If you want our honest answer to the question: you should use neither ammonia nor mothballs to get rid of bats. While we're on the subject, you shouldn't use ammonia or mothballs to try and evict or repel any kind of nuisance wildlife. You'd be surprised by just how dangerous those two things are. We're not really sure why or how mothballs and ammonia became linked to bats, but they have been and it's now proving rather difficult to disassociate them. Both are toxic compounds, neither of which is actually designed to repel bats or any other wild animal.



When you use ammonia or mothballs, you are essentially using toxic gases to try and encourage the animals to find somewhere else to hang out. If you make your entire attic foggy with ammonia fumes, for example, there's a good chance that at least a few of the bats will evacuate the area. That's a good thing, right?

Maybe … Probably not, though. Being a toxic gas, you would need to calculate the exact amount of ammonia you would need to ensure the vapor covers the attic area. Too much and you will kill the bats – an unlawful action that could face serious repercussions. Too little and you might just move the bats from one side of the attic to the other.

Even if you did get the amount right, there's no guarantee the bats will leave. Baby bats might not be capable of leaving at all, which means that you'll force the mothers to potentially abandon them. Those pups will most certainly die without their mother. Spring and summer bat colonies in the attic almost always means that you have a maternity roost on your hands – mothers with pups. Using ammonia, mothballs, or anything else that is considered to be toxic around that time is a recipe for disaster. Using anything that is meant to encourage the animal to take a course that it wouldn't usually take is probably not going to give you that much success. What if the mothballs, ammonia, or whatever other repellent you decide to use DOES work, but it doesn't force the critters out, but rather deeper into your home. You will have a much harder time locating them and then removing them once they've moved into a much deeper, darker spot in the wall cavities or elsewhere. It's not like you can lead the way with lights, hoping they'll find them and then their way to the exit, is it?

Anything that is designed to repel wild animals, bats included, is not going to give you the best results. It simply herds those animals into another spot, or has no effect at all. When you lost at how much some of those repellents can cost, you might as well have just called in the professionals to start with.

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