Raccoon in the Attic: The Signs

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In almost all cases, you'll hear a pest control problem before you see it or any evidence of it. You might hear thudding or bumping from above you during the night or perhaps a scuffling, almost as though something is stuck and trying to wriggle free. You may also hear vocal noises or calls. These are very clear signs that you have a pest control problem, but they're not necessarily a definitive sign that you have a raccoon pest control problem.



Raccoon Sounds

Raccoons are generally larger animals than rats, mice, opossums, bats, and other animals that might invade your home. This means that they will make a louder noise as they move around. They're heavier than the smaller animals, so bumps and slips will make a louder ‘thudding' noise.

Raccoons are nocturnal. Although they don't sleep the entire day away, they do sleep for large chunks of it but are easily awoken by food. If there is a very good source of food close by, the animal will make use of it, stashing food for later consumption, day or night.

Being nocturnal, you are more likely to hear these animals at night. They aren't going to make very much noise during the day while they are sleeping, unless you have very daytime active interlopers. When the sun goes down, however, the raccoon(s) will wake up, getting ready to leave your home, making a lot of noise in the process, to find food and other things. When the sun starts to come back up again, they will return to their den sites to go back to sleep, hopefully with nice, full stomachs.

During the night, you may hear raccoons doing ‘stuff' in your back yard. This will include knocking over your garbage can to get to the leftovers inside, fighting with each other for territories or mates, defending kits and habitats, and generally doing what raccoons do. If they are trying to break into your home, you will hear this, a combination of scratching, chewing, tearing, ripping and smacking sounds as the animal tries to get inside.

Raccoons also make a number of vocal noises. Kits are quite loud during the night, especially when they are hungry and calling for their mother. Over two hundred different noises has been recorded from adults and babies alike, a combination of screeching, growling, purring, whimpering, snarling, chattering, hissing, crying, and more. Younger raccoons tend to make quieter, more cat-like sounds, such as meowing and crying.

Raccoon Tracks

You might find actual, physical signs of raccoons if you go slightly further afield - in your back yard. On soft, dusty, or wet surfaces and ground material, you might see little raccoon paw prints. They're about two to four inches longer, the bigger the print, the larger the animal. There are five digits on the tracks, back paws larger than the front ones, and you might see claws too, although these can sometimes be hidden in the marks make by fur.

Raccoon Droppings

Raccoons droppings, also known as scat, is actually pretty dangerous, connected to a list of potentially deadly diseases. We do not recommend that you get up close and personal with it. This can be difficult to avoid, particularly if you have pets. Raccoon droppings can look very similar to the droppings left by cats or small-medium dogs, although scat tends to have more food remnants left in it - berries, etc., and is often quite kept-together. Raccoons use areas known as latrines to deposit their waste and this will be somewhere that isn't too close to sources of food, water, or where they sleep.

You will find these latrine areas in a number of places, both up in the attic and down on the ground in your back yard.

Raccoon Scratches

If you have trees in your back garden, you might notice that scratches have started to appear on them. This is usually a very good indication that you have raccoons. These scratches can be found anywhere that the raccoon climbs, usually fence panels and trees.

It must be noted that birch trees seem to have a surface that is too slippery and smooth for the raccoon to climb on. They find it difficult to climb up these trees (and other smooth surfaces) easily, needing something textured to grip their claws into.

Raccoon Damage

This can be very hard to diagnose because it is so vast and extensive. They can destroy entire gardens and areas of agricultural land in almost no time at all. Fruit trees, flowers, crops; it doesn't matter. Scratches on trees becomes the tip of the iceberg when the animal starts digging up chunks of your lawn after a particularly heavy rain. They do this to get to the new influx of bugs and insects down there. You'll also wish for that once the animal starts attacking your poultry too. A raccoon won't usually take on a chicken, but it will enter a coop to get to the eggs. If that means defending itself (and, in the process, killing) a few chickens ... Oh well. It's just another day for the raccoon.

Garbage cans will be knocked over, the contents of your trash littered across your front or back garden.

Screens that protect windows and doors might get ripped open or torn.

Siding can be entirely broken apart from your home in some cases, the raccoon trying to get inside the building.

Bricks can be removed.

Caps knocked off the tops of chimneys.

Raccoons are DESTRUCTIVE and NOISY. If you have a pest raccoon of your own, it's time to take some pretty serious action.

Go back to the Raccoon Removal page, or learn tips to do it yourself with my How to Get Rid of Raccoons guide.