To catch a bat in your house, close it into one room, wait for it to land, then slowly place a container over it and slide cardboard underneath to trap it. The whole process can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour depending on how active the bat is. The key is staying calm, moving slowly, and wearing thick leather gloves to protect yourself from a bite.
Before You Start: Gear and Room Setup
Put on thick leather gloves before doing anything else. Standard work gloves made of cowhide or deerskin are ideal because they’re thick enough to prevent a bite but flexible enough for you to handle a container. If you don’t have leather gloves, use the thickest gloves you can find and double them up. A long-sleeved shirt adds an extra layer of protection for your forearms.
Gather your supplies: a sturdy container (a shoebox, large plastic container, or even a coffee can), a piece of stiff cardboard or a folder large enough to cover the opening, and a flashlight if you’re working in a dim room. Choose a container big enough that you won’t crush the bat’s wings under the rim when you place it down.
Next, contain the bat to a single room. Close all interior doors and open one window or exterior door in that room if possible. Many bats will find the exit on their own within 10 to 15 minutes, especially if you turn off the lights and step back. If the bat doesn’t leave on its own, you’ll need to catch it manually.
How to Catch the Bat Step by Step
If the bat is still flying, resist the urge to swing at it or chase it. Move children and pets out of the room, close the door, and give the bat time to tire itself out and land. A flying bat in a closed room will typically settle on a wall, curtain, or piece of furniture within several minutes.
Once the bat has landed, approach it slowly. This is the most important part. Bats respond to fast movement by taking off again, but if you move at a deliberate, steady pace, most will stay still. Place the container over the bat gently but firmly against the surface it’s resting on. Then slide your piece of cardboard between the container and the wall or surface, sealing the bat inside. Keep the cardboard pressed tightly against the container opening so there’s no gap for the bat to squeeze through.
Now you need to decide: release the bat or keep it for testing. That decision depends entirely on whether anyone could have been bitten or scratched.
When You Can Release the Bat
If every person in the house was awake, alert, and can confidently say they were not bitten or scratched, and no pets had contact with the bat, you can release it outside. Take the container outdoors, hold it up high (at arm’s length above your head or place it on an elevated surface like a roof ledge or high fence), and remove the cardboard. Bats can’t take off from the ground the way birds can. They need a drop to catch air under their wings, so setting them on an elevated surface gives them the best chance of flying away safely.
Release the bat at dusk or nighttime when possible. If you catch it during the day, place it on a high, sheltered spot like a tree trunk or the underside of an eave where it can rest until dark.
When the Bat Needs Rabies Testing
This is the part most people don’t realize. You need to keep the bat for rabies testing if any of these situations apply:
- Someone was sleeping in the same room as the bat. Bat bites can be tiny enough that a sleeping person wouldn’t feel them or see a mark.
- A young child was alone in the room with the bat, even briefly.
- Anyone intoxicated or with a disability was in the room and can’t reliably confirm they weren’t bitten.
- A pet had contact with the bat, especially a cat (cats instinctively swat at bats).
- Anyone was bitten or scratched, or found the bat touching their skin.
Less than 1% of bats in the wild carry rabies, but bat strains of the virus are responsible for the majority of human rabies deaths in the United States. The risk is low, but the stakes are about as high as they get, since rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms appear. If there’s any doubt about contact, keep the bat contained and call your local or county health department. They’ll arrange testing and tell you exactly what to do next. Do not damage the bat’s head, as the brain tissue is what gets tested.
If the bat escapes before you can catch it and someone in the house falls into one of those risk categories, call your health department anyway. When a bat can’t be captured and tested, rabies vaccination is typically recommended as a precaution. The modern vaccine series is four shots given over two weeks, not the painful ordeal it used to be.
What Not to Do
Never handle a bat with bare hands, even if it appears dead. Don’t try to grab a bat while it’s flying. Swinging a broom, tennis racket, or towel at a bat risks injuring it (bats are protected wildlife in many states) and makes it harder to capture intact for testing if needed. Avoid using sticky traps or glue boards, which cause severe suffering and will damage the bat beyond the point where it can be tested or released.
Don’t assume a bat on the ground is safe to ignore. A grounded bat may be sick, injured, or a juvenile that can’t yet fly well. If you find one on the floor, use the container method described above and contact a local bat rehabilitator or your state wildlife agency for guidance.
When to Call a Professional
A single bat that wandered in through an open door or window is usually a one-time event you can handle yourself. But if bats show up in your living space more than once, you likely have a colony roosting somewhere in your home, often in the attic, behind shutters, or inside wall cavities. Bats can squeeze through gaps as small as half an inch, roughly the width of a pencil.
Removing a colony is not a DIY job for most people. It requires identifying every entry point on the exterior, installing one-way exclusion devices (tubes or netting that let bats leave but not return), leaving those devices in place for five to seven nights, and then permanently sealing every opening with caulk, flashing, or screening. The work often involves ladders, scaffolding, or roof access. Professionals trained in bat exclusion handle this regularly and know how to do it without harming the bats.
Timing matters too. Exclusion work should never happen between roughly April and late August, because flightless young bats inside the roost would be sealed in and starve. The best window is late summer through early fall, after juveniles can fly but before bats enter hibernation in colder climates. In winter, if bats are hibernating in your structure, exclusion should wait until spring when they begin emerging to feed.
Sealing Your Home Against Future Entry
Once you’re confident all bats have left (or after a professional has completed exclusion), seal every potential entry point on the exterior. Common spots include gaps where the roofline meets the siding, openings around chimneys, vents without screens, loose flashing, and cracks in foundations or mortar joints. Use caulk, metal flashing, hardware cloth, or fine mesh screening. Water-based caulk applied early in the day works well because it dries before evening when bats are active.
Never use expanding spray foam to seal cracks where bats have been active. Bats returning to a familiar roost can get trapped in the foam as it hardens. Check window screens for tears, make sure attic vents have intact mesh, and inspect your roofline at least once a year for new gaps caused by weathering or settling.