If you’ve got bats in your belfry, maybe HGTV can help. No, we’re not talking mental health care, although the flying mammals that are prominently featured in the two-part special “House of Bats” can reduce some homeowners to gibbering basket cases.
The program, which airs Sunday morning, Oct. 30, follows London, Ont., bat control experts Benjamin Vaughan and Kenny Charboneau as they try to help panicky folk get rid of unwanted flying houseguests and keep them out.
“What we try to emphasize on the TV show is that this is just complex work,” explains Vaughan, who started exploring bat control while working as a chimney sweep. “It’s not something homeowners can do effectively by themselves, and it’s not something that local exterminators and pest control companies can do effectively, because bats can get into such tiny openings, and you really need a lot of construction knowledge to do the job right.” The first episode follows Vaughan and Charboneau as they try to help a woman whose dream home has turned into a nightmare now that the bats infesting her attic have started flying around her kitchen and terrorizing her and her dogs.
The second episode takes the duo inside a 19th-century church that a couple are trying to convert into their own comfy residence. Tell that to the bats in the belfry of the building, however.
“This is just very specialized work,” Vaughan says. “If someone says they’ll come and fix it for $200-300, the customers obviously desperately want to believe them instead of me, who tells them, ‘Yeah, this is going to be thousands of bucks.’ ”
More information at batcontrolspecialists.com
