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Raccoons are a nuisance that can ruin your yard by overturning garbage cans, spreading feces across the lawn, and breaking apart birdhouses. Keeping your property unappetizing to them involves:
- Keeping trash cans and pet food containers away from the house.
- Regularly raking and cleaning debris piles in the yard.
- Sealing gaps under doors and around window frames.
Preventing Infestations
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to deterring raccoons from entering your home or yard, but you can do things to make the area less welcoming.
For instance, make sure all garbage cans have lids that are kept secure and are not positioned near trees or overhanging structures like sheds. Clean up areas where food waste might be scattered, and keep bird feeders away from your house.
The best way to prevent raccoons from moving into your home is to seal all entry points into the attic, basement, and crawl spaces. This includes caulking around windows and doors, sealing cracks with silicone or expanding foam, and installing wire mesh over vents.
Trim any bushes or shrubbery that could provide hiding places, and keep pet food inside at night. Also, keep garbage cans tightly sealed and away from sheds or other structures, and don’t feed raccoons. They can cause property damage and carry rabies.
They are scavengers that will eat ornamental fish, sully your pool, smash bird feeders, and even dig up your garden for earthworms or sweet corn.
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Exclusion
Raccoons are notorious for their talent and can use their curiosity to wreak havoc around your home. They can enter your attic and create a mess, swim in your pool, contaminate the water, and destroy your home’s exterior.
Raccoons seek out dark, confined spaces to shelter, raise their young, and den. This often includes attics, crawl spaces, and basements. Sealing all possible access points is an effective way to discourage raccoons and other pests.
This includes capping chimneys, filling holes and cracks, screening all crawl spaces, repairing vents, and installing window screens that animals cannot chew through.
After implementing raccoon removal toronto and habitat management, monitoring your yard for signs of raccoon activity is essential. This helps you catch any additional steps that must be taken before raccoons start making their way into your home.
Raccoons are opportunistic and will continue to enter homes for food and water. This can significantly damage siding, roofs, shingles, and ductwork.
Trapping
Raccoons are known to cause significant damage to properties. They tip over trash bins, eat garbage, and even destroy air and heating ducts. They also soil insulation with their feces, leading to costly repairs and energy bills. In addition, they can be carriers of dangerous diseases and parasites.
The best way to stop a raccoon invasion is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Seal entry points into your home and ensure that the areas around your home where raccoons like to hang out are blocked with fences. Also, remove potential sources of water near your house.
If you have a problem and want to trap a raccoon, use a humane live trap like the one shown here (Havahart). Check the trap regularly. Rules about checking a live trap vary from region to region, but they generally require that you check the animal every 24 hours.
It’s usually illegal to relocate wildlife on public lands, so finding a suitable site to release your catch is essential if you’re not going to keep it.
Removal
Raccoons are cute, but they can do a lot of damage. They can spread diseases and parasites, making your pets and children sick. Additionally, they are notorious for contaminating trash cans by tearing off lids.
Signs of a raccoon problem include hearing scratching or rustling noises in your walls at night and seeing five-toed prints around your property, especially near garbage bins.
Raccoons can enter homes through vents, crawl space openings, unsecured sheds or porch roofs, chimneys, and attics. You can prevent them from entering your home by sealing those openings with galvanized hardware cloth and removing food, water, and shelter.
If you find a raccoon nest in your attic, use one-way doors to encourage the mother and her babies to leave. You can re-enter your attic with a ladder or box trap to retrieve the young.
However, manual handling of wild animals presents a serious health risk. It should only be done by a professional wildlife removal expert who can humanely remove and relocate raccoons.
