Category Archives: Animal in the Wall

Animal in the Wall, Raccoons

Living in Fear

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I am literally on the verge of moving into a different house.  There are raccoons in the ceiling of my split level home, and they are pushing me to my limits.  Before they got into my house I would occasionally see them outside, sometimes even running across the roof. They are huge animals, I don’t have the slightest idea how they got into the ceiling.  There aren’t any gaps that big, I checked; but since they’ve gotten up there they have caused me nothing but anxiety and problems.

At first they just ran around and you could hear them skittering and chirping, and it was only a mild problem; definitely something I could deal with.  Then one day my front porch light stopped working, I changed the bulb but nothing happened, I checked the cord and it had been completely chewed through.  I let that go, I could live without a porch light.  Then things went from bad, to worse.  Urine stains started showing up on the ceilings in multiple rooms, not only was the smell bad but the ceiling material was starting to rot and crack.

After the urine stains, my raccoon problem got unforeseeably worse: THEY CHEWED THROUGH MY AC AND HEATING SYSTEM! It was completely destroyed, beyond repair, I couldn’t believe it.  I was tearing out my hair and picking at my skin, constantly on edge, and then a raccoon nearly fell into my lap!!  The raccoon had been standing on the vent just above me and another raccoon put weight on it and it fell open! The one fell, looked me in the eyes and ran rampant through the house until I could get it outside.  I’m at my wits end, I’ve become superstitious and am always looking over my shoulder and flinching at every sound, I can’t keep living like this. The raccoons in my ceiling are about to run my out of my own house – I need help or I need a realtor.

Animal in the Wall, Rat, Rats, Rodent

Dirty Rat

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We’ve tried everything to get rid of the raccoons in the attic, but at this point it seems impossible.  They’ve been there for what, a couple of months now?  I can’t pinpoint an exact time because we actually didn’t know they were there until a month or so ago, which is when we first saw the mother raccoon go into the attic.  Before that, we just heard the occasional bumps and creaks that we gave the old house credit for.  We would have been none the wiser if our neighbor’s cat hadn’t gotten into a tiff with the raccoon, leaving us to investigate the commotion and catch the raccoon crawling through a gap in the soffit.

After that we listened carefully to the sounds from above the ceiling, and it became fairly clear to us that there was more than just one raccoon in the attic, she had babies, so we started to do our research.  Anything we could think of we looked up: how to get rid of raccoons in the attic, trapping raccoons, the most effective raccoon removal methods; all of it.  After we made a list of possible solutions, we started to check them off one at a time.  We turned the lights on in the attic, we started playing loud music during the day when we were gone, we set traps outside where we thought we might catch the mother, and we even put ammonia soaked rags up there with a fan to blow the smell around.  We took every step possible, and we thought it had worked.

Not long after we had started harassing the raccoons, I saw the mother leave the attic with what looked like a baby in her mouth. We were ecstatic! After we celebrated for a minute, my husband went out and sealed off the gap we saw her entering and exiting through.  We went to bed happy that night, thinking all was well.  Of course, happy endings are for fairy tales and the next night the raccoon came back, tore the soffit open again, and has been hiding out there for the last 4 days (she hasn’t left once).  We can’t hear any babies anymore, but we don’t know what she’s doing up there and we have nothing left to try.  Please, we need some serious help to get rid of the raccoon in our attic, I can’t keep doing this.

Animal in the Wall, Mice, Rat, Rats, Rodent

The Longest Night

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Around this time last year, we had rats in the walls.  I look back on the whole situation and I’m kind of surprised that I didn’t realize it beforehand.  I would find little black pellets both inside my house and on the deck near some gaps in the siding.  Obviously I’m not completely oblivious, I recognized the pellets and feces and assumed it was a small mouse problem so I set out some mouse traps here and there, but never had any success so I assumed the feces I had found was old and that my cat had already killed the culprits.

That was until one night I was enjoying old NCIS reruns, and my TV stopped working.  I tried turning it off and on, and plugging and unplugging it but still nothing; no sound, no static, no anything.  I wasn’t exactly sure what to do so I Googled possible problems.  I came up with a blown fuse, faulty cord or plug, or even a failed power supply; I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with that information so I called my neighbor and asked if he’d come take a look.  He came and checked everything he could and said he wasn’t sure why it wouldn’t work, everything seemed perfectly fine and nothing else was down.  I had to wait out the night in radio silence until the cable company could come in the morning.

When they did, I was genuinely surprised at what they had found!  It wasn’t a problem with any of the actual electrical sources, but something had chewed through the cable in the wall that fed to the back of the TV.  After that I called in a Wildlife Technician and they were able to identify my problem: there were rats in the walls.  It took a month or so to get them all trapped and all of the mess they left behind cleaned up, but I was very happy with the outcome.  Now I can sit and watch my shows without any worry of rats chewing up my wires.

Animal in the Wall, Raccoons

What’s Living in the Attic?

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There are raccoons in the attic of our rental home.  My family has lived here for about 7 weeks now, but before that it sat empty for 2 years; I think they probably started nesting here during that time.  The first 3-4 weeks we didn’t even notice them because of all the racket we were making trying to get settled in, but after that we started to hear sounds almost every night and we started to suspect that we weren’t the only renters in the house.

It started as just small thumps from the ceiling, and at first I just attributed it to the new heating system, I figured everything was still adjusting.  Then we started to hear scraping and thumps in the walls and the sounds of baby animals whining and calling out to their mother.  That’s when we figured out who our house guests were.  Obviously we couldn’t call anyone in to confirm our suspicions until our landlord approved it, unless we wanted to pay for the inspection out of pocket; so we called him and let him know what was going on.  He told us he would take care of it and set out some live traps hoping to catch the raccoons himself, but no luck. We suggested that he call a professional Wildlife Removal Technician, but he wanted to try everything else first; so, we waited.

It wasn’t all that bad, we knew that the landlord would take care of any damages caused by the animals so that didn’t bother us.  The problem was, my daughters were terrified of the sounds they would hear at night.  They’re 6 and 8, so their imaginations are vast and even though they knew what the animals were, they were so afraid that they were trying to eat them while they slept.  Cue sharing a bed with my kids for two weeks. BUT, last night my landlord called and told me I could call in the big guns, so there’s an inspection scheduled for later this afternoon and hopefully the raccoons in the attic will be long gone by the end of the week!

Animal in the Wall, Bats

Legion of the Undead

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My landlord is a vampire.  There’s no other reason he would ignore so many bats in the walls for so long; they must be his relatives.  But seriously, we have been renting this house for two years with an ongoing bat problem and have still received NO help from Mr. Dracula whatsoever. How could anyone in their right mind let people live like this!  We’ve complained and called and asked for help countless times, but he will either ignore the calls, the question, or just us completely! I don’t know how to deal with it anymore, it’s worse than it has ever been and our landlord is much farther than “a phone call away”!

They’re in the walls on both sides of the house, and I’m pretty sure they come in and out from the air vents, but I read somewhere that they need just a ¼ of an inch to get inside so I guess it could be anywhere.  You can hear them leave the house at night, and it can be terrifying when you aren’t used to it.  There’s screeching and fluttering and it lasts for a good 10-15 minutes and then in a couple of hours as they all come back it happens again!  In the morning the front step will be covered in bat guano and we’ve even found dead bats in the past. Not to mention that you can smell them from the inside of the house (the chimney is the worst).

I know you’re probably wondering why we haven’t just moved yet, found a different house or even an apartment; why would we live in a bat cave?  Trust me, we are looking for houses and are planning to leave the second our lease is up, but we really don’t want to leave this for the next family.  I have three kids that are terrified by the bats in the house and will sometimes go stay at grandmas to get away from it; I’m even scared by the problem.  I’m hoping I can make the overlord, excuse me, LANDlord address the problem before it becomes someone else’s. No one deserves to sign up for Dracula’s army unknowingly.

Animal in the Wall, Birds, Woodpeckers

Misophoniac

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I have always been sensitive to loud and repetitive sounds, my ears aren’t sensitive or anything, they just drive me up the wall.  Pen clicking, slurping, tapping, you name it and I probably can’t stand it.  Now I don’t know what I did to earn this kind of karma, but I have a woodpecker problem. And it doesn’t appear to be just one woodpecker, either, actually it’s a nest of them. If I had known about the problem sooner, it would never have gotten to this point.

I know what you’re thinking, “If sound bothers you that much, how in the world does a woodpecker pecking at your house slip past you?” I went to stay with my parents in Minnesota for two week to both celebrate Christmas and get some skiing in for the year.  Trust me, I found out about the woodpecker the day I got back. I was putting in a load of laundry when I first heard the drumming on the outside wall of my house.  No sound has ever made me as frustrated as that sound did; it pierced my soul and I felt every tap beat along with my pulse.  It was nauseating.  I grabbed my headphones, put on some white noise, and went outside to find the culprit.

There, on the corner of the second story, I could see a hole and a few feet to the right was the woodpecker himself, working on another.  I climbed up on a ladder to stuff the hole with an old shirt but I discovered a nest inside, and inside of the nest were four ugly, pink babies.  I can NOT live my entire life in a house with a woodpecker problem, surviving the next couple of weeks until the baby birds are big enough to leave the nest and I can hire someone to help get the other one to leave.  Wish me luck!

Animal in the Wall, Raccoons

Raining Maggots

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My least favorite job involved some sort of dead animal in a chimney, and a crap-ton of maggots. I’ve worked with Allstate Animal Control for a number of years now, and I’ve had a few weird jobs, one that scared me half to death, and then there are the ones you will never forget. This was a job I still see in my nightmares. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen dead animals before – more times than I can count – and it wasn’t my first run in with maggots, but something about the combination and the atmosphere just made it spooky.
It was a gloomy Tuesday afternoon, a storm was rolling in and I remember because we could hear the faint sound of thunder in the distance, but it was our last job for the day (we had inspected the home the day before and were ready to finish up and clean too, if possible). I had just finished lunch when we pulled up to this old, straight out of a Stephen King book, cabin. We grabbed our gear, and headed to the door ready to pull the dead animal out of the chimney and get it over with. After talking with the owners and setting up our stuff, we pulled on our hazmat suits and prepared ourselves for the unavoidable stench of death. As we did that, thunder shook the house and the already dim lights flickered. I gave my buddy John the ‘if it gets too bad outside we’ll have to finish this tomorrow’ nod, and he returned it; and then, we brazened up and started to scrape the chimney.
Not long after I started, I made the mistake of laying down and looking up the chimney to get a better look, to which a torrent of maggots responded, hitting me like a tsunami (one got in my mouth!). This was followed up by another clap of thunder, and the release of the dead animal. In shock from the attack of maggots and trying to spit out whatever dust and bugs were in my mouth, I didn’t think to pull out of the fireplace and avoid, whatever it was dead in the chimney, coming down and landing on me as well. As I took in the stench of rot, decay, and smoke, I let out a scream that Edvard Munch would have been proud of, and every piece of food I ate that day left its place in my stomach, and covered the chimney. To this day, I have bad dreams about that job, but I did learn that when dealing with a dead animal in a chimney, don’t stick your head in the fireplace!

Animal in the Wall, Squirrels

Squirrels in the Vents

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Have you ever heard the pitter patter of squirrels in the vents?  I sincerely hope that the answer is no because it’s quite unsettling, especially when you live in an older house like I do.  I won’t lie, it crossed my mind that my house could be haunted and I thought about calling Jennifer Love Hewitt to see if she could get the ghost out.  Luckily I realized what it was when I watched a squirrel climb from the siding on my house to the tree that almost brushed up against it.  No ghosts, but definitely rodents and I’m not sure which I would have preferred.

After my squirrel sighting, I began to investigate exactly how he could have gotten in the vents because I definitely hadn’t invited him in.  Walking around my house I found exactly what I didn’t want to, a place where the tiny buggers could climb right in.  Near my bathroom window there’s an exhaust vent that didn’t have a cover on it, and led right to the venting in my bathroom and I’m sure to the rest of the house.  At least I didn’t have a hole to patch but the squirrels in the vents were looking like they were my fault at this point.

Fortunately I don’t think the squirrels were nesting in my house, at least not yet, because after I went to Home Depot and bought myself a cover, I didn’t hear them any longer. WOOHOO.  I’m just glad it was an easy fix and not something I had to call in the big guns for.  My advice though, is this: make sure you cover all holes outside that can lead inside, or you too will have squirrels in your vents.

Animal in the Wall, Mice, Rodent

Something in the Air Vents

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We were snuggled down ready to watch 50 First Dates when we heard it, something in the air vents. I was excited for date night, but there was nothing more I wanted to do than get out of the house when I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet running underneath the floor. At first I thought it the air vent was broken, that’s how loud and disruptive the scratching and clicking was, but after we stopped and really paid attention, there’s no doubt it’s some sort of animal down there. As soon as I realized what was making the noise, I stomped all around the kitchen floor. I must have sounded like Dumbo jumping up and down as loud as I could, trying to scare it out of my house, but I guess it was no use. Later that night when I was getting water, I heard it again and choked on the water in my throat. After the near death experience, I drew the line. You could ruin date night and intrude on my privacy, but you can’t try to kill me! Whatever’s in those air vents better hide, and hide well.
After staying up all night doing research, I’ve decided it’s a rat, or maybe a mouse or even a squirrel; some sort of little rodent crawling around down there. I’m still not sure what it is but it’s definitely one of those three, I hope. If it’s any bigger than that I might have to just move somewhere else, most likely somewhere sunny and warm where animals don’t crawl into your air duct for warmth. I put out a trap the day after I first heard it, but it’s been almost a week and it’s getting more active! Instead of just running around in the evenings and at night like it was, it always seems to be awake! The problem is that I’m leaving for Switzerland tomorrow and don’t have time to get someone down here, how do I get rid of this thing in the air vents?!

Animal in the Wall, Snakes

Snake in the Wall

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My life became Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets last year when we found out our snake was in the wall. Benny is a Boa Constrictor that my daughter was given by a friend who was moving to Alaska and just didn’t have room for the massive 6-foot snake. We didn’t either but since Sasha loved him so much, we did anyway, without exactly understanding the caretaking it would require. Although we had been given the giant aquarium for the snake, he wasn’t done growing and sprouted two more feet in the next month or two making him too large for the cage, but we just couldn’t afford his new home just yet, BIG MISTAKE. With his strength and length, it didn’t take him long to figure out how to push the top off and sneak out from his home. Luckily we caught him and were able to more adequately secure him inside, or at least we thought.
While my husband and I were at work, and Sasha and her sister were at school, Benny the Boa had plenty of time to plot his escape. I’m still not sure how he did it, but he definitely did and by the time we got home, we were trying to solve the mystery of the vanishing snake. We looked everywhere, high and low inside cupboards and behind dressers. We searched here and there and everywhere but we could not find him! The Amber Alert went on in our house for about a month, but it seemed like he had slithered himself into the woods and out of our lives. I’ll admit I was a little relieved but Sash was heartbroken by his disappearance so we kept our hopes up and our eyes peeled, I mean how hard could it be to spot an 8-foot giant?
As it turns out, it was pretty hard. Benny had to find us. About two nights ago while Kaitlyn (my other daughter) was sleeping, she woke up to find that the sneaky snake had intertwined his scaly, slippery body with her legs and the bed posts and was trying to climb behind the bed. Fortunately she was too sleepy to be startled and instead just untangled him, carried him upstairs, and plopped him onto Sasha’s bed with a disgruntled “I found your snake”. He had been crawling around in the walls and the air vents, probably just feeling out his new jungle since we had never let him. Everyone’s glad to have him back, and I’ll admit that even I’m a little pleased with the return of our snake from the wall.