bat to one room, and open any windows or exterior doors in that room. Most bats found indoors are lost or disoriented and want out as badly as you want them gone. With the right approach, you can resolve this in under an hour without anyone, including the bat, getting hurt.
Your First Move: Isolate the Room
Close all doors leading to other parts of the house so the bat can’t wander deeper into your home. Open windows and exterior doors in the room where the bat is flying. Turn off lights and ceiling fans. Bats navigate by echolocation and will often find an open window on their own if you give them a quiet, dark room and a few minutes of patience. Leave the room, close the door behind you, and check back in 15 to 20 minutes.
How to Capture a Bat That Won’t Leave
If the bat hasn’t found its way out, wait for it to land. A flying bat is nearly impossible to catch safely, but they tire quickly indoors and will eventually rest on a wall, curtain, or piece of furniture. Do not chase it. Chasing only prolongs the ordeal for both of you.
Once the bat has landed, here’s the method recommended by wildlife agencies:
- Gear up. Put on thick leather gloves and a long-sleeved shirt. Never handle a bat with bare hands.
- Cover it. Place a small container (a shoebox, coffee can, or plastic tub) over the bat where it’s resting.
- Slide cardboard underneath. Gently work a piece of stiff cardboard between the container and the surface, making sure no part of the bat is pinched.
- Flip and secure. Slowly turn the container right side up with the cardboard as a lid. Poke a few small air holes if the container is airtight.
One important detail: bats can squeeze through gaps as small as a quarter inch. Don’t place a captured bat in a birdcage or any container with slots or openings. A solid-walled box with a flat lid is what you need.
When and How to Release It
If you catch the bat during daylight, wait until after dark to let it go. A bat released in broad daylight is easy prey for hawks, cats, and other predators. While you wait, keep the container in a cool, quiet spot. If it will be several hours, line the box with a soft cotton t-shirt arranged in folds so the bat can hang. Avoid terry cloth towels because a bat’s tiny claws get tangled in the loops.
At release time, bring the container to an elevated spot: a second-story balcony, the top of a ladder, or a tree branch. Bats launch into flight by dropping from a height, so ground-level releases don’t work well. Lay the container on its side and let the bat crawl out at its own pace. Watch with a flashlight to confirm it flies away. If it can’t fly or seems injured, contact a local bat rehabilitator or your state wildlife agency.
When Rabies Is a Concern
This is the part that matters most. A bat flying through your living room while everyone is awake and alert is a low-risk situation, especially if you’re certain nobody touched it. But there are scenarios where you need to take rabies seriously:
- A bat was in a room with a sleeping person. Bat bites are tiny enough that a sleeping person might not wake up or notice a wound.
- A bat was near an unattended child or someone unable to communicate. Small children and people with cognitive impairments can’t reliably report contact.
- Anyone touched the bat with bare skin. Even brief contact counts.
If any of these apply, capture the bat (using the method above) and keep it contained. Call your local health department. They can arrange to have the bat tested for rabies, and the results determine whether anyone exposed needs treatment. Submit the bat intact, chilled but not frozen, and avoid damaging its head, because rabies testing depends on brain tissue. If the bat tests negative, no treatment is needed.
If the bat escapes before you can capture it and there’s any chance of contact with a sleeping person or child, call your doctor or health department anyway. Rabies post-exposure treatment involves a series of vaccine doses spread over several weeks. It’s highly effective when started promptly, but rabies itself is almost always fatal once symptoms appear, so this isn’t a situation to second-guess.
Figuring Out How It Got In
A single bat in your house is usually a stray that slipped in through an open door or window, especially in late summer when young bats are learning to fly. But if you’re finding bats more than once, you likely have a colony roosting somewhere in your home, typically in an attic, behind shutters, or inside wall voids. Bats can enter through openings as small as a quarter inch, so cracks around rooflines, gaps where pipes enter walls, and loose soffit panels are all common entry points.
Walk the outside of your home at dusk and watch for bats emerging. You’ll often see them dropping from a specific gap or vent right around sunset. That’s your entry point.
Sealing Them Out for Good
Permanent exclusion means installing one-way devices over the entry points so bats can leave but can’t return. Once the colony has departed (this takes several nights), you seal the openings permanently. Exclusion devices need to stay in place for at least four nights to give every bat a chance to exit.
Timing matters, and in many states it’s regulated. Most bat species raise pups from roughly mid-April through mid-August. During this maternity season, sealing entry points traps flightless baby bats inside your walls, where they die. In Florida, for example, it’s illegal to exclude bats between April 16 and August 14 without a special permit. Other states have similar restrictions. The best window for exclusion work is late summer through early spring, when pups are old enough to fly and the colony can relocate safely.
Exclusion also needs to happen when overnight temperatures are forecast above 50°F, because bats sealed out in cold weather may not survive. If you’re dealing with a recurring bat problem, hiring a wildlife control professional who specializes in bats is worth the cost. They know local regulations, can identify every entry point (there are often more than one), and can complete the work without harming a species that eats thousands of mosquitoes and agricultural pests every night.