Raccoons Under the Porch - What to do next

Need raccoon removal in your hometown? We service over 500 USA locations! Click here to hire us in your town and check prices - updated for year 2020.

So, you're pretty sure that you have raccoons living under your porch, what happens next? You actually have a couple of options:



You could wait it out.

Raccoons are known to move from one den spot to another after a short period of time, especially if it's a mother with her kits. This moving-around helps them to keep safe in areas of lots of predators, and it also helps them to ensure they are around regular and plentiful sources of food.

You could trap the raccoons.

You could try and trap a raccoon, but they're not exactly the easiest animal in the world to get in a trap. You also have a number of problems, once the creature is captured. In most places, you can't just release that animal back into the wild, just in case it has been infected with the rabies virus. If you do wish to release the animal, you must get rabies clearance from a veterinarian or similar professional, and you must seek permission from the landowner. If that's private land, you will need to get in touch with local authorities. They're probably going to say no. In fact, most homeowners are likely to say no too. These creatures are pests and other people don't want them around.

You could repel the raccoons.

Again, you could, but repellents and deterrents designed to move raccoons on actually don't work that well. In all our years of experience, the only deterrent that we've actually had any luck with has been wildlife eviction fluid, and even that only works some of the time.

Repellents include noise and light machines, which don't tent to affect raccoons that much these days as they aren't as scared of people as they once were, and they're also a lot more active during the day in more urban areas too. If light and noise worked to get rid of these animals, they wouldn't be around in the first place. People are noisy and they bring with them plenty of light.

You could do nothing.

You could just forget about the raccoon and hope it goes away, but there are a number of things that are likely to go wrong if you take this approach:

Large enough holes to let raccoons in are also going to let in a string of other wild critters, including rats and mice. Snakes will follow those, and you might even get a couple of skunks, a cheeky opossums, and foxes hanging around your home too. One animal will always attract another - that's how the world works. You're either the predator or you're the prey.

Raccoons do usually move along after a few days or nights in one place, but they don't stay away. They'll soon come back. Mother raccoons inform her youngsters of den spots and feeding places that she uses, and if one of those is your house, her young will come back and set up home under your porch, just like their mother once did.

It has been noted that wild raccoons will return to the same den spots time and time again, in some cases, over decades.

Oh, the whole time that you let a raccoon hang out in your yard or under your porch, you're letting it wreak havoc. You will probably be left with quite the hefty repair bill, which may include repairing bits of your home that have been torn off by the animal, chewed wood, damaged foundations, stability problems following heavy digging, destroyed plants, a dug-up lawn, a knocked over garbage can - daily, and a whole string more. In the worst of cases, raccoon damage repair and clean up can fall into thousands of dollars.

You could exclude the raccoon.

We actually quite like exclusion devices, but in some cases, you may need to ‘fashion' something in order to get the right fit for the job, and this is when things go wrong.

Exclusion devices are devices that exclude the animal. In short; they are able to get out of the building or space, but they are unable to get right back in again. Funnels and other hardware cloth devices can be fashioned to make successful bat removal exclusion devices, and the same works for opossums, skunks, and other creatures, scaling up the device and making sure that everything has been taken into consideration.

Little one way doors can work to exclude raccoons, but you must make sure that the animal can't rip the door right off the hinge. These can be purchased online and in some hardware stores, and consist of a cage trap-style device that's open on both ends. There is a door.

The idea is that the raccoon will exit using one of the frequently used holes (because you have been monitoring the area and taking notes), setting off the door which then closes behind it. The animal is not trapped, however, leaving you with no release job. Instead, the animal is free to potter off wherever it wants to go.

This method sounds like the perfect solution to your raccoon problem, but wait -

What if there are babies?

Baby raccoons can't use the exclusion devices; they're too young. The mothers get out just fine, but then she's stuck outside and her youngsters are stuck still inside. She can't get to them to feed them or move them along, and they can't get out because they're not old enough to leave the comfort and safety of their little nest yet. In this case, the mother will try her hardest to get back inside the building, breaking more bits off and causing more destruction in the process. At the same time, her little ones will be starving to death in the nest. If you don't know where that nest is, you will have the toughest time trying to find it so that you can remove the tiny bodies.

You could call in the professionals.

We WOULD say this, because we ARE the professionals, but there is a good reason why people tell you to get a wildlife rehabilitator to remove the raccoon you have cohabiting your land - it's easier, safer, and usually a lot cheaper too.

In the time it has taken you to try and fail with repellents or with failed trapping attempts, you could have hired in the professionals and gotten the entire job done. With the overall cost of trying and failing at various approaches, it would more than likely be cheaper to hire in a rehabilitator than it will be to attempt the job yourself too.

Ask for a quote - you'll soon find out.

Go back to the Raccoon Removal page, or learn tips to do it yourself with my How to Get Rid of Raccoons guide.