Woman’s Dream Home Infested With Bats

“My neighbors told me, I had bats,” said homeowner Carole McCarron.

She found them dangling from the window in her living room, some she discovered dead and even one got stuck on a glue trap.

McCarron, a bartender who works six days a week, tells me she saved for 20 years to buy her first home, which is in the Parkwood Manor neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia.

McCarron says when she bought it, she had no idea there were dozens, maybe hundreds of bats in her attic or that the access panel to the attic was nailed shut.

“I thought they were gonna come through the wall. So anytime I heard them I had to leave,” she said.

McCarron was still living with family and renovating her new home, and she had a pest expert install a cone on her roof so the bats could fly out of the attic, but not back in.

Now the issue is what’s behind the walls. She suspects many months worth of potentially toxic bat droppings.

“I have to tear down all the walls and the ceilings I think, so I’ll find out next Wednesday," she said. "It depends on the build-up behind it.”

And the bat problems have spread beyond her home.

“Next thing you know, there goes our brand new puppy," said neighbor Sarah DelRicci.

Down the street, the DelRicci family recently had to put down their puppy. A few days shy of vaccinations, he was bitten by a rabid bat. They explain that because of the woods nearby, the bats have been problem, but that a couple of years ago the neighborhood pitched in to seal each others’ vents and roofs.

“So it was, you know, we’re going up, do you want us to do this for you? Certain homes said yes, certain homes said no. Certain homes slammed doors in people’s faces," DelRicci said.

McCarron says her home inspector never checked the attic because of the sealed panel.

“I cry all the time,” she said.

I tracked him down over the phone and he told me many, if not most row homes, don’t have that kind of access and a closed entry to the crawl space doesn’t mean someone is hiding something. His protocol is to note it in the report.