Exterminators plan to cast out critters at Shreveport police station

As we’ve been reporting for some time now, bats have been hidden and flying around in the walls of the Shreveport police department, but an extermination team is on the job to evict them.

As crews prepare to eradicate the swarm of unwanted visitors, the second and third floors of the Shreveport Police Department are now eerily silent, dark and empty.

“They flutter and they scratch against the wall and they make little squeaking noise,” said Robert Storment, of SRP Environmental. “So you could actually put your hands on the walls and feel the wall moving.”
“The danger is, there is a danger of having hystoplasma and crypocauscus in bat guano so we want to protect the employees,” he said. “While they’re doing the removal, there’s not really any risk of it unless you’re stirring it up.”

Tests have already shown the air in the building is safe  to breathe.

“They want to get them out because the odor that they’ve been creating is that the bat feces and the urine that’s been creating the odor,” Storment said. “They’re going to be disturbing it and they’re going to wash down the walls and cleaning it and disinfecting it, for the people inside the building, there’s not an issue.”

The battle against the bats has about a month to go. For now, crews are forced to live and let live.

“The protected period, this is the mating period for bats so we can’t, we can’t do anything until July 15th,” Storment said. “July 15th is when the pest control company will come in and they will start letting the bats leave and then preventing them from coming back.

If you trap them from coming back in, there’s babies in there and so the babies will die if the mommas don’t come back in,” he said.

Story Originally Published by KSLA.