A Watery Grave

March 14, 2017 admin Leave a comment

I think there might be a dead animal in the crawlspace of my house? About two weeks ago I started to smell something strange when I was in the kitchen but I kind of passed it off as just bad food or even my imagination. The problem is that it has only gotten worse and I cleaned out my fridge and all of the cupboards and pantry, so I know it’s not rotting food. It’s the worst around the sink so I even had my plumber come and clean out the lines but he said they were good as new, and when I mentioned the smell he didn’t think it was coming from the pipes, but the crawlspace.

Earlier this year I noticed a couple of raccoons running out from the side of my house, and when I checked it out I found a small gap between the house and the dirt and when I shined a light down it, I could see into the crawlspace. I wasn’t sure then if the raccoons were living there because I had never heard anything, but now I think that that might be what the dead animal smell from the crawlspace is. We had some really heavy rain towards the middle of February that caused the crawlspace to flood, and if the raccoons really were living down there, it’s possible that when it flooded one couldn’t get out and drowned.

So really, my concerns are doubled. First, that there is possibly a dead animal in the crawlspace, and second that there still might be other raccoons living down there (with the corpse ick!). I’m trying to find someone to come out and see if either of those things are true, and to fix them afterwards. I just want to go back to living in a clean, fresh kitchen when I didn’t worry about animals living and dying in my crawlspace and my only concern was flooding. That is what I need, can anyone help!

Voles

Tunnel Trouble

March 10, 2017 admin Leave a comment

I’m 99% positive there are voles in my lawn; that or aliens that look like voles are creating aimless crop circles into my grass (I wish it was the aliens). Two weeks ago in between the winter storm breaks, the snow at my house started to melt and I noticed that there were long stretches of dead grass cutting through the green stuff. It wouldn’t have made me worry except that it was all over the lawn. In almost any patch I uncovered you could see dead grass, and that was only the beginning.

Within a couple of days of noticing the dry strips, my cat started bringing home dead mice. Except they weren’t mice, their ears were smaller and tails were shorter, I was a little baffled because I didn’t know what my cat was bringing home! I figured that the two had to be connected because they showed up around the same time, so I did my research. It didn’t take that long to solve the mystery, five minutes on Google and I knew: there were voles in my lawn. I learned a couple of things like voles are attracted to moisture, making them more common in winter and spring months; and that they can carry a deadly virus called the Hauntavirus.

Once I read that last part, I was freaked out. Not only were these things killing my lawn and gardens, but my cat had already killed and eaten four of them and they could kill us back with some virus! That’s when I started trying to get rid of them myself, I bought some poison at an IFA in town and tried my best to apply it to my lawn, but after a week: no luck. The tunnels were expanding and my cat killed two more, so now I’m looking for a professional. I haven’t really been able to find anyone with a slogan that says “Got Voles in your Lawn, We Can Help!” (which would be useful), but I’ve called a couple of wildlife technicians and things are looking up; hopefully by the time spring hits for good, they’ll be gone.

Skunks

Grandma on the Defense

March 7, 2017 admin Leave a comment

There are two skunks living under the deck in my backyard and I need for someone to get rid of them. They’ve burrowed a hole down underneath the deck and you can hear them down there right around dusk scuffling around. There haven’t been any instances where they’ve sprayed and caused a problem with smell – although there is definitely a skunky tang to the air around the deck especially early in the morning. I realize that you probably think if they’re not spraying and causing any harm why can’t I just leave them there, but I hope any rational person would understand my dilemma of needing them gone without any further explanation.

The real problem is my granddaughter. My daughter leave little Alyssa with me when she goes to work in the morning and we spend the day together. She loves to be outside and will play through all hours of the night if I let her, and I used to entertain her energy and enthusiasm but now I’m too worried about the skunks under the deck to let her play outside without careful supervision. I don’t want them to crawl out from under the deck and spray or attack my sweet girl. She’s so innocent and sweet she still tries to pet every animal she sees so that’s a very real concern for me. I just want to protect her.

I’m in a pretty residential area or I would have my husband take care of this problem himself. I assume trapping them will be fairly easy; they walk the same small path every night when they leave and the only way they can access the deck is through one small hole. But, if I trapped them myself I’d have no clue what to do with them. I need help. Help protecting my home and my grandbaby!

Raccoons

Undisclosed Infestation

March 3, 2017 admin Leave a comment

Personally, when I’m buying houses I prefer that they don’t come with raccoons in the attic, but maybe that’s just me. We bought the house in December, and granted the raccoons didn’t move in until late January, but according to the neighbors this was not the first time raccoons had gotten into the house’s attic; and I am very frustrated that it was never mentioned once when we were looking into the house! At one point the realtor even asked about a strange smell coming from the attic, and the owner acted oblivious to what it was!

When the smell started to get worse and small sounds started coming from the attic, I went to investigate, and I was shocked by what I saw. The entire attic was in shambles! There were raccoon feces everywhere, torn insulation, ripped up dry wall, and a hole directly through the roof to the outside. I was in a disgusted trance, looking at the entire mess; truthfully I didn’t think it could get any worse; until I heard a throaty growl coming from the far corner. My eyes met the large, furrowed face of a mother raccoon, right there in my attic. It took me about 20 seconds to realize what I was seeing and to get the hell out of dodge.

For the last month-and-a-half, my wife and I have been watching the attic carefully. We’ve seen the raccoon leave several times during the night, and once, when she was up early enough, my wife saw it going back in from the hole I saw. It’s obvious that this problem isn’t just going to solve itself; I did a little research and apparently raccoons mate around January, meaning that this lone raccoon could be pregnant and just waiting to pop out 2-5 new raccoons into the attic! I’m not even a father of a human child yet, I am NOT ready to deal with baby raccoons, especially not in my attic!

Birds, Pigeons

Old MacDonald had a Farm

February 28, 2017 admin Leave a comment

There are pigeons in my barn, and it is getting out of control. Living on a farm I am pretty darn used to seeing animals around, and outside of my personal livestock of horses, pigs, a few head of cattle, I’ve also got chickens, turkeys, barn cats, and a couple of dogs running around. I get along well with animals and respect the positive way they can impact my land by helping with insect and rodent control and keep food from going to waste. When I first saw the pigeons in the barn, I figured that they’d help with just about the same things as the rest of the animals do so I let them nest in the upper level. Obviously, I was wrong.

When it started out, I found about 3 or 4 pigeons in the barn, just casually roosting on the roof. Later that evening is when I discovered that they were nesting in the hay storage at the top of the barn, but I figured they would help control any ticks and mites that would get into the hay. What I didn’t realize, was that pigeons can actually have bird mites in their nests!! They got everywhere, all of the animals were itching and scratching, it was a nightmare. After that I tried to shoo the birds away and left poison pellets out for them to eat. But my plan failed.

A year-and-a-half later, I’m still here with the same pigeon problem, only now it has more than quintupled in size! My original 4 birds has now grown to nearly 30. Having a few pigeons in the barn was annoying, but this is absolutely mad. The cats will kill a few now and again but not nearly enough; that’s what I get for teaching them to leave the chickens alone I guess. Even worse, the pigeons have learned not to eat the pellets I set out and I’m too slow of a shot to kill them all. I need some help, please!

Skunks

It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog World

February 24, 2017 admin Leave a comment

There is a skunk in my yard and he is at war with my dogs. It started about two weeks ago after we had about 3 days of hard rain. The skunk was denning underneath our shed out back, and I think that the rain may have flooded it out which is why we’re just now seeing activity from it. The problem is that now that it’s out it is wandering around our property and we have two small dogs. Needless to say the two types of animals do NOT get along.

Even though I know the skunk is out and about, the sightings are scattered. We will smell him long before we see him, especially with the dogs. It has been a nightmare dealing with it, if we let them out and forget to watch them they’ll be long gone, chasing after the skunk before we realize it and can stop them. In two weeks, they have each been sprayed twice; the hydrogen peroxide and baking soda are practically all gone from using them so much and I can still smell the skunk lingering in their fur. I’m not even sure if the skunk is in the yard or if it’s hiding out under the shed still. I know that when I let the dogs out the immediately head for the foundation of the shed, but they just sniff and don’t usually bark or scratch. When they see the skunk, though, they go absolutely bananas!

We need help getting rid of this thing. The skunk is turning our backyard into a war zone, world war three is happening: dogs vs. skunk! I’ve looked up skunk traps and skunk repellents, but it seems unlikely to me that they would help get the skunk out of my yard for good. I’d rather have him trapped and relocated so that I know he’s gone. I need a professional skunk trapper and I don’t even know if that’s a real job!

Animal in the Wall, Raccoons

Living in Fear

February 21, 2017 admin Leave a comment

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

February 17, 2017 admin Leave a comment

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.

Rodent, Voles

Dangerous Tunnels

February 14, 2017 admin Leave a comment

I have a severe vole problem in my yard. Last week was warm and small holes started to melt in the snowing exposing the grass beneath. I was surprised to see that the patches of grass were split into sections of green, healthy grass, and yellow, dead paths. It wasn’t in just one spot either, it was in a few so I dug up some of the snow to investigate and they were everywhere! Trails of dead grass snaking across my yard. I had never heard of animals that did that until I Googled the things I was seeing and found out that it was a common sign of voles (a small, mouse-like creature).

I did some research on why they would have suddenly moved to my yard, and I guess they look for areas with a lot of water. I’m guessing that the snow we got this winter is what brought them around. But since I can’t control the weather, I need help controlling the voles. They burrow through the ground, consuming the roots of grass, flowers, even trees! They kill off all the vegetation and not only that, but they can spread a dangerous disease called the Hantavirus through their feces.

A couple of days ago, the vole problem got worse. It’s not just the trails, but things started to sink into the ground where the trails are dug. I was walking across the stone pavers in my garden and a couple of them sunk into holes in the ground. I’m worried that someone will fall into one of the tunnels when they’re walking across my yard and get seriously injured. I need some help; I didn’t even know these animals existed until a week ago, I have no idea how to get rid of them.