How To Get Rid of Raccoons

It’s no secret that raccoons are a nuisance. On the hunt for food and a place to establish their den, raccoons can show up in your yard, your attic, your chimney, rummaging through your garbage and more. While they’re not out to destroy your home sweet home, it is important to get them out and keep them out. Here’s how.

If you don’t have a raccoon problem yet but you’ve seen them in your area, you’ll want to start with prevention. Keep food sources out of sight, with garbage well-secured in outdoor trash cans, using a thick lid and weights or pressure straps on top. Also, be sure your pet’s food is kept indoors. Install a tray on the bird feeder polls roughly six inches below the feed to catch any dropped seed, and be sure the feeder isn’t in a location near trees that the raccoon could use to jump from to get on the feeder. Also, be sure to cut trees back to six or eight feet from your home so raccoons can’t get to your roof and make their way into the attic to form their den.

How Do You Get Rid of Raccoons?

You can even deter raccoons from coming with cayenne pepper. These masked marauders hate the smell of the spice. Add one small canister of cayenne and one bottle of hot sauce to a gallon of water, then spray the solution all over your garden plants, bushes and shrubs, and reapply after a rainfall. There are various other repellents you can use as well, like Mint-X trash bags, which are specifically designed to repel raccoons. They’re all-natural trash bags that have a mint fragrance, which raccoons dislike. Motion-activated floodlights can also serve to deter raccoons.

Are annoying bugs and outdoor critters invading your home? You can control most common pests on your own without spending big bucks on an exterminator.

If you have raccoons inside your home, the first thing you’ll need to do is figure out how they got in by inspecting your house thoroughly. Once you know how they’re getting in, determine if it’s a mother raccoon with young. If so, allow the babies to grow a few weeks, otherwise they will die without their mother. You can then use one-way doors to get raccoons out of attics or crawl spaces or invest in the help of an animal control professional who can make sure that mothers and their litters are unharmed and not separated.

How to Keep Raccoons Out

There are several ways to keep raccoons from entering your yard. Roger Dickens, Technical Services Manager for Terminix says removing raccoons’ food sources can help prevent them from entering your property and encourage any of them living in the area to leave. “Do not leave pet food outside and clean up the area and remove any leftovers after the pet is done feeding,” Dickens says. “Leftover pet food can attract raccoons to your home.”

Food sources aren’t the only things in your yard that can attract raccoons. Dickens says the animals are also attracted to water sources, like decorative fountains and ponds, puddles, leaky pipes and pet water dishes. You should keep your trash can lids tightly secured, and if the home has any nut or fruit trees, be sure to remove fallen fruit and nuts from your yard, as that can attract them. “Raccoons are opportunistic feeders who may consistently visit your garbage if it is a source of food for them,” he says.

How Do You Get Rid of Raccoons? Try Loud Noises

If you’re just dealing with adult raccoons, you can DIY their removal by trying bright lights and loud noises (like a loud battery-operated radio in the attic or fireplace) to scare them out. Also, try placing a bowl of cider vinegar at the base of the chimney — it’s a smell raccoons find foul, so they’ll run from it. Once they’re all gone, be sure to make your home as unattractive to raccoons as possible.