Critters in the Attic

by Randy Connell

I never did find out what was living in my attic.  I'm going to always believe it was a family of raccoons, but I'll never know for certain.  One night a heard a little noise in the attic.  Being the procrastinator that I am, I didn't do anything about it.  The noise continued for a couple of weeks then intensified.

I figured something had gotten in and had babies, but I don't have handy access to the attic and again I put it off.  I started researching on the Internet about the best way to deal with unwelcome visitors in my house.  I first started seeing services for trapping and places to buy the live traps and do it myself.

I then started finding "greener" ideas.  One article said that if you trap the mother and remove her that the babies will go off in search of mom and could fall into a wall and die leaving you with a rotting corpse to deal with.  Hmmm... that doesn't seem very good.

It went on to say that the best thing to do is to just let them be - eventually they'll be big enough and move out.  To entice them to move out this article said to start putting food near the point where they're getting in and then everyday move it further and further away.  That didn't make a lot of sense to me, so again, I waited to see what would happen.

The small scuffling noises I'd been hearing turned into what sounded like raccoon wrestling matches.  And now the noise was no longer just in the corner of the house, they were all over the place.  I could often hear them chattering at each other.  The wrestling matches kept getting rowdier and it was getting to be altogether too much to ignore (even for someone like me). 

One night the chattering got really loud right near the chimney that runs through my second floor, then suddenly I could hear it at my floor!  Oh, NO!  One of them fell down into the wall and was stuck and screaming between the first and second floor.  I went downstairs and listened for it.  It suddenly stopped.  I wondered if the poor creature had gotten stabbed on a nail and had died in my walls.  A few minutes later it started chattering with increased urgency and suddenly I heard it walking across the ceiling by the fireplace.

Being the soft-hearted animal lover that I am, I listened and tried to figure out exactly where this critter was, then I cut a hole in my ceiling to let it out.  Mind you, I hadn't thought of what I was going to do when this raccoon (or badger or whatever it was) came tumbling out of the ceiling onto the floor where my Jack Russell Terrier was waiting and wondering why I was tearing the house down.

Of course about the time I got the hole opened I heard it in the kitchen.  The kitchen already had a hole in the ceiling (that's as story for another time), but nowhere near where the critter was.  I tried pounding on the ceiling to see if I could scare it to the hole where it could escape.  No luck.

I finally decide to just let it be and I'd figure it out once it started stinking.  Some time later I heard it in the hallway by the laundry room and decided to go back to bed.  By now it was 2:00 AM.  A few minutes later I heard it scurry up the bedroom wall.  Somehow it had figured it out and found a space big enough to get back to its home in the attic.  Whew!  No dead critter to stink up the place.

That was a close enough call that FINALLY, I was moved to action.  I read a little more on the Internet and found references to driving them out with smell.  Not knowing exactly what I had up there I finally decided that coyote urine would drive out most small to medium sized animals in this area as we have coyotes in the field at the end of the block (another story).  Turns out, I couldn't find coyote urine, but found meat fed fox urine at a hunting supply store.  It was concentrated into a gel and sold in a tube.

I squeezed a bit out onto a shop towel and added a bit of water.  I placed the damp towel into a ziplock baggie, left it open and tossed it into the attic right next to the access point.

Later that night when there should have been wresting matches, I heard nothing.  Then ever so quietly and slowly, I heard the rafter creaking under the weight of one of the critters.  It came about halfway between the corner where I presume the nest was and the access point where the fox pee was, then RAN back to the corner and that's the last I heard from them.  I guess it forgot something when it moved out in such a hurry and had to come back to get it.

According to the tube, the scent (which was meant to hide human scent for hunters) will last about two weeks.  It's now been about two weeks and still no sound in the attic.  I assume they've found more suitable quarters for wild beasts, but I plan to refresh the scent in case anyone else decides to move into this nice abandoned habitat - when I get around to it.  Have I found where they come in?  Not yet - I'll get to it someday.  Will I win the award for the best procrastinator in the USA?  Probably, but I won't get around to picking it up for a year or two.