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Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Alabaster, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Travis McGowin
So thankfully, here in Alabama, the weather is getting cooler. Thankfully, this is my favorite time of the year it’s fall leaves or fall in. It’s chilly when you wake up. It’s chilly when you you know when it starts to get dark in the evening. It’s just my favorite time of the year. I love the whole Halloween thing and all that however in your car super hard though. It does. And it does make washing your vehicles difficult but not everybody obsesses over washing their vehicles like some people so not gonna say any names. But anyway. Unfortunately though, with that cooler weather with those other fall temperatures coming in wildlife begin looking for somewhere to stay. And unfortunately, that can push people to have unwanted visitors and spots to their house and outbuildings in areas of their house like their attic, a lot of times, all of a sudden they’ll have no problem and then all of a sudden, there will be some loud noise thump in the attic scratching at all hours of the day or night. You know, and one of those animals in particular that really likes to take up harborage in an attic is a raccoon.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, it’s the perfect place for a raccoon. I mean, you got insulation, and most times can be blown in so blown in insulation. There’s plenty of space, they don’t have to worry about any kind of predators. It’s just it’s perfect for him. So the biggest thing here, that really we want to get across is a raccoon cannot gain access to your roofline without having an access area to that roofline. And what I mean by that is a tree. Really, I think a tree is probably 100% The only way I’ve seen a raccoon gain access to the roofline. And that could be a tree that’s two feet away from the house. I mean, they can jump they can leap. Another way that we see it is the the decorative wrought iron support that’s holding the garage up or something of that nature, they can climb up it, and occasionally a chimney. So the biggest thing is just keeping that keeping all the tree branches cut away from that that roofline is going to stop that that raccoon from gaining access.
Travis McGowin
Yeah, that’s essential for any wildlife control. And especially in the case of raccoons, I mean, a full grown raccoon is not some little small animal, that’s a pretty decent sized animal. And like you said, it’s not, you know, they’re not going to be able to climb up the side of brick. But given a tree given, you know, decorative pillars, wrought iron pillars up underneath carports, like you said, those kinds of things, they’re going to gain access. But I have yet to see a raccoon get into an attic, that didn’t have a way to climb up a tree, like you said, that’s that’s usually nine times out of 10. That’s what it’s going to be. And you know, that tree can either butt right up against the side of the house close to the eaves, or that tree can be I’ve seen them climb up a tree that’s all the way, you know, probably 1520 25 feet away from the house in the yard. But because the branches overhang towards the roof, you know that raccoon has an easy way to get in. You know, I’ve got some really cool photos to show to kind of give people an idea. It doesn’t take a very large access point for these raccoons to get in this customer who I’m going to show you the photos of in particular of their house. They called me one day and they said hey, we have started to hear some kind of craziness in the attic. It’s loud noises It’s usually at night. Just thumping and scratching, most specifically right above our son’s room. So it’s like really, you know, just really this great opportunity for their five year old to be freaked out at night. Because the noises in the attic. So they called
Michael Wienecke
Just in time for Halloween.
Travis McGowin
Exactly right. So they call me and I went up in loads and it took me about 30 seconds of being in the attic to go okay, I know exactly what this is because there were droppings and they were just indicators of a raccoon and so immediately turned around and left the attic. Because, you know of course we operate during the daytime raccoons operate at night. And if raccoons have found a nice place to stay They’re usually there in the daytime, sleeping and waiting for their nocturnal senses to kick in. And so I didn’t want to. I didn’t exactly but I didn’t want to meet a raccoon in the attic. You know, if you’ve ever seen their their clothes, it’s gonna like razor blades. So long story short, it took a little while to catch this one, he avoided my traps for quite a while, actually. And then, you know, one morning, early one morning, we were getting up and getting ready for the day, get ready to get the kids off to school and that sort of thing. And my game camera had caught motion in the attic. And I was like, finally, finally he is he has decided to mess with the cage. And so when I checked my gang cameras, this is what I saw.
Michael Wienecke
So cute.
Travis McGowin
And you know, they really are, especially the baby ones. Everybody thinks the baby ones are super cute. But that is actually a very vicious mean little creature out there. Most people don’t understand that. So we did we got a couple of photos of him he he did kind of was a little wary of the trap at first. You know, kind of see he sniffed around it for a little while before he decided he wanted to go in. But finally, by nine o’clock that night, he was he was caught. So and then you know that next morning I woke up. Before I saw these photos, I have text messages from my customer that said, Hey, he’s in the attic still. And it sounds like he’s tearing something apart. Well, he was actually banging on this cage trying to figure out how to get the door open. So, you know, they’re again, right about their son’s room. So it was just a great night for them. I said, Well, don’t worry, because you’ll you know, it’s gonna be a lot quieter after this. But so in trying to figure out where this raccoon got into this house, I had an idea. There was a tree that I figured was kind of the access point onto the roof, but I was still hunting trying to find out where this raccoon was actually getting into the attic at and I had looked all the way around the roofline, looking for gaps and, and finally after I had called him and removed him, I went and kind of explored a little further in the attic. And I finally found where he was getting into So, you know, addicts have these vents on top, of course, you know, release heat from the, from the attic space and cool the house off. But from the inside, you know, you finally could see he actually tore the mesh out of that attic vent and was able to get in and out of the attic, through that little gap right there, which isn’t really all that big.
Michael Wienecke
And I’ll say this, I mean that that’s factory mesh that they put on on all of those events that took him what Travis less than a second two seconds to get through that right there.
Travis McGowin
I mean, if that as you can, you can see towards the the actual mesh itself, that’s closer to the top portion of that vent. I mean, it’s kind of just sitting there, it’s secured to those. A couple of points. But realistically, all that raccoon had figured out to do was just to push push it inward on itself and go from there. And you can actually see the brackets hanging down. So they’re at one point was some sort of ventilation fan that was housed in that that was removed obviously. So without that ventilation fan being in there, he had he had free access.
Michael Wienecke
That’s correct. Well, I mean, we see it all the time. I mean chimney vents that aren’t aren’t properly secured vents that aren’t properly secured. I’ve seen him rip off the one to the right right there that that big van I’ve seen him completely rip that off the entire house and crawl through the hole there. Once they’re on the attic, I mean they they’re they’re tough so they can chew through that that What about roofing shingles and then write into the plywood and then they’ve got themselves a nice little hole and as you can see in the picture, it doesn’t take much of an opening for them to get into just just from experience I would say the size of a grapefruit typically is what it what they can fit through. And I know we were talking about how they get onto the roof one of the things I’ll add is that I have seen a few times where they can come up a gutter that is a Rambo style raccoon it’s pretty rare to see that. If they are gaining access to the house from from the gutter, they have to be trapped and they have to be removed and it’s that some records are smarter than others it’s pretty rare. We don’t see that very often but it does happen.
Travis McGowin
I’m glad you said that though. They these animals they are they’re very intelligent. The the ones that I have actually caught if you watch them, you know they realize for one of course they realized they’ve been caught but if you watch them, their hands or their paws if you will basically have a thumb I mean they literally I’ve watched set and watch the raccoon they nowhere they get called out. So they saw that the trap door fell down on the cage. And so they’re literally reaching outside of the gap trying to figure out exactly what they can grab to open that cage door. And you know, it’s kind of creepy when they’re sitting there watching you from inside of the cage, just like they’re trying to read you like they’re trying to figure out what it is you are what it is that you’re going to do to them or, or, you know, how can they get one over on you. But there must tell you, anyone who encounters one of those creatures needs to stay away, you know, there was a commercial. I don’t remember if it was the auto insurance commercial, or an Ikea commercial or, or it may have been an Ikea commercial of it. There’s a lady that lets her cat out in the backyard at night, you know, to go out to use the restroom or what have you. And her vision is obviously not very good as the commercial implies, because she’s like, Hi, kitty, come on back in. And it shows that she’s letting a raccoon into the house. You know, she’s like good kitty!
Michael Wienecke
But something else I’ll say about raccoons. You know, going back on what you’re cute, cuddly. I had a customer one time that was feeding raccoon and she was feeding them on her back porch with dog food. She told us about it. While we were doing our quarterly pest control, we recommended to stop doing that she did not stop doing that we got a call about a month later, she now had raccoons in her attic. She had raccoons in her house, they were actually going through the doggie door they busted through the plastic doggy door cover. And we’re inside of her house in her kitchen. So it’s a wild animal. They look cute. They are not pets, and they are extremely dangerous.
Travis McGowin
They are you know one of the points where I’ve trapped a raccoon, you know, I went to go grab the record. And thankfully, these traps have some very tight, mesh together tight middle together. So you know they can’t reach through it. But within the blink of an eye, with within the time that it took me to reach out my hand and grab the handle of this cage. The raccoon snarled at me and tried to basically bite me through the cage. And like I said it was within the blink of an eye it was so fast. So this is not a creature that you’d like you said like you don’t want to be feeding them and attracting them to your residence. There’s already enough out there to attract them to your residence. Like I said, if you have domesticated animals that you feed dogs and cats, garbage cans, waste waste piles, compost pile, there’s enough out there to attract these animals without you helping them along.
Michael Wienecke
Definitely, you know, and that’s another thing as far as the tree branch removal, overflowing trash cans, any kind of food source that’s going to bring them in, like you said dog food on the porch, it’s going to attract them towards your house. And eventually they’re going to try to find a way because now they’ve got a food source around the house. So now they need a Dan around that house because the food you know, we live where we eat. They’re basically the same way now they’ve got it, you know, easy pickings from from you know where they’re going to sleep to where they’re going to eat.
Travis McGowin
Exactly. So definitely don’t feed them. And don’t make it easy on them to gain access because they will find a way inside if they really want to. And then that just creates a for one a very unsanitary situation up in your attic and then a very dangerous situation as well.
Michael Wienecke
Definitely. One thing I’ll say too is rabies right now in Alabama is is running running rampant. There. I know in the last podcast, I talked about it they are dropping rabies blocks out of the sky and helicopters in Birmingham. I’m in bluff Park Hoover, they they’re dropping them out of the sky trying to get get rabies under control right now because because it’s something that’s just kind of growing into a lot more than they thought it would.
Travis McGowin
So that’s actually statewide to that actually, before Birmingham, they were doing that down in South Alabama, closer to the mobile area like said airplanes and helicopters and they were drop dropping these blocks out to basically try to combat it with the wildlife population. So it’s it’s definitely statewide.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah. So with that being said, if you see one in the daytime around your house, or in your house, and he’s there act in any kind of strange anyway, especially in the daytime because raccoons are nocturnal. They shouldn’t be just tromping around in the daytime around the outside of the house or anything like that. Just stay away from a call professional. I would recommend not doing a raccoon removal yourself. Anyway. That cage that Travis posted up on the picture. That’s a special design cage for inside of an attic. It really anywhere but it’s really designed for a roof. If you put a regular cage that’s got, you know, a larger opening, they are going to claw your roof, all the way down to where light is going to be able to pass through your roof. That one right there’s tight knit they can’t call through it. So, just using the right equipment to do the job, it just better to call a professional.
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