How To Get Rid Of Possums In The Attic

If you hear the scurrying of little feet around your attic or crawlspace, your offset dreaded thought is probably that you have mice, or—even worse—rats.

Goose egg could ready y'all for the utter daze of coming face up-to-face with the creepy, blackness optics of an opossum in your attic instead!

If this situation sounds familiar, go along reading. We've got just the solutions you need for how to deal with this type of scenario…and don't worry—it'south more common than you call up!

Ed has been working in the pest command manufacture for years helping one,000's of homeowners navigate the world of insect and rodent management. He manages Pest Strategies now helping homeowners around the globe!

Table of Contents

Finding The Source Of Your Opossum Problem

Your very first step in handling the opossum in your cranium is figuring out how and why it got up there in the first place.

It didn't merely magically appear overnight; there'south got to exist an attractant up there and an entry point through which information technology made its way inside. Your job is to locate both of those things before yous tin focus on getting rid of the opossum.

Otherwise, you're inviting more trouble right dorsum into your cranium!

Get-go, Check And Seal Upward Loose Boards

One of the easiest ways for opossums to gain admission to an attic or a clamber space is through loose fascia boards.  By sealing up all the possible entryways in your dwelling, you lot're eliminating the methods an opossum tin can utilise to skirt its fashion inside.

Bank check out the video below to see how this uncomplicated procedure tin can be achieved yourself.

Be sure to check the construction of your home (inside and out!) on a regular footing in lodge to make sure that everything is even so continuing in good order. This should exist washed every bit a routine Integrated Pest Management strategy. If you lot oasis't already implemented this every few weeks, now is a proficient time to start!

Hither's a comprehensive checklist you can follow around your home to get started.

Fill In Access Entries And Hole With Caulk

If there are whatsoever holes or small openings in your domicile's structure or effectually windows, caulk them up immediately!

Each unsealed pigsty presents an opportunity to become a point of entry for a small pest, or manipulated into a big entry point for an opossum, raccoon, rat, or mouse. Past sealing up your home, you're closing all the doors to the outside—equally they should be.

Ensure That Nothing Died Upwards In that location

This is a highly unpleasant task, just 1 that must be accomplished nonetheless. Sometimes, nuisance animals sneak upstairs totally unbeknownst to homeowners, then die—still nether the radar.

The only sign of their presence occurs when a scavenger appears to sniff out and eat the carcass. In this case, the opossum could very well be that scavenger.

Because opossums regularly feast on expressionless animals when given the risk, information technology's non unusual for this to be a leading factor in their arrival. If an opossum smells a decomposable carcass in an attic, it will make its manner upward there to pick the bones clean. And because the opossum eats the dead brute every bit it decays, this ordinarily eliminates the putrid odour normally associated with carrion.

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Deal With the Opossum Itself

Once you lot've found the issues that led the opossum within your home in the first identify, you can begin your efforts to drive it out of your residence once and for all.

Take a look below at some of the all-time methods to ward off these nuisances and get your attic back!

Purchase a Trap

At that place are several oversized rodent traps and traps for nuisance animals on the market place which tin be used to confine opossums that have thrown down roots in your attic.

These traps piece of work using a system of springs attached to the door and the bait platform. Once an opossum crawls inside the trap to take the bait, the door will snap shut behind it, locking it inside.

For our recommendations on top traps, be sure to check out our guide to opossum traps and cages.

Tidy Things Up

Mostly, nomadic opossums are merely looking for a place to crash for a few weeks. They like to make dens out of unorganized spaces because it's likely that they will be left solitary in these places.

If your attic is disorganized (and let's exist honest, about attics are), opossums run into this as prime number existent estate to settle down and spend a few weeks or months. Past cleaning things up, you're removing the opportunity for the opossum to be left alone in its solitude. It will more than likely scurry away, every bit these animals are very shy and passive in nature.

To further illustrate this point, check out how this opossum reacts when freed from a trap where it spent the dark. The animal is then afraid of the human letting it go that information technology seems to be paralyzed!

Check and seal upwardly loose boards

One of the easiest ways for opossums to gain admission to an attic or a crawl space is through loose fascia boards. Past sealing upward all the possible entryways in your domicile, you're eliminating the methods an opossum tin can employ to brim its way inside.

Detect A Local Exterminator

Call In a Professional

When all else fails, call someone trained to handle these animals. It may cost y'all a few extra bucks, just in the cease, you lot'll be paying to have your opossum removed safely and securely.

In addition to that, you lot'll go the peace of mind in knowing that your professional crew can offering you good advice on how to prevent opossums from coming back in the future.

Repellents & Deterrents For Opossum Removal

While at that place are a ton of repellents and deterrents targeted toward opossums and other nuisance animals that you lot tin can purchase and apply to sway these animals out, we DON'T recommend that you lot use them in your home, even in the attic.

Why is that?

Well, these products unremarkably employ an undesirable quality like aroma, audio, or low-cal in order to drive off the opossums. For case: many repellents are made from the urine of predators, which is pungent. In the garden, this is no trouble. In the cranium, the odor wafts through the vents and inside the entire home.

Deterrents and repellents like  ultrasonic repellers are effective, and maybe a little likewise much; we mention them here only as an option, just not one we wholly endorse for indoor use.

Terminal Thoughts Most Opossum Attic Removal

Information technology tin can be a lilliputian tricky to become the opossums out of the attic (and it definitely requires a few extra steps for success), but it can be done.

The most of import thing to think is that the presence of these animals in the attic is oftentimes the get-go indication of a larger trouble—an unsealed entry bespeak somewhere, an unchecked food source out in the open, or both.

Brand sure to locate these key aspects in your attic earlier driving the opossum out. In this way, the opossum is more than similar an alert to an issue than a nuisance animate being!

Essential Guides

• 

  Are Opossums/Possums Unsafe? (The Answer May Surprise You)

• 

  Possum vs. Opossum (What're the Big Differences?)

• 

  What Exercise Opossums / Possums Consume? (A super WEIRD diet…)

Source: https://www.peststrategies.com/pest-removal/opossum-removal/how-to-get-rid-of-opossums-in-attic/

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