Baby Raccoons In Attic

Eric: All right, so we’re here with All City Animal Trapping. A question that keeps coming up is from clients is about raccoons and in their attic. And so what do I do if I have a baby raccoons in attic?

All City Animal Trapping: Absolutely. And that’s a timely question too because of the season. So right now is when the mothers, I mean, there could be some late season babies already being born, but our early season babies, excuse me.

But realistically, right now the mothers are basically for lack of a better word, breaking into attics to have their babies away from the males. If there’s two solutions to this problem and both are effective. But I’ll give you my experience with both. So I’ve been doing this 16, 17 years or something like that.

And for the first six to seven years that I did this job as far as relocating animals or trapping them or whatever the case may be getting them out of houses, we just use trapping. And so what would end up happening is I would figure out that there were babies up in the attic. I would figure out where they were coming in and out of the attic from. And then I would set a trap on the ground. Usually trapping does not work well inside the attics. Although there are exceptions to the rule when it comes to raccoons. You’re not really allowed to put traps on the roof because it gets too hot up there. It’s considered inhumane, so you figure out how they’re getting up to the hole that they’re getting.

And then you put a trap at the base of that. And it’s really, really effective raccoon trapping is really effective. But the problem becomes, I would catch what I know as a mother. I would roll the trap over and I would see teats knowing she was producing milk. And I’d go, where the heck are the babies?

Because she came out to feed cause she needs to eat enough food to produce milk for the babies. But I only caught her and that means that the babies are not old enough to come out and get caught in a trap. Which requires me then to go up into the attic, figure out where the babies are. Now her job is to hide them as well as she can.

That’s messed up part because she’ll put them down into walls, things like that. Where the only real solution is to cut open the wall from the inside, because I’m not as small as a raccoon. I can’t get into that space to get them out. So her goal is to protect them by putting them on honestly, the most awkward places.

A lot of the times that you can reach. We came up with a solution to that about 10 years ago and that’s called a pheromone treatment. A pheromone treatment is non-toxic, we also call it a eviction treatment. It goes by both terms but it’s non-toxic. It’s a spray that we put up in the attic. We kind of spray the opening and spray all the corners of the attic.

And what does it incites fear in the mother. So what we touched upon earlier was how aggressive the males are to the babies. And so what we’re spraying up there is actually the pheromones of a male raccoon or an alpha male raccoon. And it’s telling the mother, hey our babies are now endangered because he’s up here with you.

So the first two nights that you use this spray, she’ll go in and out of the hole. You might even hear more noise. She’ll be going in and out looking for a fight. She’s trying to fight this male raccoon, except he doesn’t exist. He’s really just the smell. After that second night, she’s going to start to get very concerned that her babies are going to come under attack.

So she’ll move them and I’ve actually seen it happen, it’s very cute. She puts them in her teeth and climbs out. Then one by one and she’ll take them to a secondary nesting site. And so she can find a more permanent location. But the best part about the pheromone treatment isn’t only just that you don’t have to go through the process of catching every single one of them. Which is time consuming and can take a little while more damage can occur in between all that stuff.

The best part is I don’t have to figure out where those baby raccoons could be. Because in the worst case of scenarios, if you can’t find them, they will die without that mother. In which case, if I were to trap, I would have to let the mother go so she can go back in and at least feed her babies until I can come up with a solution to get them out. Because we’re not going to leave babies in that attic to die.

We want them with the mother at all times. So the pheromone is really, really, really, or it has been really a lifesaver for me over the last 10 years or so that we’ve been using it. There’s a guarantee behind it if it doesn’t work the first time a reese spray is free with our company. So in my opinion, if you think that there’s babies and the only real way to tell if there’s babies is if you’ve seen them visually. Or if you start to hear cooling or chirping, what sounds like bird noises, realistically, it almost sounds like pigeons.

A high-pitch chirping and stuff like that. That’s babies calling for their mothers to be fed, they need to be fed every four hours. So if you’re hearing that pretty consistently, especially at night, when birds are not formally active, then you probably have raccoons. So if you’re hearing that going and chirping at night, you probably have raccoon babies, and that’s still only leaves you with two options.

I’ve seen a lot of customers try to put boom boxes up in the attic and lights up in the attic. And it’s smart sometimes that may work. But if the mother has babies, it’s going to take more than that to kick her out because she considers that her house. She set up some time building a nest. She’s been feeding the babies there for a while.

And every time she moves the babies kind of dangerous to the babies, if there’s any other predators out. So it’s going to take a little bit more than that to encourage her. So you’re left with either. trapping or the pheromone. Both will work, we’ll make both work depending on the situation. But there’s a lot of times where I would advise the pheromone treatment over trapping just simply because trying to find those babies can be extremely difficult.

Eric:  And I’m assuming the pheromone treatment is not harmful to humans.

All City Animal Trapping: Correct. Not harmful to humans or to dogs or pets or anything like that. It’s not even harmful to the other animals that are up there. Basically, all it does is incite kind of a fear response in the mother and making her think that there’s a predator up there or an alpha male raccoon that wants her babies. And that initiates her desire to leave basically.

Eric: Okay. Fair enough. Well, thank you so much for your time.

All City Animal Trapping: No problem. Thank you.