Raccoon Removal Services: Safeguarding Your Fulshear Property From Raccoon Intrusions

How much do you know about raccoons? Do you know that when a raccoon holds food and starts licking around it, they aren't washing the food; they wet their hands down to heighten their sense of touch and determine whether or not the food is good for eating? So, they're actually using their hands to see their food in the dark. Do you know that a raccoon can get food from many places, including trash receptacles, and that they can easily forage for food at night when you're not looking? Raccoons commonly start trouble long before Fulshear residents realize it because most people don't really understand how these animals behave.

Join us today as we look at how raccoons behave and how you can use this information to prevent them from getting into your home. If you currently have raccoons in your house and you know it, contact Modern Pest Control for professional raccoon pest control. If you'd like to learn about our services, you can skip to the last section of this article, where we discuss removal strategies. It is always best to let an experienced pest management professional address raccoon problems. Getting rid of raccoons is tricky. Read on to learn why.

Detecting Raccoon Presence: Signs Of Raccoon Activity

Before you can get rid of raccoons, you need to know you have raccoons, right? Detection can also help you avoid unwanted raccoon intrusions by catching them early on and taking steps to stop them. In either case, it helps to know what signs raccoons leave behind.

Sign 1: You lift up the lid of your trash receptacle and find the trash bags shredded to pieces.

Raccoons are dexterous. They can open trash lids, rip up the bags with their claws, eat selected foods, and put the lid back down so you don't even realize your trash was disturbed. Of course, if you're paying attention, you'll wonder why there are torn-up bags. A solution for this is placing something heavy on the lid of the trash can, such as a brick.

It is hard for a raccoon to get into a receptacle by lifting the lid and climbing up and in. What usually happens is when you place trash receptacles next to each other, it allows a raccoon to sit on the lid of one as it feeds out of another. You can counter this by keeping your receptacles away from each other.

Sign 2: You go up onto your roof to inspect your shingles and find a pile of animal waste.

Raccoon droppings look quite a bit different from squirrel or roof rat droppings. If you find waste that looks more like that of a dog or cat, you might have a raccoon in your attic. Raccoons commonly get into homes through vulnerabilities in the roof.

You can try to keep them off your roof and out of your home by addressing the routes they take to get onto your roof. For example, trimming tree branches near your roofline can deter them. Inspect your house and consider exterior pipes, wire conduits, wires, brick, stucco, and certain siding. Take steps to make it harder for these exceptional climbers to get up there. But you should know that it can be difficult.

Sign 3: You go out to put cat food in your cat's outdoor dish; the dish is gone, and the food is all over the place.

Raccoons eat pet food, but they're likely to want to avoid eating the food close to your home or anywhere near your pets. So they'll take the bowl and carry it off. When you start to see this kind of behavior, raccoons are getting too close to your house. You can deter them by using scare tactics. For example, install sprinklers that come on when motion is detected.

Sign 4: You go out to your garden and find it destroyed in one night.

Raccoons can dig up a garden. They eat vegetables and will feed on grubs in the ground. Both will cause them to damage your garden. You can prevent this by using hardware cloth as a barrier to keep raccoons out. Keep in mind that they're good climbers and can scale a fence. Look for how-to videos online for installing fencing in a way that will deter raccoons.

Sign 5: You hear noises in your attic at dawn and dusk.

Raccoons are nocturnal animals. They will leave your attic to go out and feed at night, so you will most likely hear them in transition. You may also hear them throughout the night when they return to check on their young. What noises do they make? You'll hear bumping sounds and vocalizations. They're pretty distinct. Look for videos online to learn how these vocalizations sound.

There are many ways to detect a raccoon and a few ways to prevent trouble. Hopefully, you already have some great data to help you with your raccoon prevention and control. Next, let's look at why it is important to get rid of raccoons as soon as possible.

Raccoon Damage To Property: The Costly Consequences

Raccoons often get in through openings they create in rooflines and especially roof-soffit intersections. These are points where two roofs connect. They get underneath the roof and make a hole into the roof trough through the soffit, which can quickly lead into your attic space. The hole a raccoon creates is likely to be underneath, so you'll have to get down and look up to find it.

The holes created by raccoons can allow other pests to enter your house, too. But, the most troubling issue that can arise is it will enable rainwater to seep into your wall voids. Damp conditions in your walls can lead to black mold. If you only have to replace a soffit and a portion of your roofline, the cost is manageable. But cutting into walls to deal with a mold problem is a big expense.

When raccoons get into your attic, they can damage your storage items. They will tear up furniture to collect soft materials for their beds. They'll also leave fecal matter and urine in your insulation. You may not be able to recover some of your stored items and might have to replace your insulation. Both can add up to big money. It is best toremove raccoons as soon as you detect trouble—or sooner if you use the tips provided earlier.

Raccoon-Proofing Your Premises: Proven Techniques To Prevent Entry

We've discussed how raccoons can damage your property and take money from your bank account. Now, we will look at how you can raccoon-proof your premises. These are methods used by the experts to keep raccoons away and keep them from getting in. Let's summarize the tips we've provided so far:

Secure trash can lids with something heavy, or use a bungee cord. Don't bother getting a receptacle with a lid that locks because most raccoons can use their dexterous hands to open latches.
Avoid setting trash receptacles near each other or close to low walls or other objects raccoons can climb on. Keep in mind that they prefer to avoid climbing things that are shaky and unstable.
Trim branches away from your roofline.
Install guards on pipes to block raccoons and prevent them from climbing up your house. If guards aren't enough, you may have success using netting material, the same material used to guard your home against unwanted birds.
You can also use netting strategically to keep raccoons away from areas that are easy to climb, such as brick veneer or stucco surfaces.
Use scare tactics, such as a sprinkler activated by motion. Keep in mind that some raccoons can figure out that the sprinklers aren't a threat. Therefore, this isn't a guaranteed solution.
Refrain from feeding your dog or cat outdoors. If you have livestock, such as chickens, store the food behind fencing.
Create fences to prevent raccoons from getting into your garden or berry bushes. Make sure to use techniques that work to keep raccoons out.
Inspect all of your soffits and look for potential trouble spots. Use hardware cloth or netting to keep raccoons from chewing and clawing through your soffits and roofline.
Protect your chimney by putting a cap on it.
Clean your gutters to remove blockages and repair your gutter troughs and downspouts. Doing this will prevent water from accumulating near your home. Raccoons are attracted to properties with a source of drinking water.
Address conditions in your yard that can allow puddles to form. Fill in spots that sink down, install a French drain, etc. Once again, it is all about preventing watering holes.
Properly mix compost piles. While the aroma of a poorly mixed compost heap smells bad to humans, raccoons love the scent. It is a promise of food that they can detect from quite a distance.
Raccoons love bird food as much as birds do. It is hard to keep raccoons from getting into bird feeders. One way to protect your bird feeders is to set them on thin, smooth metal poles. Raccoons can't claw or grip poles like this, which may prevent them from accessing the bird feeders. If this doesn't work, we recommend moving the feeders well away from the exterior of your house or nixing the idea of bird feeders entirely.

You won't have to spend money on raccoon control services if you get in front of raccoon problems. But, if raccoons find their way into your attic or some other secluded space you don't want them living in, don't worry; we have you covered. Contact Modern Pest Control for humane raccoon management in Fulshear and the surrounding areas.

Professional Raccoon Removal: Effective And Humane Solutions

Raccoon removal is a tricky process. There are many skills required. The wildlife experts on staff at Modern Pest Control have a ton of training and experience. When you contact us for raccoon removal in Fulshear, you'll get an effective resolution to your pest control issue. Here are a few ways we address raccoon problems:

We perform an inspection to track where the raccoons are going in and out of the structure. It is essential to track this entry point so that we can allow the animals to leave and prevent them from getting back inside.
We evaluate the infestation and consider how to best remove the animals without causing harm. There are cases when we have to remove building materials to inspect an infestation. We only use methods that cause the least amount of disruption and damage.
What we use most often for evacuating adult raccoons is to install a one-way door. The device allows the raccoons to go out but does not allow them to get back inside.
Getting the raccoons to leave is a little harder when raccoon kits are involved. But, once the mother is gone, we'll collect the babies and use a special method to reunite them with the mother raccoon. If we don't, she will want to chew a hole to get back in and rescue them.
After the removal process, we will remove the exclusion device and seal the entry point. At this time, we'll likely share advice regarding ways you can prevent future raccoon problems. We'll tell what conducive conditions we observe, how they impact raccoons, and what you can do to correct them.

When you have trouble with wildlife on (or inside) your Fulshear property, you can count on your Modern Pest Control wildlife management team to deal with the problem using advanced technologies and field-tested methods. Contact us if you have questions we did not address in this article. Our friendly service team would love to speak with you. We can give you more details about our trapping and exclusion services and tell you what you can expect from your raccoon treatment. We can also share pricing with you.

Call, text, or email us. Your QualityPro service team from Modern Pest Control is here to help.