Got a critter in the attic!

Zoodles95

Zoodles95

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Got home after a weekend in Toronto with old friends and my wife thought she heard a noise in the bedroom ceiling. Snagged the step ladder and opened the attic hatch and... Saw two eyes looking back at me. Raccoon is in there and must be the better part of 25 lbs. Anyone got some suggestions for a service in the Guelph/Cambridge/Kitchener area?

Ideally I would want the guy caught in a live trap and taken to some woodsy area away from our subdivision. I also need to figure out how the heck he got in. We had our roof redone two years ago and I had some "whirlybird" roof vents installed. Maybe he got into that thing?
 
Can't imagine it'd be hard to find a hole around your roof that lets in a 25lbs raccoon.

Personally I'd smoke him out. Won't require much to send him running.
 
Buy a live trap from Canadian tire or tsc. Relocating farther than 3km can get you in trouble unless you are taking it to wildlife rescue or wild life control. The later you are guaranteed that you will never see the critter again. Smoking it out can end up requiring some unexpected renovations that aren't covered by insurance.
 
Find the hole and cover it with plastic

Make a racket and add some lights, pitch around mothballs.

When it exits it will tear the plastic. replace the plastic and keep up the noise, disturbances until t leaves for good (No more torn plastic)

Repeat as needed.

Patch hole and remove whatever tree / pole it climbed to get to the roof.

Or call an exterminator.
 
Friends of mine did speakers cranked through the day up in their attic, papered over hole and watched it exit. Then patched hole.
 
go make sure the f'er didn't pull loose a roof vent, a large hole in the roof will be unpleasant when it rains.
 
FWIW, if you're going up in the attic (to clean the crap up) you can rip 4x8 plywood sheets in half lengthwise to take up through the access hatch and lay down over the joists to make walkways...
 
All kinds of great advice and input here. :)

Got someone coming tomorrow morning. Will update how this turns out.
 
Zoodles95 said:
Got someone coming tomorrow morning. Will update how this turns out.
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If you make it until morning, have a good nights sleep!
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They know how to push the soffit up to get in.It drops down behind them and leaves no trace.
 
Wingboy said:
They know how to push the soffit up to get in.It drops down behind them and leaves no trace.
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Exactly.
He will get hungry around 2am when it's quiet and dig through the ceiling to the kitchen for a late night snack.
A smart man would send up a peace offering to keep him happy until the eviction.
 
Just get some weed from Agave & smoke it in the attic. He'd be high as a kite & fall to his death
 
RockerGuy said:
Just get some weed from Agave & smoke it in the attic. He'd be high as a kite & fall to his death
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You're wrong again on both counts, weed might make him even more hungry, or he might want to cuddle, and i certainly don't have any to spare, it's hard to come by these days, since it has to be smuggled from several foreign countries by gangs that ride motorcycles. :rolleyes: or at least that's what i learned here.
 
Wingboy said:
They know how to push the soffit up to get in.It drops down behind them and leaves no trace.
Click to expand...

You know I was pondering that while I was working today. If that is the case then I do not know what we will do. I guess we will see if he is still there tomorrow when the critter removal folks come in and then take a look at how he may have come in. If they are coming in via the soffits then how in the heck do you secure those?

Darn creatures are so ingenious!
 
Since i polluted your thread, let me help you out.
I've fixed many poor installation jobs of all kinds, soffit quality is dependent on the integrity and skill of the installer.
I've seen some that are barely hanging in there, mostly on crappy new expensive homes like the "markham" type.
Can you get on your roof or reach the soffit from outside with a ladder?
If not, no sense in talking about it, you're allready going to pay a hefty bill to the racoon expert, let him figure it out.
If it was my house, i would go push on all the soffits and see if they are affixed by some method, or at least cut well so they are tightly wedged in place. Most aren't.
Should have checked tonight, and left one open so he could get out and save you some money.
When i find loose soffit pieces, i can usually fire a self tapping screw into the side rails that support it, providing it's well cut and has at least 1/2" overlap to work with.
th


The main problem i find is they are blocked by insulation by the idiot that installed it.
Having access from the inside could work for you also, could just tack some wood strips to the joists and brace them, hard to say without seeing your particular home.
Hope that helps you out, Wingboy is busy rebuilding his fancy trials moto for the 37th time. :D
 
Thanks for the tips. Attic is a bit of a PITA. Our master bedroom has a cathedral style ceiling so that part of the attic is obviously smaller and oddly shaped. The house has three attics. This critter is in the back attic.

We had the house built back in 2000 so it is somewhat "cookie cutter". I do find it weird that we have a Raccoon. Lots of rabbits around, quite a few skunks. Very rarely do you ever see a squirel. I have never seen a Raccoon until I saw the big fella up in my attic!

Will update tomorrow. At least last night he was quiet (or had already left as maybe he did not like seeing me peak my head into "his space".
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