You may discover you have a raccoon in your attic once you start hearing scampering noises or loud scratching. If you are hearing noises at night, it may be raccoons because they are nocturnal creatures. It is possible to remove raccoons humanely from the attic. Raccoons can cause a lot of damage in attics and can even tear apart ducts and cooling systems, so they need to be removed as soon as possible. Raccoons have even fallen through the ceiling into people’s homes. Generally, raccoons won’t leave on their own. Raccoons are creatures of habit and they wouldn’t want to leave a comfortable space.

When removing them, you want to determine if you have just one or a family. If it’s a family, you need to remove the babies first then trap the adults. Raccoons can be aggressive animals, so it’s best to call a professional raccoon removal service that can handle these creatures. The company should have the equipment necessary in order to handle them in the most humane way and release them back into nature. If you are dealing with a family and there is one left in the attic, the mother will go back for the babies, so it’s important that it is done correctly the first time. There are raccoon repellents available that may work, but these tactics aren’t usually a long-term solution and won’t guarantee that they will leave. There is no legal poison for raccoons and poison should not be used because it’s inhumane and ineffective.

Once you remove the raccoons, it’s important to practice raccoon control to make sure they don’t get back in. A house with wide-open holes will be easier to enter and those houses with easy climbing access also have a great probability of having a raccoon enter. However, raccoons are great climbers and there doesn’t necessarily need to be trees nearby.