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Eau Claire, Wis. (WEAU) – The Eau Claire City-County Health Department is advising people to take steps to protect their homes.
This comes as the Department of Health reports increasing numbers of bat sightings in the area.
The sightings pose a threat to the health of residents, with rabies being a major concern.
“So our main threat to bats is rabies. In terms of Wisconsin, you know, it’s one of the leading carriers of rabies,” Nolan Fadez said. He is an environmental health specialist in the health department.
“Bats make up the largest percentage of calls we get. Without a doubt,” said Jared Hansen. He is one of the owners of Quick Action Pest Control in Altona.
It explains how bats get into your house.
“A bat can find a very, very small crack to get into the house, a three, six, seven inch crack,” Hanson said.
What can you do if you encounter a bat in your home?
“First we need to find out if anyone in the house knew they were exposed,” Fadez said. If there is a bat in your room when you wake up, a child, a pet, a drunk person, a mentally disabled person, if they are unattended in the room and we find a bat in that room, we wish. Consider it exposure too.
Fades added, “If you happened to see a bat come in, you know, in the middle of the day in your living room, we wouldn’t consider that an exposure.”
Bats are small enough to fit in small spaces, and because of this it can be difficult to get rid of them.
“Packaging your home. Making sure your screens are in good condition, walking around your home, looking for cracks or gaps,” Fadz said.
If there are bats in your home, there are ways to get them back outside.
“The best thing to do to get the bat out of the house is to open the back door and the front door and turn off all the air circulation in the house … it really scares you more than it scares you.” Believe it or not,” Hansen said about trying to get a bat out of your house. “The best thing is to get a professional or inspect the whole house and do the necessary sealing to get rid of them.”
Experts recommend that anyone trying to handle a bat indoors wears adequate protection to reduce the risk of being bitten.
“You want to wear some sort of jacket, just to pair the thick jacket with thick leather gloves so that we don’t reduce the risk of bats biting and biting and touching skin and breaking skin. ” said Hanson.
And if you catch a bat, the health department will ask you to bring it in for testing.
“Let us know you’re bringing the bat and then we can send it to be tested for rabies,” Fadez said.
Experts want to remind everyone that killing bats is illegal because they are a protected species.
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