By Demetra Aposporos

	Basic bat houses can blend into any surroundings. For more about bat houses, visit Bat Conservation International www.batcon.com

One of the consequences of a successful bat eviction is that all those of displaced bats—the ones once sheltered in your rafters—will need a new place to live. Installing a bat box on your property makes it easy for them to find one. Bat boxes can come in many shapes and sizes, but all have one thing in common: They are designed to provide cozy quarters for a colony of bats. From the outside, a bat house often looks like a boxy birdhouse on steroids—with one difference, entrance holes are at the bottom. Nonetheless, they can be adorned with clever detailing—we even discovered a bat box with Folk Victorian styling. Inside, all feature several crevices so bats can roost in layers. Installing a bat box in the corner of your yard gives newly excluded critters a place to go, while keeping them close enough to provide major insect control on your property. With a single bat chomping down about 3,000 bugs a night, that's a lot of pest protection for your al fresco dining.

For more information on bat exclusion, see the article Banishing Bats from the Jan/Feb issue of Old-House Journal, Click Here.