There's a Raccoon in My Attic — What Do I Do?

A raccoon doesn't sneak into an attic — it moves in. Heavy footsteps at night, a torn soffit panel, chattering or crying sounds. If this is your Columbus home right now, here's what's actually happening up there and how removal works when it's done right.

Confirm it's a raccoon

Sound tells you most of it: raccoons are heavy — walking and thumping, not scurrying — and active at night. Add a visible entry (a bent vent, a torn soffit, a hole ripped at a roof return) and droppings in the attic or on the roof, and the ID is solid.

Chattering, trilling, or crying sounds change the situation significantly: that's a litter. Spring raccoons in attics are almost always mothers denning with kits, and that dictates the whole removal approach.

Why 'just trap it' backfires

Trap a mother and miss the kits, and within days you have dead animals in the attic plus a furious raccoon tearing your roof apart trying to get back to them. Kits must be located and removed by hand — they hide in insulation pockets — and reunited for relocation.

There's also the legal layer: relocating wildlife in Georgia has rules, a cornered raccoon is a genuinely dangerous animal, and raccoons are a rabies-vector species. This is one of the clearest 'call a pro' jobs in pest control.

How professional removal works

The pro finds the entry first, then checks for a litter before any trap is set. Live traps go at the entry or along the travel route, checked daily. Once the attic is verified empty — including the kits — the entry is sealed with metal flashing, because a raccoon treats hardware cloth and foam like wrapping paper.

Then comes the honest assessment: compacted and soiled insulation, torn ductwork, and latrine sites. Raccoon latrines carry roundworm eggs, so cleanup is a sanitation job, not just cosmetics. You get the damage documented and priced separately from the removal.

Keeping the next one out

Raccoons are creatures of territory — an attic that denned one will be checked by others. Sealing is mandatory, and so is thinking like a raccoon: trim branches back from the roofline, cap the chimney, and lock down pet food and trash that make your yard worth visiting.

The pros we connect you with seal with materials rated for a strong, determined animal and stand behind the exclusion — a sealed entry that fails gets re-sealed.