How to Get Raccoons Out of the Attic & Your House

One of the most common, and challenging, jobs that I deal with as a nuisance wildlife control professional is a case of raccoons in the attic. It is not an easy thing to take care of! The problem is that there are almost ALWAYS baby raccoons in the attic, along with an adult female. The young are helpless in a nesting area of the attic, and can't be trapped. They must be removed by hand - you or the wildlife technician you hire must go into the attic and remove the babies by hand. You can then use them to trap the female raccoon, and get all of them out at once, thus enabling you to relocate them all together (if you wish, or if state law allows it).

Once all the raccoons are out, you want to seal the entry point(s) shut, as seen below. If you don't, new animals will move into your attic soon. The raccoons living there gave it an odor that might attract new wildlife quickly. There's also the matter of the mess the raccoons have left behind in the attic, which often must be cleaned up.

If you want to know how to get raccoons out of the ceiling, the same sort of principles apply. If there's no accessible attic space above the ceiling, but that's where the baby raccoons lie, then you need to find the spot where the babies lie, by feeling for a warm area on the ceiling, and cut out a hole nearby and grab and remove the baby raccoons. Same goes for how to get raccoons out of your walls - you need to pinpoint the exact spot by listening to baby raccoon chattering, and feel for the warm spot, and cut a hole in the wall to remove the baby raccoons.

See the below email exchange for an example of the kind of thing I see again and again in wildlife control - incompetent companies and ignorant homeowners who hire bad trappers, who don't do the job right.

I am looking for any advice that you could offer on how to deal with the mess that I have been left with. Last year a couple of raccoons moved into my attic. I called a wildlife removal company and after a lot of expense I had a cage over the power vent on my roof, which was the point of entry, and no raccoons in my home. 3 raccons, a skunk, and an opossum were trapped and removed.

In June of this year I had my roof repaired, and started hearing noises in the rafters. Although I had not heard the raccoons' voice the thumping and scratching sounded like it was a raccoon again. When I spotted him trying to hide from me it confirmed my suspicions. This time I intended to trap the animal and re-locate him myself.

I could find no entry point and fearing that something had been sealed in when my roof was repaired I called a wildlife removal service. The company that I used last year had an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, so I gave them a try again. The service technician could not find an entry point either, and wanted to place traps on the ground next to my home, which is where they were placed last year.

Given that an entry point could not be found, and that they used liver sausage to bait their traps I asked him to place two baited traps in my attic. This was over a week after my roofing work was complete, so I was amazed that these animals were not going crazy. The traps were placed while I was at work and my wife who was at home told me that the traps smelled of skunk.

That night I started to hear the raccoons vocalize (loudly) almost constantly. The next morning the side was pushed out on one of my roof vents. I went into the attic and it reaked of skunk. The sheet metal from the inside of the roof vent was laying on the floor. I called the wildlife company and they agreed to replace the traps with fresh ones.

There was raccoon chatter still coming from in between the rafters. This continued almost non-stop for most of the day. The service technician replaced the traps and apologized for the smell. My wife was concerned that the raccoon was stuck because it was chattering all day. The technician explained that it was probably a young raccoon, and that sometimes they do chatter all day.

After a couple of days the chattering stopped but the traps were still empty. I placed a plastic bag over the vent as a barrier to see if anything was still going in or out. The barrier remained in-tact for a couple of days until a rain came and the wind blew it off. No sounds were heard coming from the attic, so I replaced the barrier. The barrier remained unbroken, but since no animal had been caught I requested that the traps remain for a while.

I called the wildlife company to ask about the clean up work. I was told that the technician could measure the attic when he came to pick up the traps so that an estimate could be provided for clean up. The clean up would consist of the following:

- Flea and tick treatment - a powder relatively safe to humans and pets.
- Enzyme treatment - to neutralize the feces and urine
- Insulation removal and replacement using a treated material.

When the company called my wife to verify our appointment they told her that they do not remove the feces. When the technician arrived to remove the traps he told my wife that the treatments were powders that they carried in their trucks, that he would remove feces if he saw it, and that there was no insulation that needed to be replaced. My wife told them that we would discuss this and call them back Monday. I am sure that there is insulation that has to be replaced.

For the last two days we have been killing a lot of flies in our house. Small, young flies. Going into the attic I see many small, young flies. It seems as though an infestation is under way. I've placed a fly trap in the attic to try and help keep them at bay until I can have someone come out to look things over.

I am afraid that the constant chattering was a raccoon in distress, and that he never left the attic, perishing between my rafters above my ceiling. I hope not, but can feces that is a couple of weeks old really support all of these flies? The attic smells a little gamey, but certainly not as rancid as I would think if there were a dead body in there.

I have to get someone out here quick, before I wind up with a full blown fly infestation. I have begun leaving messages at whatever company I can find advertising clean up and restoration services. I have called my Insurance Company to start a claim in case the clean up becomes a little more involved than spreading some powder around.

I will call back the wildlife company, but I think that this is probably more than they can handle.

I appreciate the information that you provide in your web site. While providing information to allow people to perform this task themselves, you get the point across that it is not as easy as it sounds, and allows people to make an informed choice as to whether they want to do it themselves or not.

Tom, Well first of all, the company you hired did a very lousy job, end of story. Never mind their "A+" BBB rating, I give them an F. Who were they, by the way?

The first step for any case of an animal in an attic should always be a thorough investigation inside the attic to determine the type of animal, unless it's already known for certain by homeowner observation. If it's found to be raccoons, then the most important step, by far, is to find and remove the baby raccoons first. YOU CANNOT JUST SET TRAPS OUTSIDE, ON THE ROOF OR GROUND, if there are raccoons in the attic - there are almost always baby raccoons inside!

So yes, what has happened in your case is that some baby raccoons have died. That's the chattering you heard - baby raccoons starving to death. The smell may not have been all that bad, since they lost a lot of weight before dying, and they might have been young, and attic ventilation and air flow and barriers vary a great deal. Location of dead animal matters a great deal in determining presence of odor problems. In general you're going to continue to have flies unless you find and remove the carcasses, and if maggots are big enough, get ready for a big future fly hatch. That's what you're getting - 28 days after animal death, there's a boom of flies, as the the maggots from the dead bodies hatch. Raccoon feces, by the way, will not attract flies. They dry up into little petrified logs before flies find them in attics. But dead animals in attics always attract flies.

To be honest, regarding the cleanup, I probably wouldn't say that insulation replacement is necessary. I've been in a couple hundred attics with raccoons, and it's rarely warrented. But if that's what you want, oftentimes homeowners insurance companies will pay for it in the case of raccoons, which aren't rodents. You've already got the fly hatch, so after they are all hatched and make their way out, you won't get any new flies.

The point here is that it's often a very difficult job to get raccoons out of your attic. Even "A+" companies (what a joke - probably a national chain that sent out a redneck guy they pay $10 an hour) can fail to do the job correctly. If you want to know how to get raccoons out of your house, any part of it, from the ceiling to the walls, you should know that you want to hire a competent company who can demonstrate true wildlife knowledge, and promise to go in the attic or cut open the walls to get out the baby raccoons. That's the only way it can be done. Another important step in the how to get raccoons out of the ceiling or walls process is to find out how they get into the house in the first place, and seal those entry points shut permanently, as shown in the photo near the top of the page. Repairs to animal damage, and sealing entry holes shut is the most important step in a complete and permanenent solution to any wildlife problem.