How Can Opossums Damage Your Attic or Shed?

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The presence of one or more opossums in your attic or outhouse is certainly a cause for concern, even though they generally keep out of your way. Like some other wildlife, opossums like the attic because of warmth; it provides shelter and even food in some cases.



It is common to see female opossums with young nest in attics between May and June, and again in December & January. When a possum takes up residence in an attic or shed however, it is capable of considerable damage to the structure and should be removed as soon as possible.

• Chewing of electrical cables is one of their major activities. Whenever opossums nest in a location with wires or cables, they would use the cables as climb ropes and will eventually chew through and destroy them. Thus, they often destroy insulation in attics.
• Female opossums tend to have their babies inside the attic. Babies sometimes fall into the walls and get stuck and die. Sick adults may also die under a shed or in the attic. This results in a great stench and sometimes expensive removals.
• Opossums can chew through walls and destroy structures when there is ample time and space to do so. One of the ways through which they get into buildings is by chewing wooden and other malleable barriers.
• From living under garden sheds, opossums have been known to cause the destruction of many gardens. They like to forage at night and they destroy vegetable beds and plants while at it. Many home owners have woken up to the sad reality of their garden being destroyed by opossums.
• They litter the garden, shed and attic with biological wastes that pose a health risk by the potential spread of diseases that opossums often carry; diseases like salmonellosis, leptospirosis and a host of others. The scent of their urine and feces also serves to attract other animals to the location.
• They make for a dirty environment with food leftovers, fallen hair from their coats, and nesting materials.
• All of the damage often culminates into a depreciation in the value of the property.

How to get rid of these pesky guests is to remove them with live traps or one-way exclusion doors, then block all the entry points into your property. Clean up the damages they have caused and replace things that you need to be replaced, such as chewed electrical wires, woods and so on.

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