Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the river region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka,  Pike Road, Auburn and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

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 wh