RACCOON REMOVAL SERVICES
Raccoon Removal
You have raccoons in your attic or your garage. What are you going to do now? Raccoons are one of the most adaptable creatures on the face of the Earth. They will do everything in their power to find a way into urban areas to look for food, a warm place to nest, and anything else they need to survive. Raccoons have ways of getting into your home and garage that surprise many people. Continue reading this article to find out how to remove raccoons safely and humanely.
Why do raccoons wander onto my property?
Raccoons are creatures of opportunity that are also very curious. They may come onto your property for a variety of reasons. If you have easy food sources in your yard, be it fruit trees, dog food that is left out, or an abundance of small critters, raccoons will be drawn to your yard. Also consider looking at your trash can to see if it is easily accessible for raccoons, as they can get into them easily.
One of the real problems you can have with raccoons is when they get into your garage or, even worse, your attic. They come into these places looking for a nice, cozy place to set up their den. Most of the time, it will be a female raccoon that gets into your attic so that she can make a nice, safe nest for her young that she is about to have. No matter what reason they come onto your property, you will want to get rid of them.
Why should I remove them?
Raccoons are animals that cause a lot of damage, be it structural damage or the health risks that they pose. When it comes to property destruction, raccoons excel at it. They will eat and destroy any food source or trash they can find. They will kill any small pets or livestock (chickens and fowl) that are on your property, as these are easy food sources. Raccoons will also dig up your gardens and yard if there is an abundance of grubs present.
The health risks posed by raccoons is worse than the potential for property damage. Raccoon droppings are a host to all kinds of diseases, from raccoon ringworm to E. coli that has the potential to sicken you or your family. In addition to the health risks from their droppings, raccoons also can have rabies and many other illnesses that are dangerous to humans and pets. It is very important to get rid of these creatures before they cause more destruction or cause illness or death to someone.
How can I prevent raccoons?
Preventing raccoons is important, and it actually is not that hard to do. The main thing you need to do is get rid of any readily available food sources. Putting pet food away, locking up trash bins tightly, and picking up old fruit that fell to the ground are all excellent steps to preventing raccoons. Once you’ve done this, examine your house closely to spot any large holes or gaps along the roof, by your attic, by your chimney, and any other place you see. If there are gaps, fix them with a sealant or a sheet of aluminum. Prevention is easier for homeowners than removal, which is where a professional is recommended.
How do I remove raccoons?
Many homeowners try to remove raccoons on their own, oftentimes with little luck. The problem with this is that if someone catches a raccoon from their attic, there is a good chance that there is a nest full of baby raccoons up there. These babies will die slow, agonizing deaths while causing bad odors and more health risks to humans. This is the main reason it is recommended that people hire a professional wildlife removal company to deal with a raccoon infestation.
Why hire a wildlife removal company?
In addition to being sure that all raccoons are taken care of, there are many other benefits of having experts remove raccoons. One of the biggest reasons is that experts will be able to look at your home and property and determine ways to prevent raccoons from entering it again. No one does this better than A&D Construction Plus. A&D Construction Plus services the state of Maine and makes sure that the job is done right the first time. Once raccoons have been removed humanely, we will be able to safeguard your home, sealing gaps and holes, bolting siding on, raccoon-proofing your chimney, and many other prevention methods. We will then release the raccoons safely into the wild. At the end of the day, it is easier to prevent a raccoon from entering your property than to remove it.
How to Get a Raccoon Out of Your Attic
While raccoons might be a commonly seen animal throughout much of the United States, they are not exactly the type of house guest you want. These larger nuisance animals can cause tremendous amounts of damage and expose you and your family to health risks. If you have a raccoon in your attic, you will want to remove it as soon as possible. Continue reading to learn more about how to get a raccoon out of your attic.
What problems can a raccoon cause in my attic?
Raccoons might seem like fairly harmless attic visitors, but this is not the case. Raccoons can cause very serious health risks that can potentially put humans, their families, and their pets at risk to contract very serious, sometimes deadly diseases. Raccoon roundworm, rabies, and a variety of other nasty viral and bacterial infections are very well known to be spread by raccoons. If a raccoon were to bite or scratch a human, the diseases could be spread in that fashion. In addition, even coming into contact with the raccoon’s droppings or urine could also be enough to spread these diseases. This risk for potential disease spreading is very serious and should not be overlooked.
As if the health risks are not enough, raccoons can also cause some real property damage while in your attic. Since raccoons are larger than many nuisance animals, they will often leave large holes in the exterior of your home that would allow many more nuisance species to come into your home. In addition, raccoons are very good at tearing up insulation and smashing it down, which both contribute to the degradation of your insulation’s usefulness. This can cost you money with higher energy bills. Finally, raccoons are known to gnaw and scratch many different materials, potentially causing serious structural issues. This is precisely why raccoons cannot be allowed to live in the attics of homes!
How can I remove raccoons from my attic?
While removing a raccoon from your attic sounds simple, there are a couple of problems that you will potentially encounter. One of the biggest problems with removing a raccoon on your own is the potential for baby raccoons. Often, the raccoon that makes its way into your attic will be a pregnant mother raccoon who is looking for a warm and safe place to raise her young. If you try to remove this mother, her young raccoon pups will all starve to death and die slowly. Consequently, your whole home could begin to smell like dead animals, which could attract further pest problems. In addition, raccoons will begin to get wise and will not enter a cage trap, and will also not want to use a one-way door. These are generally the reasons that most homeowners in most scenarios are recommended to hire a professional wildlife removal service.
If you are absolutely certain that there are no baby raccoons in your attic or anywhere else around your home, you can attempt to remove raccoons on your own. The best way to go about this is to use a cage trap or a one-way door. Either choice represents an excellent and humane way to get rid of destructive animal. If you do attempt to remove raccoons on your own, be sure to check out local and state laws, and always be sure to take the proper safety precautions to keep you, your family, and your pets safe.
Why hire A&D Construction Plus?
Here at A&D Construction Plus, we have spent years perfecting our raccoon in the attic removal strategies so that they are completely safe and effective. Dealing with any type of nuisance animal can be frustrating, and we are proud to help the citizens of Maine solve their pest problems permanently. In addition to our animal removal services, we also offer many construction services, animal exclusions, and many other home services. Give us a call at A&D Construction Plus, and we will be happy to help you and your family solve your nuisance animal problems.
How to Keep Raccoons Out of My Garden
Raccoons may look cute from afar, but if you’ve had one in your garden, you already know how destructive they can be. As omnivores, these masked bandits have no problem feeding on fruits and vegetables. The only problem is you didn’t plant them for raccoons.
These pesky critters can also damage the root system of plants in your garden in their quest to dig up earthworms and grubs from the soil.
This post shares some of the tips we use at A&D Construction Plus to help our clients keep raccoons out of their garden for good.
Signs of Raccoons in the Garden
Raccoons are nocturnal. This makes your garden particularly susceptible to their attack at night. While you might not see a raccoon or other nuisance wildlife, the presence of damaged crops is an indication of an infestation. So, how can you tell if the culprit is a raccoon?
Look out for:
- Small dog-like droppings. They tend to be dark in color, smell bad, and contain undigested seeds and other food items.
- Latrines. Raccoons are known to defecate repeatedly at the same spot.
- Distinct five-toed paw tracks.
- Scratches on your fence and trees
- Evidence of looted trash cans
Keeping Raccoons out of Garden
- Remove food sources in your yard.
More often than not, raccoons are attracted to a yard because of an open trash can, pet food scattered around, birdseed lying on the floor, and other food sources. Once in your yard, they start exploring your property, and that’s when your garden catches their eyes.
To prevent that from happening, minimize access to food in your yard by:
- Ensuring your trash cans are properly sealed at all times.
- Sweeping off seeds from underneath your birdfeeder.
- Taking your pet food indoors, especially at night.
- Eliminating access to water.
- Build a fence
After eliminating other food sources in your yard, you also want to make the fruits and vegetables in your garden inaccessible to these pesky creatures. This can be accomplished with building a fence.
But remember, raccoons are good climbers. That’s why an electric fence is most effective. Use a 2-wire electric fence positioned 6 and 12 inches above the ground. Ensure that the fence goes a few inches into the ground to prevent raccoons from digging under.
Fencing your entire yard is a good way to keep raccoons away from your property altogether.
- Use repellents and deterrents
These are substances you can use or actions you can take to make your garden unappealing and uncomfortable for raccoons. Coming examples include:
- Ammonia: Raccoons hate the strong smell of ammonia. You can soak rags in ammonia and scatter them in your garden.
- Motion detector lights and water sprinklers: These devices come into action whenever they sense any wildlife approach. This helps to startle raccoons and send them back into the dark.
- Pepper spray: applying pepper spray around the perimeter of your garden and yard may help keep raccoons away.
- Big dogs: Big dogs can send off pesky raccoons away from your garden or yard.
- Live Traps
Believe it or not, some stubborn raccoons will always keep coming back to your garden no matter what you do. In such cases, trapping is the only choice left.
A live trap can be used to capture the nuisance raccoon, which can then be relocated at least 10 to 20 away. Good baits to use include marshmallows, bacon, canned tuna, and whole eggs, among many others.
To trap and relocate a raccoon effectively, you need to understand raccoon behavior and the laws surrounding wildlife trapping and removal. That’s why you might need professionals like the experts at A&D Construction Plus.
Wrap Up
We’ve explored ways through which you can keep raccoons out of your garden. If you’re unable to resolve the problem or you need help, A&D Construction Plus is always here to put an end to your infestation problems.
How to Keep Raccoons Away?
Everyone knows raccoons thanks to the black and white mask they wear, which makes them at times adorable but also quite sneaky and suspicious. We find that the infamous mask is more than appropriate for the animal itself, since raccoons are resourceful, smart and fast animals that have become masters in urban hit-and-runs in the years since they learned to live alongside humans.
Nowadays, raccoons are not at all an uncommon sight on human properties, as they frequently rummage through trash cans, dig up your crops, and upturn your attic. Which brings us to our title questions – what can you, the homeowner, do to keep raccoons away from your property?
Keep in mind that in this article, we’re focusing on prevention, and not on what to do if you’ve got a serious raccoon situation. If you do, our best recommendation is to just hire a professional wildlife removal company. While many think they’re doing a great deal in attempting DIY removal, the truth is, they’re going to a lot more toil and trouble, only to save a few bucks in the long run.
But how can you prevent raccoons from bothering you?
- Remove the main culprits.
Obviously, raccoons aren’t coming to your property just because they wanna hang out, and think you’re fun. They’re looking for food and water, like pretty much any other creature under the sun. So a good way to get raccoons to just leave you alone is to remove that food and water from your property.
Now, the attraction per se will depend from property to property, but most commonly, raccoons will hit up trash cans, garden crops, pet food bowls, and bird feeders. They will also be attracted to ponds, bird baths, and leaky pipes, as a great open source of water.
So seal up your trash cans, or bring them indoors overnight, and do the same with pet bowls. Since you probably can’t remove garden crops and ponds entirely, the second best thing you can do is to fence those up, or install protective netting.
- Use predator urine.
Predator urine, weird as it sounds, is actually sold in a lot of specialty stores precisely for this purpose. You can actually buy a pint of fox or coyote urine, to sprinkle around your yard, in order to deter wild animals from bothering you. Presumably, the smell is strong enough to repel the raccoons, and tell them to stay away from your property.
Alternatively, you could just get a dog, which would not only solve the urine problem for you, but also place an actual predator nearby. And since raccoons aren’t generally aggressive, fight-y creatures, they’re unlikely to start a fight with a big dog over your trash cans.
- Try to keep them away naturally.
A common favorite is using your plants to repel wild animals. Plants with strong, pungent smells like garlic, clover, or lemongrass, have been known to repel wild intruders like raccoons. Presumably the smell is too strong for them, and pushes them away.
- Try a commercial deterrent.
Another option is to buy a specially made device that senses when the raccoon is nearby (in other words, motion-activated), and emits either a loud noise, or a strong light. Since raccoons are nocturnal creatures, they’re unlikely to like either of these, and look for a home elsewhere.
Trim your yard.
A great way to discourage wild intruders is to maintain your yard neat. Keep the grass short and regularly trim the branches that might allow raccoons roof access. This will make your property unpleasant for the raccoons, while increasing their chances of being noticed, if they do decide to make an appearance.
How to Keep Raccoons Out of Your Garbage Can
When it comes to troublesome wildlife, you’ll be pressed to find some more in love with trash than raccoons. Thanks in part to raccoons being omnivorous, they’re open to eating virtually whatever they come across. Although that primarily means bugs, assorted plants, or other pieces of food found on the ground, it might also mean stuff out of your garbage can.
And, because most people don’t plan for raccoon issues within their garbage can, that could mean an issue waiting to happen – after all, not only do trash cans have human food, but they also have a lot of material raccoons are willing to eat anyway. Garbage cans are quick ways to find food, and that means raccoons love them. So, how do you keep raccoons out of your garbage can?
Lock Down Your Garbage Can
Primarily, the best way to keep raccoons out of a garbage can is to prevent them from even accessing the inside. Many think that a standard lid, when closed, is enough to keep a raccoon out, although most of the time, it’s definitely not. Raccoons are incredibly smart animals, and they’re willing to go out of their way to find their food.
That includes taking the lid off your trash can, opening easy spots for food, and much more. Additionally, that means that an easy solution to a raccoon problem is to simply invest in a heavier garbage can or to buy something like a bungee cord to lock down the lid. In either case, you’re looking to make the effort to get the food in your garbage can much greater than the food inside.
Get Rid of Smells
However, locking down your garbage can isn’t foolproof. Not only can raccoons likely chew through a bungee cord, but even mechanical locks might break over time, and garbage cans themselves can be knocked over and sorted through. In these situations, you might need to get rid of attractants involving your garbage can.
That might mean bagging or double bagging your trash, adding ammonia or mothballs to the garbage can, or investing in a garbage can with a lid that closes and blocks smells. Other times, it might mean keeping food and trash indoors until not too long before your trash service runs. No matter what, getting rid of the smells of food works well towards getting rid of raccoons.
Block off Your Garbage Can
Although it’s a much more involved option, another great way to keep raccoons out of your garbage can is to simply keep them away from raccoons. Depending on where your garbage is, that could mean placing it behind a fence, creating a little wooden section to store your can in, or moving garbage underneath your deck.
There are countless ways you could move your garbage can, and it really depends on where it is and the places you have to relocate it. It’s important, too, to remember that raccoons are tricky animals and will likely make their way around your fences or cages if you give them enough time.
Remove the Raccoons
Worst case scenario, it might be worth it to get the raccoons removed. Although rifling through your trash might seem more annoying than it does dangerous, raccoons can prove to be both. The little creatures can carry diseases, scratch or bite you, and might do whatever it takes to get away from you if started.
In these situations, you might need to call local pest control or a local animal control company, both built around helping get rid of animal problems you might encounter, in a way that’s safe for both you and the animal. When dealing with any animal that you’re not too confident in taking care of, you can do much worse than a local pro.
