FONDA — Several reports of people coming in contact with bats prompted the Montgomery County Public Health department to issue a notice to help residents remain safe when they confront the little winged creatures.

County Community Health Worker Suzanne Wells said the department received calls last month from people who found bats in their homes.

Officials don’t believe there is a crisis, Wells said, and such calls are more frequent in the summer months.

“It does happen every year. At one point, it did seem like we had . . . more reports to our office in the past month than we did the year before,” Wells said.

A total of five bats from Montgomery County were sent to the state during June. One was found to carry rabies, according to the state Health Department.

Along with raccoons, skunks and foxes, bats are common rabies carriers.

Only a small percentage of bats actually carry rabies, Wells said, but officials can’t be sure if a bat that comes in contact with people or pets may carry the disease.

“Everything is so much more active in the warm weather that it just shows up more,” Wells said.

Officials are asking people who think they came in contact with a bat to try to capture it intact — scientists need the bat’s skull in one piece in order to test it, Wells said.

“If you smash it with a dictionary . . . it’s not a good specimen,” Wells said.

There are several ways to catch a bat, and there is a state Health Department tutorial the local health department is referring people to on YouTube, the Internet video-sharing Web site

The video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YhnV5WJQBA.

People who suspect bats are roosting in their houses can watch for them leaving the home at dusk or entering before dawn, according to the county health department.

Typical nesting sites include attics and behind shutters; bats can also enter houses under roofing and siding, under a porch roof, in vents and behind hollow walls, according to the county health department.

Gov. David Paterson declared June Rabies Awareness Month to highlight the increase in human contact with wildlife that comes with the summer season, state Health Department Spokesman Jeff Hammond said.

Bats were responsible for 38 of 41 human rabies cases in the U.S. since 1990. There have been three fatal cases of human rabies in New York since 1993, according to the state Health Department. Two of those cases involved bats, one was from a rabid dog that bit a person while in Africa, according to the state.