All seriousness aside, I'm hearing the same noises in my attic. I'm going to have to get those big rat traps. I caught a big rat at the previous house. I picked up the trap and rat. That SOB was still alive!
Posted on 01/26/2019 7:07:07 PM PST by EinNYC
For the past few weeks, usually in the middle of the night, I have been hearing some kind of animal running around, scratching, etc. in my attic. I asked the maintenance guys to go up into the attic to have a look for damage, points of entry, etc. They went up there and reported no holes. They had put a small Havahart trap up there baited with peanut butter, but nothing was caught in there. I told them to remove that, as I didn't want anything getting trapped and then starving. I threw a bunch of bags of mothballs up there when they left.
This afternoon, at 5 p.m., I was sitting in my living room when my Maine Coon cat alerted. She jumped up onto the top shelf of her cat tower and then stood on her hind legs, allowing her to dab her paws against the ceiling. She heard something! A moment later, I heard a big THUNK! and then the sound of an animal dropping to the floor, in the attic. I banged around everywhere with the end of a broom handle, and then I didn't hear it any more.
Is this a raccoon or a squirrel? I have written emails to the management, urging them to get professional wildlife removal, but so far, they have not acted. I certainly don't want this thing having a litter of babies up there, as I know breeding season is just about here. A look around while standing on the ground has not revealed any holes, but there are solar panels all over the roof, and if the animal has chewed an entry hole under those, you wouldn't be able to see them just walking around outside.
Thankfully elk are a lot calmer than deer. Deer will run full speed across the road seemingly coming out of nowhere. Elk on the other hand tend to slowly wander up to the road’s edge in groups then mill about a bit until they decide to very slowly cross the road in a group. By that time traffic has already slowed to a crawl or stopped so people can gawk at the elk. Much better for all involved.
What do you call them? I get the raccoon thing. You go the the Midwest and pick up a paper. You’ll read an ad that says “Walker coon hound for sale, great hunter”. Don’t have crap to do with race. It’s the way we talk and the little masked bandits are hell in a sweet corn patch. Ask a black person with a garden.
Why on earth do you have any holes up there that allow anything in? Attics should be well ventilated but that doesn’t mean big gaping holes....Screening material was invented a long time ago...
All seriousness aside, I'm hearing the same noises in my attic. I'm going to have to get those big rat traps. I caught a big rat at the previous house. I picked up the trap and rat. That SOB was still alive!
Coming out of YNP through Gardner at night in the fog I thought I saw all sorts of peeps on the road. Turns out it was a herd of legged Elk standing in the middle of the road.
Good thing I was going slow.
I have seen some bloated, dead elk on US 191 just north of the canyons south of Bozeman. The State Highway guys eventually picked them up, but I am sure glad that they were not my road kill.
Funny that you posted this tonight. Just got back from my daughter’s house and she’s hearing noises in her attic that we don’t know if it’s squirrels or what.
The following year we lucked out and a feral cat started hanging around our part of the neighborhood and we put out no more poison. Thing is she had a litter of kittens. We trapped her and the four little ones, got the mama fixed and sent the kittens on to be adopted.
We have not had a mice or rat problem since. We do have to keep food and water out for her because when she gets hungry she goes after the squirrels. And, we have nice squirrels.
The dead ones are probably hit by folks who don’t know the score in that area. I live southwest of there, we have a creek on the west side of the road and a hay field on the other. Speed limit says 65 but between dark and dawn you better be down to 45 so you can stop or slowdown for mule deer. Don’t like your car or want a hood adjustment just let’er fly.
You could put a WiFi camera up there. They are relatively inexpensive (about $30), come with IR light so they can see in the dark, and you can set them to send an alarm to your smart phone (if you have one) when they detect movement. You could use the camera for other security applications after you find out what is going on with your attic.
Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase...
This time of year its probably flying squirrels. They are a beotch to get rid of. I had them in my mountain cabin. My sister currently is trying to get them out of her attic. Have a heart traps are a waste of time.
If you find tiny hand-towels in your attic, they are raccoons. Our neighborhood raccoons wash their food before eating it.
One even did a “Two-Fer”. He not only washed the bread in the cat’s water bowl, but also washed his butt by sitting in it. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I think I even have a cellphone picture of it somewhere.
#7. At my house, a 20 pound raccoon is called “starving”. We put a saddle on the last one on my porch and my Maine Coon cat went for a ride. The coon answers to the name “Wideload”.
“...catching them to release them in other neighborhoods is not very effective.”
I visited a friend in rural NJ and met her new husband. They have some ducks and chickens and rabbits and stuff. He said they had a bunch more, but a raccoon came in and killed them all. He said he trapped the raccoon and took it across the river and released it.
“Released it!!?? I would have killed it!”
“Ha! Well - I did. But seeing as you are from the suburbs I didn’t know if you would understand.”
It’s illegal to kill a racoon too - so he was afraid that I might tattle.
I learned the hard way to tie down the rat traps with heavy duty wire or fishing line. Otherwise the rat will just drag it to some hidey-hole and die (and stink). I had some traps where they licked the peanut butter but never sprung the traps.
Peanut butter, pepperoni stick, all tied down to the release bar with thread had a greater success rate as they had to really tug at it to get it all.
The big thing though was plugging the VERY small cracks at the base of the garage door, and putting the food stored in the garage away in sealed containers. (Mainly the cracks though.)
Have you thought about using an ultrasonic pest repeller?
I heard those things don’t work. Might annoy the cat, though.
Mothballs?! What?!
Did ya think it might be a flying squirrel? I hope he didn’t bring his moose. A moose once bit my sister.
Are you sure you weren’t just in one of your dogs’ dream?
Probably a squirrel. If it was a coon then you couldn’t miss seeing an entry hole......
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