Animals In The Attic

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Animals In The Attic Sarasota

The first of the bats likely moved in some previous fall — when bats, birds, spiders, scorpions, mice, rats, raccoons, snakes and squirrels tend to fly, gnaw or creep into suburban attics and basements.

You might call this time of year the critter season — when humans and certain animals collide. Even large animals, such as mountain lions and bears, have been known in rare cases to seek shelter for short stretches under more secluded homes.

"When the temperatures change, this is when animals generally seek refuge wherever, and houses often provide those refuges," said Peter Weigl, a professor of biology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina who studies animals, especially flying squirrels, taken from people's homes.

Nocturnal flying squirrels are hard to spot in the wild, but often not hard to hear in a house, scraping or rolling acorns overhead.

"This is the time of year that I frequently get calls from people about flying squirrels that apparently have set up a bowling league in the attic," Weigl joked.

Ants, cockroaches and termites remain the most common household pests, but some observers believe greater numbers of medium-sized animals may want into private homes these days. With suburbs encroaching on the wild and thinning the ranks of large predators, they theorize, animals like raccoons, opossums and skunks may reproduce more quickly.

"Their numbers are exploding, so they're coming into our habitats," said Terry Root, a senior fellow at the Center for Environmental Science and Policy at Stanford University.

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