GET RID OF OPOSSUMS ONCE AND FOR ALL
Opossum Removal
Opossums are scary-looking animals, however, they rarely attack people and when cornered they will growl to scare off the intruder or play dead to escape the situation. These animals may not be aggressive, but they are still considered nuisance wildlife due to the amount of damage they cause when they invade your property.
Opossums are scavengers, and they can dig their way through anything. You will rarely see an opossum during the day, they are nocturnal animals and will come out to hunt for food and scavenge at night, and sleep through the day. Opossums will eat anything from vegetables, fruits, garbage, insects, worms, grains, etc.
They are notorious for raiding garbage cans in search of discarded food. In the wild, opossums will make their homes in forests and scrublands, however, these mammals have adapted well to living around humans in cities, and you can find them living in garages, attics, chimneys, crawl spaces, etc.
Why You Should Remove Opossums
Opossums may not be aggressive and will likely not attack anyone around, but they still have to be excluded from your home and property. These mammals are capable of causing a significant amount of damage to your property in a very short time. First, they will continuously raid trash cans and litter the entire driveway with garbage.
And when they find their way into your attic or crawl spaces, these creatures will cause an even bigger mess. They will leave an incredible number of smelly droppings and this smell can quickly spread to other parts of the house.
Opossums don’t clean up after themselves, which results in a lot of waste products. If a female opossum gets into your home, she will most certainly build a nest for her babies, and in this case, eviction can be more difficult because an opossum mama will aggressively defend and protect her babies.
Also, the mess opossums make can quickly attract other animals and insect pests to create a much bigger problem. Having opossums share the same roof with humans should be discouraged, and as with other wildlife problems, opossum problems should be dealt with as soon as it’s discovered. Opossums will also attack if they are threatened. This can put younger children and pets at risk. This is why it’s best to remove opossums.
What Health Risks do Opossums Pose?
Opossums also threaten your health. They are known to carry leptospirosis, tuberculosis, tularemia, rabies, and many other dangerous diseases. These diseases can be passed on to both your pets and your family. To protect your family, you should remove opossums as soon as you notice them and clean the infested area.
Frank’s Wildlife Removal is happy to remove the opossum for you and bring safety back to your home. Opossums may be docile and non-threatening, but they can attack when they feel threatened, therefore it’s very important to keep kids and pets away from these creatures. Or rather, keep these creatures away from your kids and pets at all costs to prevent an ugly incident.
How We Remove Opossums
At Frank’s Wildlife Removal, we handle all animals with great care. Our opossum removal process is humane and safe for both the animals and the people around. Our team of wildlife removal experts does not use toxic chemicals to pollute the environment in order to scare away an animal. Instead, we will trap and remove the opossum as opposed to killing it.
Once we remove the animal, we relocate it to a safe location that ensures its survival. We will then clean the affected areas. On many occasions, opossums have been found dead under decks, sheds, and even in crawl spaces. If this is the case, our technicians will also remove the dead animal and clean up the mess.
Trapping and removing an opossum requires both skill and experience, and our team at Frank’s Wildlife Removal has both. We employ the following steps to trap and remove possums.
Step 1: Thorough property inspection
We first take a look around the property to find both obvious and subtle signs of the presence of opossums. The goal at this stage is to determine the animal’s hideout and how established it is. We also find out how many opossums we are dealing with, and whether there are babies or not.
Step 2: Baiting and trapping
With the information gathered from the inspection, we will determine the best approach for eviction. Our method is generally to safely trap and remove the wildlife. And for opossums, we strategically set traps with appropriate food bait to lure them in.
Step 3: Removal and cleanup
With the opossum successfully contained in the trap, we quickly remove it from the property and relocate it to its natural habitat. Our technicians also take care of the mess the animal left behind. We clean up the affected areas and disinfect to kill any pathogens and prevent the spread of diseases.
If you live in Michigan and find yourself with an opossum problem, give Frank’s Wildlife Removal a call today at (810) 691-4967!
What Attracts Opossums to My Property?
Opossums can be a huge nuisance to homeowners and neighborhoods in general. These animals will eat anything and everything they see, and they can cause damage to the outside of your home if they get comfortable on your property. Also visit getridofpossums.com to learn how to get rid of possum.
Still, what exactly attracts an opossum to your property. We’ll answer this question in detail here. This way you can keep these pests away from your home.
What Makes Opossums Come to Your Property?
Overflowing Trash Cans
Opossums love eating trash, especially stinky trash. If you leave your trash out in the open and don’t tie it up properly, opossums and other animals will be attracted to your property. Even if you tie up your trash tightly, opossums can still smell the food inside your trash bags.
So, it is best to get a secure bin for your trash, and make sure to close it once you put your trash in. This way opossums won’t come to your property at all.
Leaving Food Out
It’s not just trash that signals opossums to your property. These animals love garbage, but they will eat just about anything. If you leave food from a cookout or other leftovers in your yard or backyard expect an opossum or other animal to make a visit to your home.
Again, you need to make sure to secure all food sources and trash. Anything edible and out in the open is an invitation to opossums and other pests. In addition, don’t leave dog food or other pet food out. This will also attract opossums to your home.
Unsecured Gardens and Plants
If you are growing fruits and vegetables, this can be great for you and your family. Everyone loves freshly grown produce. However, you want to make sure that your garden is secured, this way animals won’t regularly visit your property.
As you already know, an opossum will eat anything it can get its paws on. If you are growing fruits and veggies without a fence or some kind of mesh covering, opossum and other animals can easily get into your backyard and snag what you are growing.
This is the perfect food source for them after all, and you are all but asking an opossum to come to your home. So, make an effort to lightly fence or protect your garden and plants.
Ponds and Other Water Sources
Finally, opossums also like to be around bodies of water and moisture. If your home has a pond, this could potentially attract opossum and other animals to your property. It’s not that you can’t have ponds on your property. But having this structure around could make an opossum much more likely to make a visit to your backyard.
Other nearby sources of water could also attract an opossum. This includes sewers and drainage ditches that are nearby. You can’t help if you live near one of these, but opossums will probably be wandering around your area.
This is why you want to prepare your home as much as possible, with fences, secured trash, and properly protected gardens.
Contact Frank’s Wildlife Removal
Opossums can be difficult to handle for the average homeowner. If you want to leave this job to professionals, call Frank’s Wildlife Removal services today. We operate seven days a week and are happy to help you with your pest issues.
We can be reached on our website if you fill out one of our contact forms. We are also available to take your calls at (810)-691-4967. Call now to get a free quote and find out how we can help you with your opossum problem.
How to Remove An Opossum Under The Shed?
Opossums enjoy sheds and porches because they present themselves with a comfortable, secure, and secluded environment. They’d be content to stay there all day and only go at night to look for food. Some may argue that there are benefits to having possums around because they feed on insects, but the real truth is that the negatives far outweigh the positives. Opossums will spread feces all over the place and do damage to your building.
Opossum infestations are often accompanied by a slew of other issues, making the need to remove them from your property all the more pressing. Because opossums lack the tenacious intelligence of certain other rodent pests, achieving this is not difficult. It is quite easy to exclude or trap them, although poisoning or lethal trapping should be avoided.
Use a possum repellent
Opossum repellents come in a variety of forms that can be used to keep the rodent-like critter away from your house. Opossum repellents work by utilizing the animal’s acute sense of smell against it to keep it out of your yard. Predator urine, mothballs, ammonia, and other typical repellents are used. Toss an ammonia-soaked rag under your porch or in the corners of your shed.
You can accomplish the same thing with a handful of mothballs or a little amount of predator urine sprayed around the house or trash. Although this may work in the short term, it may not work in the long term, because when survival is at stake, opossums have been observed to overcome their sensitivity to the unpleasant smell over time.
Install a sprinkler
A water-based possum repellent is effective in scaring away many nocturnal nuisance wildlife. Possums are nocturnal, which means they go about their business at night, which is why humans rarely notice them. When a motion-activated sprinkler detects possums on the move, it sprays them with a stream or shower of water. A sprinkler is most effective when possums are initially detected in the region, rather than if they’ve been visiting night after night and have grown accustomed to the spray.
Make your trash inaccessible
Opossums eat fruit, grains, and insects in general, but if they have access, they will also eat from compost piles, garbage cans, and pet food bowls. Fish, birds, and mammals have all been known to be eaten by them. Because these animals are scavengers, they will often dig through trash in search of food. But if you make certain that they have no access to your trash, either by using possum-proof trash cans or taking your trash inside at night, you can discourage them from sticking around your property.
Trapping and removal
The most effective way to get rid of an opossum living under your shed or deck is to have it captured and removed. Because they like to scavenge, opossums are one of the easiest species to catch.
Opossums will not be killed by live traps; instead, they will be trapped so that they can be removed from the area and released elsewhere. Purchase cage traps from pest control stores and place them near the porch or shed in question, following the critter’s journey.
The trap’s position is crucial to its effectiveness. Fruits, vegetables, or small animals that might easily attract the opossum should also be used as bait.
Why Hire Norcal Wildlife Removal?
Here at Frank’s Wildlife Removal, we have years of experience with removing nuisance wildlife of all kinds. Our humane wildlife removal techniques have been mastered over the course of years, and we know exactly how to remove animals humanely while keeping you and your family safe. . If you have a nuisance wildlife problem of any kind, give us a call today at Frank’s Wildlife Removal.
How to Get Opossums Out Of The Attic?
Have you seen an opossum creeping out of your attic at night? Or do you hear crawling noises coming from your attic? Or have baby opossums fallen down walls from the attic? These are just some of the tell-tale signs of an opossum infestation.
Opossums look docile, but they can be very problematic. These nuisance pests are frustrating, from digging through the trash to leaving large droppings in the attic. But how do you get them out of your attic? Read on to find out the answer.
Identification: the necessary first step
The animal wildlife removal process starts with proper identification. You want to be sure that you’re dealing with opossum infestation. Opossums are typically 20 to 36 inches long, with slender bodies, white faces, pink pointed noses, and hairless tails. They are known for playing dead when threatened. As scavengers, they can feed on anything. That’s why they are a threat to unsecured garbage cans, pet food, bird feeders, and even the garden.
Inspection
This stage involves figuring out how the animal is getting into your attic. More often than not, this is through a hole in the attic. It may be damaged shingles, missing roof tile, broken brick, and more. Watch out for crevices around the attic.
You also need to inspect the attic. If you’re lucky, you might see the animal in a corner. If not, you should look for indirect signs like droppings on the insulation, damaged insulation, and more.
Inspection also allows you to gauge the extent of the problem you’re dealing with. Is there just an opossum there? Or is it a female opossum and her kits?
Getting rid of the opossum
There are two main ways of removing an opossum from the attic. They include:
- Exclusion
Exclusion is the most preferred way to eliminate a nuisance opossum in the attic. To exclude an opossum, first identify all entry holes into the attic. Seal up all these entry holes with caulk or hardware cloth, leaving only the main entrance open. In this last hole, install an exclusion device (also known as a one-way door). Once the opossum goes through the device, it cannot get back in. After confirming there is no longer an opossum in your attic, you can then remove the exclusion device and seal up the last hole.
- Trapping
Live traps can also capture the nuisance opossum from your attic before relocating. While opossums can feed on anything, using sweet foods such as honey buns is a great bait idea. You can place the trap inside the attic or close to the entrance. Make sure you monitor the trap at least once daily to know when it has caught the nuisance pest. After that, you can relocate the opossum to at least 5 miles away from your property to ensure it doesn’t return.
Ensuring opossums do not return.
Getting rid of the opossum is not enough. You must also put measures in place to ensure that they never return. Some of the tips to bear in mind include:
- Get rid of easy access to food on your property
This can be achieved by securing your trash cans properly, keeping your pet food inside, fencing your garden, and clearing away seed crumbs from under your bird feeder.
- Eliminate hiding spots
If there’s no place for opossums to stay, they won’t be on your property. That’s why you must eliminate abandoned objects that can serve as hiding spots. Clear away tall bushes from your yard. Seal off entry holes to your attic, chimney, and building.
Apply repellents
Repellents are also a great way to make your attic unattractive to opossums. Some repellents to consider are hot pepper, ammonia, and predator urine. Ensure you constantly reapply these repellents around so that it remains effective.
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