Seven Raccoon Control Tips

Raccoons are smart and quirky animals that might be fun to observe from afar. However, they are not an animal you want to share your home with.  Once they have invaded your house, they can cause a tremendous amount of damage to your property. 

From digging through your trash to destroying your lawn, damaging your building's materials, consuming pet food, and transmitting many contagious diseases, a raccoon infestation in your house can cause huge problems for you, your family, and pets.

With all that in mind, it is easy to see why raccoon removal from the attic or house is necessary. Your well-maintained garden or dark attic can seem quite appealing to raccoons. Once they gain access to your property, they often refuse to leave unless absolutely forced to do so.

Winters are usually a busy time for raccoons to prepare their nests for staying warm and safe during the coldest months of the year. So, chances of raccoons entering your property in, and directly preceding, winter months are high. 

If you hear noises in your attic, it is best to contact a raccoon removal company that knows how to remove raccoons from the attic, garage, or any other area of your house, as it is unlikely to be a one-time occurrence. By taking strict measures for raccoon control, you can keep yourself, your family, and your lovely home safe.

Signs of a Raccoon Infestation in Your Attic

Like the rodents that they often hunt, raccoons are nocturnal. Unless the raccoon has rabies, they will be most active at night, making their presence harder to detect. If you suspect you have an active raccoon infestation in your house, you must pay attention to the clues they leave behind. 

You must be wondering what those clues are that raccoons leave behind during their period of stay. Here are some of the most common signs of a raccoon in your house:

Clear Evidence of Raccoon's Feeding

Raccoons are usually messy creatures. Therefore, they often leave a trail behind after their mealtimes, such as knocked over trash cans, dug up gardens, spilled dog or cat food, or empty or broken bird feeders.

Paw Prints

Raccoons usually walk flat-footed as humans do, and they have claws on all their toes. The primary differentiating factor is that their foot tracks are diagonal, just like deer. The most common areas paw prints are visible is in wet soil or mud on the outside of your home and on dusty duct work in your attic. If you see any diagonal track pattern about the size of a raccoon paw, you are likely in need of raccoon removal services before the situation worsens.

‍Droppings

Since raccoons are pretty large, they produce large-sized droppings. If you spot piles of large-sized droppings, often in one area called a “latrine,” it is very likely you have a raccoon problem on your hands.

Unusual Noises

If raccoons are nesting in your house, you will hear unusual noises, especially at night. The sounds raccoons make are often described as moaning, growling, and whistling. There are many videos online that can help you pinpoint exactly what to listen for. If you hear strange noises at night and you live in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, you can call Critter Stop, one of the most reliable raccoon removal services in North Texas.  

Critter Stop will inspect your property thoroughly to look for an active raccoon infestation. If you have raccoons in your attic, the team will remove them in the quickest and most way possible.

If you think you might have a raccoon in your attic but have been hesitant to make the investment needed to address the issue, it is worth keeping in mind that a raccoon infestation often just gets more expensive with time due to the damage they can do to duct work, radiant barrier, insulation, soffits, and chimneys, to name a few home features often damaged by raccoons.

7 Effective Raccoon Control Tips

The best and most permanent solution for raccoon removal is to enlist the help of a professional raccoon removal company that guarantees their work (and has the reputation to back that guarantee!). If the cost of professional raccoon removal is out of your budget, here are the seven most effective tips to get rid of raccoons from your house fast:

Raccoons Are Better Outdoors Than Indoors

When we have provided raccoon removal services, we have found that they generally enter your property in search of shelter, water, or food. If you have an attractive garden full of vegetables and fruits, you will have more raccoons trafficking your property. 

Once on your property, they will be enticed to enter your house for its warmth and shelter, since attics are a perfect place to build their nests and raise their babies. If you have mice or rats, raccoons will be even more attracted to your attic, since raccoons hunt mice and rats for food. Raccoons are usually solitary animals. However, a single mother raccoons can turn into a large family in a matter of months, urinating and defecating all across your attic, quickly making the insulation unsanitary due to airborne diseases they can carry and ineffective due to the raccoons’ heavy wait compressing the insulation.

If a raccoon or group of raccoons have gained access to your attic, you must take quick action for their removal. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before they cause extensive damage to your belongings and building materials. 

Raccoons, like rodents, can carry infected fleas, ticks, and mites in their fur. If the diseases carried by raccoons were not enough, these insects can expose you, your pets, and your family to many more harmful diseases. For obvious reasons, a raccoon infestation inside your home is more dangerous than an outdoor raccoon infestation.

Now you must be wondering how to keep raccoons out of your attic or house. Raccoons are fond of climbing. Therefore, if there are any tree branches near your home, raccoons will easily jump from them to the roof of your house. While raccoons can still climb straight up brick walls, trimming trees will at least help deter roof and attic activity.

Once the raccoons are on your roof, they will soon find their way to the inside of your attic. Thus, it is recommended that you keep the branches of trees near your house trimmed and short. Also, make sure to be on top of repairs. Otherwise, raccoons and other wildlife – especially rodents – will enter your house through broken roof vents, chimneys, and windows.

Cut Off Their Food Supply

Raccoons always prolong their stay where there is a steady supply of food. Therefore, you must make sure to remove all their attractants from your property. If you have outdoor pets, you must bring their food inside before nightfall. Also, make sure to cover your garbage containers with heavy or tightly-secured lids.

Furthermore, if you have a garden full of vegetables and fruit-bearing trees, you must look regularly for fallen fruits and nuts. Otherwise, they will attract raccoons and many other pests to your property. 

Eliminating the food source, whether it is mice in your attic or fruit in your garden, will work to address one of the root causes raccoons are coming to your property.

Frighten Them

We have provided hundreds of raccoons removal services, and they are naturally easy-to-scare animals. Therefore, you can use their weakness as your strength by installing motion-activated sprinklers, lights, or radios to scare them and keep them from wanting to make your home their regular stomping grounds. 

These methods might only offer a temporary solution to repel raccoons away from your property though, as raccoons are very intelligent creatures. They will often figure out these deterrents are rather harmless.

Dogs Are a Real Threat to Raccoons

If you own a dog, raccoons may avoid your property altogether. Raccoons may give a tough fight to your dog though and even bit or scratch them, so it is wise to make sure your dog keeps a safe distance if they do enter a standoff. 

Several breeds of dogs such as Black, Tan, and Blue Tick coonhounds are specially bred for hunting raccoons. So, if you have a dog of one of those breeds, it will help you a lot in keeping the raccoons away from your house.

While dogs can scare raccoons off your property, if your yard has a steady supply of dog food and water, it may act as an attractant, causing raccoons to take the risk in order to feast on your dog’s yummy food.

Use Live Traps

As raccoon removal experts, another effective method for raccoon control that we can recommend is trapping and relocating them. Many homeowners install a few traps in areas frequently accessed by raccoons and use their favorite food as bait to attract them towards the trap. At Critter Stop, we have found cat food, sardines, and tuna to be effective baits for trapping raccoons. Once a raccoon enters the trap to get the bait, the door snaps behind it. 

However, after trapping a raccoon in a live trap, you will also have to relocate it somewhere safe. If dealing with a wild raccoon is not something you are comfortable with, professional raccoon removal companies can often help you with the relocation part of the process.

If you want to get rid of raccoons from your property without killing them, live trapping is a good option.

Shooting Raccoons

In some states, shooting raccoons can legal if they are causing damage to your property. Before killing these innocent animals simply looking for a home, we highly recommend consulting a raccoon removal company that may be able to offer a quick and humane solution to your raccoon issue. If you are still set on killing the intruders, it is very important that you check your state, local, and federal laws and guidelines before proceeding.

Take Safety Precautions

In Texas, much of the raccoon population carries parasites and roundworms that can expose you, your family, and your domestic pets to many contagious diseases. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you consult with a company that offers professional raccoon removal services to deal with a possible raccoon infestation on your property. Companies such as Critter Stop will not only quickly and humanely remove the raccoon from your attic, they will also provide necessary sanitation services to ensure your home is safe for you and your family.

If you think you can handle it all yourself, it is important to always keep a safe distance from raccoons. Additionally, you must wear gloves and a mask or respirator when disposing of their droppings or cleaning up the traps since the diseases that can be spread through their feces are contagious via both direct contact and airborne particles. 

Conclusion

Critter Stop is one of the most reliable raccoon removal companies in Texas. We provide a wide range of animal removal services for residential and commercial properties.  If you see raccoons around your property, call us at (214) 234-2616 and see why we are one of the best-reviewed companies in the entire state.