04/04/2024
These 5 raccoon kits are not orphans. They have a mother. Unfortunately, she was trapped and relocated because she was nesting in an attic space. Without checking for babies, and without humanely evicting her and trying to reunite any babies that could have been found or letting her remove the babies herself, mom was removed from the property days ago and released at a different location. When the kits became hungry they started to cry and move around, alerting the home owners of their existence. Unfortunately there is no chance of reuniting them. No chance of getting Mom back. She is gone.
Raccoons are nesting in many different types of locations during the spring season. Sometimes those locations are in attics and sheds. While we know these locations are not desirable you must ALWAYS assume the raccoon is up there because there are babies. These 5 kits are now safely in our care but would have been much better off with their mother. They will remain with us at the center for at least the next 6 months and are, unfortunately, taking up the limited space we have for true orphaned raccoons.
There are many reasons to attempt to evict animals from your attic yourself: It’s simple, effective, and low-cost to free compared to pest control companies that cost at least $200 to take on an attic job. Pest control services will harm and often KILL the animals they catch. You will have to repair the entry holes yourself anyway, or hire another company to do that. You have much more incentive to do this work correctly the first time than a company who depends on your repeat business! Plus – It’s EASY! No traps required, no bait, no heavy leather gloves, or animal handling experience.
Steps to Evicting Animals from Attics
1. Start by determining the species of animal that is inhabiting the attic. The easiest way to do this is to find the opening where the animals are getting in and out. During day light hours, pop your head up into the attic (We promise that no one will attack you! Just don’t try to be sneaky about it and make some noise.) and look for areas in the attic where light is getting in. Those spots are your trouble areas. Take note of where they are. That evening, around dusk, grab a lawn chair and a good book and sit somewhere outside where you can see those spots. If it’s raccoons, you will see Mom leave sometime right after dusk. If it’s squirrels, you will see Mom come HOME around dusk. If it is bats, you’ll see a steady stream of them leaving every night around dusk.
2. Once we know what we’re dealing with, it’s time to let them know they’re not welcome. Animals look for four main things when raising young: They want a place that is warm, safe, dark and quiet. Our job is to make your attic as cold, unsafe, well lit, and loud as possible to encourage Mom to move somewhere else. You will do this by running an attic fan, if you have one, or putting fans up in the attic and turning them on, turning lights on and using battery operated stick-em lights to really light the place up, and by hooking up a stereo and playing music or talk radio REALLY loud for at least a few hours per day, if not ALL day. It needs to be loud enough to be annoying, but not loud enough to make your neighbors call the cops! When you are in the attic doing all of this, don’t worry about treading lightly. We want Mom to know that you found her spot.
3. After employing some of the deterrents from step 2, we wait. In the next 48 hours you should see Mom start to panic and leave the attic. This step is CRUCIAL. You MUST allow Mom to come back to get her children!!! If you do not, Mom will destroy the roof, shingles, siding, chimney, and much more in an attempt to find her kids. You have two options here: If you are SURE Mom has moved out, you can put the babies in a box and sit them outside wrapped in towels to wait for Mom to retrieve them, or better yet – stand back and let Mom handle this herself. You may see Mom at an odd time of the day or night, going back and forth from your attic over and over again. She can only carry one baby at a time and has to make separate trips to get all of her kids. This is a time when you really don’t want to mess with Mom! She’s on a very important mission and she really doesn’t want to be interrupted. If you see a raccoon mother during the day, this does not mean that she’s ‘rabid’ or sick in this circumstance. She’s just desperate to get her kids back. This saves you a TON of trouble. Now you don’t have to set Evicting Raccoons traps, relocate them, kill them, dispose of them, or any of the other things that people do to get ‘rid’ of wildlife.
4. At some point in the day or two after she finds and retrieves all of her kids, we can move on to the next step. We recommend waiting 24-48 hours and then fixing EVERY possible entry point in the attic except one. Leave one last hole open for them to use to get in and out if by chance they are still around, but tightly stuff newspaper or tissue into that last entry point. If that paper does not fall out of the hole or get disturbed in 48 hours and you don’t hear crying in the attic to signal a baby left behind, it is now safe to seal the entry points to keep all future critters out of your attic!
