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Raccoons

Pest Control – Raccoons

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Pest control ain’t just for little critters like roaches and ants.  Pest control is for any pest, including the coons that keep stealing my food, and I’m not too sure my old bones can handle it.  I usually sit up in my cat tree, overseeing the household affairs and making sure all is well during the night.  I’m an old cat, but I still make sure my house stays nice and safe through the dark hours.  In all my years, I’ve done my job well and handled a lot of the pest control around here.  I keep the mouse population under control, I’ve scared off more than one rat in my time, and I keep the property pretty much free of voles and gophers.  But, when pest control includes getting rid of raccoons, I have to draw the line.

The people I live with keep my dry food in a big bin, close by, so they can keep my bowl filled all the time.  It’s a nice, satisfying deal.  They give me a warm place to sleep and lots of food, and I handle the pest control.  But, one night, a little black paw came right through my cat door, followed by a black snuffling snout and black-rimmed eyes.  My food bin and cat tree sit right by the door, and I guess that raccoon decided to come right on in and steal it.  I’ve run up against a coon only once in my life, and it wasn’t pretty.  I still have the scars to prove it.  So, I was a little more than cautious when that critter came right through my very own cat door, bold as you please.  I slunk out of sight and watched the whole thing.  I’m great at rodent pest control and insect pest control, but raccoon pest control is best left to someone who knows what they’re doing, and won’t end up with bites, scratches or worse.

That raccoon came in and walked around my space, snuffling around the food mostly, but also taking a look up in my cat tree.  Good thing it was hungrier than anything else, so it pretty much just ignored me.  With those paws, it easily dragged the bin over to the cat door, and hopped back outside.  Sticking its head back through the plastic door, it easily popped that top right off the bin and dug in.  Now, I’ve been trying to do that for years, but I’ve never been able to get that tight lid off.  That raccoon made it look so easy, and I growled in jealousy as I watched.

Soon, it was joined by a second raccoon, and I wished raccoon pest control would show up right then and get rid of the raccoons.  Unfortunately, it was late at night and I was the only observer, so I was forced to just watch as the two of them devoured my food right in front of me.  They were too good to stick their snout right down into the bin.  No, they were too hoity-toity to do that.  They dipped their paws in and pulled out just enough to fill their mouths daintily.

To my delight, someone else in the house woke up.  I don’t know if they’d heard the noise or if it was just luck, but humans bumping around and turning on lights scared those two coons off.  I have no idea what they thought when they saw the bin in front of the door, lid off.  Hopefully, they’ll figure it out and get raccoon pest control out here soon.  I just want to go back to chasing mice and rats, sleeping in my cat tree and eating my food.  This old cat can’t handle much more than that, I’m afraid.

Exterminator, Raccoons

Salt Lake County Exterminator

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raccoon traps too small

I was so happy we called a Salt Lake County exterminator to get the dead raccoon out of our chimney, especially after witnessing the horror show of its removal.

My wife and I saved up for years, and finally bought a beautiful vacation cabin near a beautiful, mountainous national park, and I had grandiose ideas of hiking nearly every day we spent in our cabin property.  Truthfully, we spend more time just sitting on the porch, looking out at the view, bird-watching, talking or sitting in silence together.  We enjoy living our dream.  And, I swear, my wife had more fun furnishing and decorating the cabin than our actual home!  We put a lot of effort into our vacation spot to make it a romantic getaway for us for some weekends, and a great place for the kids and their families to join us for holidays.

So you can imagine how awful it was to show up for a long weekend, walk in the door and get hit with a nasty smell.  I’ve never smelled anything like it, but it was rancid.  My wife couldn’t take it after a while and retreated to the car while I investigated.  As I searched for the source of the smell, she called a Salt Lake County Exterminator.  The cabin wasn’t really damaged, but I was certain that smell was going to be near to impossible to get out of the front room furniture, where the odor was the greatest.  Finally, it overpowered even me, so I sat in the car and waited for the Salt Lake County Exterminator to arrive, assuring her it would all be okay and we’d still be able to enjoy the weekend.

When the Salt Lake County Exterminator arrived, he walked right over to the fireplace in the front room, shined a flashlight up there, poked around a little, and said, “Yep, you’ve got a dead raccoon in the chimney.”  He explained that raccoons will often climb down the chimney from outside, most often to bear their young, but sometimes just to find a quiet place to die.

What followed soured the entire weekend for me, but made me grateful I hadn’t attempted to remove the raccoon myself.  The dead raccoon was so far into the decomposition process that he had to remove it in pieces.  Yes, pieces.  It was like a horror movie.  I was confused at the sound I kept hearing, as he worked.  It sounded like rain coming from the chimney.  When I realized what it was, I had to beat a hasty retreat out of the cabin, close on the heels of my wife.  Maggots rained down from the raccoon corpse down the Salt Lake County Exterminator’s head and arms as he removed the raccoon.

Needless to say, we did not spend the weekend there, but we were happy his services included cleaning and sanitizing our cabin.  We didn’t have to do anything other than finding a nice hotel room in the area, and planning our next weekend getaway.

Raccoons

Raccoon Control

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I thought we just needed to get the water leak fixed, but I had no idea that would mean getting raccoon control specialists out to our house first.

I can’t believe we didn’t notice the wild animal living in our attic.  I suppose it went in and out while we were sleeping, or when the television was on, or when our family was just loudly playing games together or talking or fighting.  For whatever reason, we didn’t notice we needed raccoon control until after I noticed the water leak damage.

This spring, when it really started raining, I would sometimes hear the sound of water dripping in the middle of the night.  It drove me crazy, because I’d get up to investigate, but found nothing.  I stumbled around, in the dark house, fumbling from bathroom to bathroom and checking all the faucets and listening to the toilet, but never did find the source of the dripping noise.  Come to think of it, I would sometimes hear a rustling in the middle of the night, but I assumed it was our cat playing somewhere else in the house.  It must have been the raccoon.  I hate to think of that animal living in our home and all the nasty little bugs it brought in with it.

When the obnoxious dripping noise ended up as a slightly sagging ceiling in the upstairs hallway, we finally thought to investigate the attic area.  We grabbed a small ladder, pushed up the small piece of painted drywall separating our upstairs ceiling from the attic space, and my husband climbed on up.  He waited at the top of the ladder, the upper half of his body in the ceiling, to let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting conditions.  I handed him a flashlight, and he brought it up, clicked it on, and turned slightly.  Then, he gasped and told me there was a huge hole through which he could see sky, and that there was a raccoon growling at him from the other end of the attic.

Apparently, the raccoon decided to build a den out of the spring rain by tearing under some shingles, and ripping a wider hole around a pipe.  That left our house completely exposed to the raccoon’s activities, any other wild animal that cared to come in, and the weather.  We thought we’d have to get a raccoon control service as well as a roofer to come out, but it turns out that Allstate Animal Control does both – removes raccoons and repairs the damage they caused.  We had them clean out and sanitize our attic while they were at it.  What a mess.  I hate to admit it, but I was grateful we had a water leak so we could find out we needed raccoon control.

Raccoons

Get Rid of Raccoons

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raccoon traps too small

Tears drip from my eyes, and I can not stop laughing as my roommate, Joe, stammers on about getting rid of raccoons.  The memory of his little-girl scream, the shocked look on his face, and the way he wind-milled back out of our fireplace makes me laugh harder every time I think about it.

“I’m serious, we have to get rid of the raccoon in our chimney!”

I know he’s serious, and I know we have to get rid of raccoons, but my laughing fit is making me hiccup out of control, and I can’t breathe, I’m convulsing so hard.  What makes it worse is our other roommate, Todd, is laughing, too.  I have to stop looking at him, or I’ll laugh myself into a coma.

Joe is kind of the macho man out of our group.  He’s the guy who spends at least two hours at the gym every day, bragging about his arms, even though most of the time is spent texting his girlfriend, drinking water, or looking in the mirror in between a couple of sets of grunting and lifting.  Hey, I don’t make fun of him, because neither Todd nor I can handle tools other than the occasional hammer or wrench, so it’s up to Joe to fix our toilet, install the new dishwasher, and, as of tonight, investigate whatever was making that noise up in our chimney.

We heard it at the end of our weekly game night.  We all have different gaming consoles, and we hook them all up in our living room, so we can rotate from game to game, trying to beat each other’s scores.  Some of our other friends were invited, too, but only on the condition they brought chips and drinks.  The raccoon in the chimney must have been making noise for a while, but we didn’t hear it until most of the guys had gone home.  Joe and Todd were picking up some of the empty cans while I finished up a game, and we heard a little scratch and a kind of chittering sound come out of our fireplace.

I didn’t bother to stop the game, until we heard it again, and Joe told me to shut up the game or he’d turn it off for me.  The three of us sat there, staring at the fireplace, waiting for the noise again.  When we heard it, a little rustling sound, we jumped up and ran around doing random things.  Todd ran for the phone.  He was going to call 9-1-1 until we yelled at him to stop dialing and hang up.  It couldn’t be that serious.  I grabbed a broom from the kitchen, although I’m still not quite sure what I planned on doing with it.  Joe ran for the fireplace, and banged on a spot just over the mantle.  He says he was trying to scare whatever it was, so it’d run back out and get out of the chimney.

None of that worked, and when we heard a noise again, Joe decided he was going to grab a flashlight and have a look for himself.

Flashlight in hand, he pulled the grate back, got on his back, and squirmed his way back into the unused fireplace.  At first, he didn’t see anything, but we sure knew when he did.   Raccoon eyes gleamed down at him from the dark, paws outstretched, and Joe screamed a scream that would have made a six year-old girl proud.  He’s still babbling about “getting rid of raccoons,” and Todd and I are still laughing hysterically.

Raccoons

Raccoon Problems

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Raccoons in an attic
Raccoons in an attic.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

Dear Mr. Atwell,

I am very sorry to inform you that I will need to break my lease due to the severe raccoon problem I have been dealing with for the last few weeks.  I know this puts you in a difficult position, since you are out of the country, and it will make it hard for you to find another tenant.  I just can’t deal with this anymore.

We have been hearing bumps, chittering and squeaks coming from the ceiling and our neighbor told me he saw a couple of raccoons on our roof the other night.  The noise is bad enough.  It wakes up the whole family, and my dog just goes crazy, barking at the ceiling and whining.  I’m afraid to put the dog outside at night, because I’ve heard raccoons can attack pets or give them diseases.

But, it’s not just the noise we’re dealing with.  I’ve repaired the rain gutters and fascia a few times now, but they just keep finding other ways inside.  Would you be willing to repay me for the cost of materials and my time for the repairs I’ve made?

I strongly suggest you have a property management company to make further repairs and inspect the attic once we’ve moved out.  They’ve made a hole all the way through the ceiling in the master bedroom.  Last night, I woke up to see a snout and then a paw come through the hole almost right above my head.  I am sure the insulation is soiled.

I’m not allowing the kids or our dog to play in the backyard, because I found a whole bunch of raccoon droppings by the back fence and also under the back stairs.  I understand that my children or our dog could actually get raccoon roundworm if they touch something that had raccoon droppings on it, and I just don’t want to take the risk.

Mr. Rodriguez, I really don’t want to break our lease, but I have to think of our health and our safety first.  I am sure you understand.

Yours sincerely,

John Mackey

Dear Mr. Mackey,

Thank you for informing me of the raccoon problem.  Please allow me time to find a good nuisance wildlife removal company to take care of the issue before breaking your lease.  I will find a company that will remove the raccoons, repair the damage and sanitize the attic.  Please believe me when I say I want this problem taken care of quickly.  You have been an excellent tenant and I am sure you do not want to move.  I assure you this will be taken care of in the next couple of days.

Arturo Rodriguez

Arturo,

By the time I opened your email, the wildlife control company had already called me to set up an appointment for raccoon removal and to assess the damage.  I’m really impressed!  They’re coming this afternoon and I’ll let you know what happens.  Hopefully it’s all taken care of soon, because we really do want to stay.  Thanks!

–John

Raccoons

Raccoon Trapping

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“Okay, Martha, you ready for an evening full of fun and raccoon trapping?”  Max was sixty-eight, newly retired, and bored out of his mind with all the free time he’d had on his hands.  He admitted to himself he was probably driving Martha crazy, with all the new projects he’d started and then left unfinished.  He just wasn’t ready for retirement, and Martha wasn’t ready for him to be retired, hanging around the house all day long, banging away at something and then leaving it for another project.

“Sure, Max.”  Martha sighed.

They were both curled up on the couch, lights off and video camera running.  A couple of raccoons had been hanging around their house for a few nights, and they’d even noticed their cats’ food was disappearing each night.  Max was sure the raccoons were coming into the house through the cat door, and decided to try his hand at raccoon trapping himself.

Martha had suggested just getting a lock for the cat door, but Max didn’t want the hassle.  He knew if they got a locking cat door, they’d just end up having to get up throughout the night to let a cat in or out, and he was enjoying his long nights of sleep, after years of waking too early to an alarm clock.

Martha propped her feet up on the coffee table.  Max’s excitement hadn’t quite infected her yet.  As far as she was concerned, raccoon trapping was just another of Max’s projects.

But, before too long, the cat door swung open a little, and a human-like hand, a raccoon paw, came reaching through the opening.  “Shh, shhh, it’s happening!” Max exclaimed, even though Martha hadn’t made a sound.

Max had set up a raccoon trap with the cat food inside of it.  Martha wasn’t so sure that was the best way to go about it, but she’d learned years ago that it was easier just to let Max pursue his own things, and let him come to his own conclusions.

The raccoon paw came through the cat door again, groping around.  Max wondered if it was looking for any sign of a cat, but had no idea why the raccoon didn’t just come through the door all the way yet.  He refocused the video camera and waited to see what would happen next.

What happened next is not what either Max or Martha expected.  That raccoon felt around until its paw landed on the small rug in front of the door.  It grabbed up the rug, tugged it back out of the opening in the cat door, and ran off into the night with its prize.

Both Max and Martha were stunned.  Why would the raccoon want the rug, they wondered.  Martha’s eyes drifted over to the cat food, and she sighed.  Was this effort at raccoon trapping just another failed project, soon to be abandoned, or would Max want to try it again tomorrow night.  She wasn’t sure which she wanted more, but she looked at Max reviewing the video on the camera and realized it didn’t matter.  He was happy.

Raccoons

Removing Raccoons

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Raccoons in attic
Raccoons in your attic.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

Who would think of removing raccoonsfirst thing in the morning??

The comforting smell of fresh brewed coffee makes it way through the house in the early hours of the morning.  Alarms are softly buzzing in different bedrooms.  Everyone is sluggishly moving about their morning routines, getting ready for the hustle and bustle of a normal day.  Someone turns on the TV while Mom is scrambling eggs.  Talk centers around homework, after school activities and what the general schedule is for the day.

Suddenly, someone says, “Shhhh, shhhhh!  Listen!”  Everyone stops talking and looks awkwardly at each other while trying to figure out what they’re listening for.  “What . . . “ Dad says, but he’s quickly shushed.  There, softly, everyone hears it.  A quiet scrabbling coming from right above their heads.  Then, a small squeak.             Someone volunteers to run outside and see if there’s anything on the roof, but nothing is spotted.  The scrabbling reoccurs.  Dad sighs.  “Must be something in the crawl space.”

Suddenly the day isn’t normal anymore.

Dad gets out the ladder, grabs a flashlight and climbs up into the small hole in the ceiling.  He shines the flashlight around every corner, and almost misses it, but there!  A shiny flash of eyes staring back at him from above the kitchen.  One set of eyes?  No, more.

Dad comes back down the ladder where everyone else is watching expectantly.  “We’re going to have to get help.  I think there’s raccoons up there.”

Everyone bursts into exclamations.  “How did they get up there?”  “Why our house?”  “Come on, Dad, you can get ‘em!”  But, Mom walks over to the computer, gets the number for removing raccoons, and calls.

When the raccoon removalserviceman arrives, he verifies there’s a mother raccoon and her pups up in the attic.  They’re nesting on the opposite end of the house, far away from the crawlspace access, so he suggests the best way to remove the raccoons is to cut a small hole in the ceiling close to their nest.  He’s going to reach in and remove them one by one.

Mom’s worried about the mess.  Dad’s worried about having to patch up the hole afterward.  But, they decide messes can be cleaned up, holes can be patched, but those raccoons must be removed.  The small hole is cut.

The brave serviceman climbs up a ladder, wearing heavy gloves and armed with nothing more than a mirror.  The mirror lets him see where the raccoons are.  He looks, retracts the mirror, and sticks his arm up into the hole.  A short time later, one pup is removed.

“AWWWWW!” says everyone, including Dad.

One by one, the adorable raccoon pups are removed and placed carefully into a bag.  Soon, the bag is wriggling and squeaking.  Although these are pests that have invaded their home, the family can’t get over how cute they are.  Still, they’re happy to have them out of the house.

Removing mamma raccoonisn’t as easy.  It requires a specially devised noose, but she’s removed, spitting and growling and unhurt.  She’s carefully loaded into the truck, along with her pups.

All of a sudden, the house is quiet again and the family goes back to their routine activities.  They still love talking about their little raccoon family!

Raccoons

Get Rid of Raccoons

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get rid of raccoons
I’ve been working to come up with the best way to get rid of raccoons so my cat Nikita Kitty can eat her food in peace.  My second-grade teacher says that I’m “spunky” and “extremely creative”, even though I think sometimes she doesn’t mean that in a good way.  So, I’m sure I can come up with some great master plan to keep Nikita safe.

            The first thing I thought of was I’d build a big rocket, and then I’d put the bestest cat food in there.  That greedy raccoon wouldn’t be able to resist, and would come right over to steal the food.  Blast off!  I’d shoot the rocket ship right up into space, all the way to the moon!  That raccoon would be like, “Oh, no!  I don’t have my space helmet!” Then, it’d just steal one from another space ship, because they’re good at stealing stuff, and it would just live the rest of its life on the moon.  And every night, Nikita and I would just look up at the sky and laugh and laugh, thinking of that raccoon stealing food from the space animals that live on the moon.

            But, then I realized I didn’t know how to build a rocket ship, so I thought I’d dig a booby trap in the backyard instead.  That’d be a great way to get rid of raccoons.  I’d dig and dig a huge hole, all the way down to the center of the earth.  And then, I’d take pieces of the cat food and make a trail all the way from our porch to the hole and throw the rest of the food in, so the raccoon could smell it and want to go in the hole.  It’d go in the hole thinking it wasn’t that deep, that it could get back out again, but nope!  It’d just fall right on through to the center of the whole earth, and it wouldn’t be able to climb back out ever again.

            I had to throw that plan away, just because Mom doesn’t even like it when I dig holes to bury my broccoli, so I doubt she’d be okay with a hole that big.

            Guns and super missiles wouldn’t work either.  If I blew up the raccoon, I’d probably end up blowing up the house n’ stuff, and I KNOW Mom would be mad then.

            Do raccoons swim?  Because I could throw a big net down on top of it, and then throw it onto an island in the middle of the ocean.  Course, I’d have to get a helicopter to take me out there, just so I could make sure it landed on the island and didn’t drown.  But, I’m kind of afraid of being up too high, so I don’t think I’d be real happy way up high in a helicopter over the ocean.

            Sigh.  I think I’m going to have to turn this problem over to Mom and Dad.  I’m sure they’ll need me to consult with them, though, on how to get rid of raccoons.  I’m too little to do some of that stuff, but maybe Mom or Dad would be willing to fly on a helicopter, or maybe they could build a rocket ship.

Raccoons

Raccoon Removal

raccoon removal
She thought she’d found a place safe from anyone attempting a raccoon removal.  Quiet, warm, free from predators such as bobcats, cougars or coyotes, the attic she found would protect her babies while giving them the best shelter she could find.  It was certainly better than the small hole in the rotten tree outside where it was freezing cold and wet from the slushy rain that had been almost nonstop. 

            Digging a small depression in the attic’s insulation, she gave birth to her four cubs.  At night, she would slink out for a short time, forage for food, and go straight back to her nest. 

It was a perfect life.  Warm, protected, with plenty of food, she was prepared to hole up in this soft place with her cubs for a couple of months.

Everything was just fine for a few weeks, until . . .

            Scratch, Thump!  A form appeared from the floor, and then, threw something onto the wooden beams and foamy insulation with a muted clang.  A bright light swung around the warm, dark space, catching her eyes and making them gleam in the darkness.  This was it, this was the thing she feared.  Raccoon removal. 

            There were at least two of them, great big men armed with a shovel and heavy gloves, growling incomprehensibly at each other.  Reacting quickly, she snapped up the nearest cub in her teeth and ran to the far end of the attic, hoping to get back to the nest in time to snatch up another one.  No such luck, the men were faster.  There they stood by her babies, hunched over, huge, shining that awful light into her eyes and muttering.  All she could do was growl and bare her teeth, hoping that would be enough to frighten them away from the nest.  She would charge them if she had to, but she desperately hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. 

            All four of her babies, including the one she had next to her, shivered with small, weak chitters, crying out for her, crying out for life to return to the safe haven they had known until now.  She paced angrily, nervously, never once taking her eyes off these men who had come for raccoon removal. 

            No!  One of the men reached down and scooped up two of her cubs in one hand, placing them gently in a bag.  Anguished, she watched the last of the remaining cubs in the nest disappear into the bag as well.  She was not going to let them get her final cub, safely curled at her feet.  A shovel landed near her, but she didn’t even flinch.  She was not going to make raccoon removal an easy thing for these men to do.

            She feared for her own life, as well as that of her cubs as she was dragged out of that attic, shoved into a cage and hauled outside to be placed on a large truck.  Her fears quickly turned to relief when she was quickly reunited with all four of her cubs and taken to another warm shelter.  Nothing would ever be as warm or as comfortable and free as that soft den in the attic, though.