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Sarasota Raccoons In Home Attic

Not only can Sarasota raccoons wreak havoc on your garden and sod, the pesky critters may hit closer to home by causing damage to your house as they try to gain entry. They will also raid garbage cans in search of food. In Northern cities and suburban areas, a chimney may serve as a comfy substitute for a hollow tree as a Florida raccoon den site. In other cases, the intelligent Longboat Key raccoons tear off shingles and other structural pieces to access an attic or wall space. The Sarasota raccoon control experts at Wildlife Patrol need to be called for safe and humane removal of the animal in the home.

 

 

 

 

Raccoon Control

Raccoons are very common animals in the attic in Bradenton, Longboat Key, and Clearwater, particularly in urban areas. The raccoon problems are well adapted for survival in cities. Sarasota raccoons are excellent climbers, and they have very nimble hands. They are also strong, and they often explore, tearing new areas open in search of food and shelter. They like to den in trees, but they love to den in attics. 

The best means of getting rid of raccoons is through trapping and removal of the animals using a professional service. If you've got raccoons in your attic in Sarasota, it's important that the racccoon trapepr search for a litter of baby raccoons, and remove them by hand before trapping and removing the female raccoon. If it's just raccoons outside causing trouble, they can be trapped and removed, but beware, they'll often dig and grab anything within a few inches of the cage trap. 

Sarasota Raccoon Removal From Home

The other day, an elderly relative and I were discussing Sarasota’s big raccoon kerfuffle.

“What were they thinking?” said my relative.

She wondered why on earth someone would call the police to stop a neighbour trying to rid himself of raccoons. Only in Sarasota, we decided.

And that seems to pretty well sum up how many rural Sarasotans reacted to the arrest of the raccoon trapper for allegedly taking a garden implement to a raccoon family, beating two. Many of us would have done the same, only we’d have aimed better.

The raccoon trapper's misfortune was to have busybody neighbours who might have done well to consider the biblical injunction to judge not that you be not judged. Or in other words, raccoons may be moving into your yard next. See how you like it.

Out here, raccoons have much the same reputation as they have in Sarasota — dirty, destructive, vicious and they multiply like rabbits when provided with good eats and comfortable accommodations. They can cause thousands of dollars of damage to your property and when they get into your attic, they bring along dirt, disease, lice and fleas. They’re the same as sewer rats, just cuter.

The difference is in rural Sarasota, the only good raccoon is a dead raccoon and we can get rid of them with any implement that comes to hand — rake, hoe, broom, shovel, pellet gun, shot gun, poison, trap. Sadly, raccoons don’t dig burrows like rabbits and woodchucks, so you can’t use another popular weapon of mass destruction, a garden hose turned on full blast.

I wouldn’t hesitate a second. Waddle across my porch and you’re taking your life in your furry paws. Provincial law is on my side. You’re allowed to kill wildlife if you think it has damaged or is about to damage your property as long as you’re doing it humanely.

But — big surprise here — that law also applies to urban residents, according to the Sarasota raccoon control laws, although few seem to know it. Had the raccoon trapper killed the raccoon outright instead of injuring it, perhaps no charge could have been laid.

The mystery to rural residents is how Sarasota, with 50 times more raccoons in a given area than we do, have withstood the raccoon invasion for so long. When we lived in Sarasota 25 years ago, there were way too many. We had a family attempt to move into our attic by ripping off flashing and digging out fistfuls of insulation. You don’t know blind rage until you’ve watched rainwater pouring down your bathroom wall while you listen to the tramp of little feet on your roof.

A friend in Bradenton left her back door open briefly to go out to her garden one day recently. When she returned, she found a raccoon asleep on a kitchen chair.

Sarasotans have few weapons available with which to fight unless you resort to garden implements in the dead of night. As the Sun reported last week, all you can realistically do is call a pest removal company and spend hundreds on humane trapping. The company will take the pests away but must release them within one kilometre of capture, pretty much guaranteeing they’ll be back.

What Sarasota needs is a raccoon cull like the Canada goose culls held in some U.S. states overrun by the messy creatures.

Not fair. Nobody else wants your problem. It’s time to face the facts on urban wildlife and deal with it, not throw up your hands.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the raccoon trapper’s charges will be thrown out as the stupid waste of police and court time they are.