Why August Is the Official Window for Safe Bat Removal in Pennsylvania

Have you heard scratching sounds in your ceiling? Have you noticed dark stains near your roofline vents? You are not alone! Late summer brings peak bat activity to Pennsylvania homes.

However, if you’ve called around for assistance earlier in the summer, you may have been told that immediate removal wasn’t an option. That isn’t because the problem isn’t urgent—it’s because of state wildlife laws protecting roosting bats during their breeding cycle.

Understanding when you can legally remove bats from an attic in PA helps you solve your wildlife problem humanely, effectively, and legally.

When Can You Legally Remove Bats From an Attic in PA?

📌 Quick Answer for PA Homeowners:

Property owners can legally perform non-lethal bat exclusion from August 1st through May 14th. The PA Game Commission prohibits bat removal during maternity season (May 15th through July 31st). This law prevents homeowners from trapping flightless young bats inside their attics.

Why Does Pennsylvania Enforce a Bat Maternity Season?

Every spring, female bats gather in warm attics to give birth. These colonies primarily consist of Big Brown Bats and Little Brown Bats. Throughout May, June, and July, bat pups are newborn infants and cannot fly.

If someone seals an attic or installs exclusion devices during maternity season:

• Mother bats get locked outside when they leave at night to hunt.

• Flightless pups starve inside, creating dead wildlife inside your walls.

• Trapped pups crawl into living spaces, entering air vents and rooms while searching for an exit.

By August, young bats fly and hunt independently. This makes late summer through autumn the safest, legally approved window for professional bat exclusion.

Why Are Bats So Active in Attics During August?

If you did not notice bats earlier this summer, three main factors drive August sightings:

• The Colony Size Doubles: Young bats now fly alongside their mothers. This doubles visible flight activity around your roofline at dusk.

• Extreme Attic Heat: August attic temperatures frequently exceed 110°F. Extreme heat forces bats downward into air-conditioned rooms, wall voids, and near attic doors.

• Pre-Hibernation Feeding: Bats feed aggressively in late summer. They need extra fat reserves before fall migration or winter hibernation.

How Safe, Legal Bat Exclusion Works

Trapping or poisoning bats is illegal in Pennsylvania. Chemical treatments also fail long-term. Professional removal relies strictly on humane physical exclusion:

1. Comprehensive Exterior Inspection: A technician inspects the roofline. They locate entry gaps as small as 3/8 of an inch along soffits, fascia, and ridge caps.

2. One-Way Valve Setup: Technicians install custom exclusion valves over main exit holes. Bats exit freely at dusk to feed, but they cannot re-enter.

3. Full Perimeter Sealing: Technicians seal secondary gaps with durable, weather-resistant materials that match your home’s exterior.

4. Final Sealing & Sanitization: After the colony leaves, technicians remove the valves, seal the gaps permanently, and clean up any bat guano while remediating the area.

Need Help Clearing Bats From Your Roofline This August?

Do not wait until cold fall weather forces bats deeper inside your home. Backyard Wildlife Solutions provides fully compliant, humane bat exclusion services across South-Central Pennsylvania.

The striped skunk is most commonly found in Pennsylvania and belongs to the Mephitidae family.

About Skunks

Adult skunks are about 2 feet long, including their 7-10 inch tail. They can weigh between 3 and 12 lbs, depending on age, sex, physical condition, and time of the year.

Moreover, males are about 15% heavier than female skunks. They have small heads with small eyes and ears, pointed noses, short legs, and wide rear ends. The claws of the skunk’s forefeet are long and sharp, well-adapted to digging. The striped skunk is most commonly found in Pennsylvania.

What do they do?

Skunks make a variety of sounds, including hisses, growls, squeals, cooing, and churring. Skunks are placid and sluggish; they walk in a slow and clumsy gallop, and they can swim but are poor climbers. Their senses of sight, smell, and sound have been judged poor to fair.

Their defense mechanism is their potent scent that sprays from 2 large scent glands. Musk, or their spray, is an oily liquid that is highly repellent to all mammals. Their musk can spray up to 12 feet, but it is their last resort in the line of defense. They will drum their forefeet on the ground while growling, hissing, arching their back, and flicking their tails.

Striped skunks are omnivores! In summer, they feed heavily on insects: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and wasps. They also dig out bumblebee nests and scratch at the entrance of beehives, catching and eating honeybees that fly out. They often leave remnants of their feeding; small cone-shaped holes in the soil, pine needles, leaf duff, or suburban lawns mark where they’ve dug for grubs. They also eat spiders, toads, frogs, lizards, snakes, mice, chipmunks, turtle eggs, and ground-nesting birds. In fall and winter, skunks eat fruits such as wild grapes, cherries, moles, mice, voles, shrews, grasses, leaves, buds, mast, and carrion.

They are nocturnal animals; they hunt from dusk until dawn. They den in ground burrows, beneath buildings, stumps, wood, rock piles, and overhanging creek banks. Skunks will use abandoned woodchuck burrows. They like sloped spaces for dens, most likely because they drain well. Their breeding season runs from February to March.

Skunks do not hibernate, although they might remain dormant underground all winter. Skunks like to live in a variety of habitats. They like mixed woods and brushland, rolling weedy fields, fencerows, wooded ravines, and rocky outcrops in or near agricultural areas. They use hayfields, pastures, fencerows, and brush borders of waterways. Corn fields are ideal feeding habitats.

What Damage Do They Cause?

Skunks are burrowers and diggers, using these skills to find any weak spots in your foundation and crawl spaces they can use to find an entrance to their new home. They can damage electrical wiring and plumbing. Due to skunks preferring to den together, there may be a family living in your home. They also like areas under sheds and decks.

How To Get Rid of Skunks

We offer skunk removal! We start all jobs with an interior and exterior inspection of the home so we can determine where the animals are entering and living. Physical removal is the best approach, as we only use traps and methods approved by the PA Game Commission. We also offer exclusion services to prevent skunks from coming back.

We’re your licensed and insured skunk removal experts in Pennsylvania. Give us a call or use our contact form if you believe you have skunks living near your home!