Removal of Baby Raccoons in the Wall and Ceiling

I got a typical call from a home owner. They heard scratching in the ceiling and down in the wall. Sometimes they heard heavy noises, sometimes vocal noises, like chattering. I knew that the culprit was raccoons. I arrived at the house, and sure enough, heard some of the scratching noises. It takes a lot of very careful listening in order to determine the exact area the babies are in. In this case, one was down the wall of the home, and the rest were up in the ceiling between the 1st and 2nd floors.

Once I knew exactly where the noise is coming from, it's time to cut the proper hole in the wall. Be sure not to cut too close to the animal, or you could injure it!

Here is one baby raccoon. Notice the white dust covering it, that's from the drywall cut. There was only one down the wall. It was a fiesty one, and had crawled away from the rest of the litter, and its exploration proved costly: down the wall it went. Had I not cut it out, it would have starved to death, and then caused quite an odor in the home. The mother raccoon was too big to go down the narrow wall to save it.

After I got the first one out of the wall, I had to get the rest of the litter. They were up in the ceiling. There was no attic space in this house. This ceiling was actually between the first and second floors of the house. The raccoon was entering the crawl space under the house and crawling up. In order to find these babies, I used a trick I thought up many years ago: I carefully felt around on the ceiling until I found a warm spot - and that's where the litter is resting! I cut a hole two feet from that area, so as not to injure the baby raccoons, and removed four more. Here is a photo of two of them.

I placed all five baby raccoons together in a bucket. You can see the one down in the wall still has a face full of white drywall powder. The first thing I do is use the live babies as "bait" to trap the mother raccoon.

Here you can see the mother raccoon trapped in a cage, using some of the baby raccoons as bait. I caught her under the house, where she had been gaining access to the walls and the gap between the floors. Once I have her, I seal up the entry points, and the problem is solved. The raccoons are relocated together.

This is not the type of work for amateurs to attempt. It has taken years of field experience to do this job right. From subtle things like using extension mirrors in tight gaps to find the locations of the raccoon down the wall, to listening and knowing that the litter isn't all in one place, to understanding architecture, raccoon behavior, and ultimately trapping the raccoon and properly finding and repairing the entry points, this is a job for an animal pest control professional. We are actually known as nuisance wildlife control operators, or animal damage controllers. If you need help with a situation like this, and you live in the Orlando, FL area, give me a call.

For more raccoon trapping information, go back to the Orlando raccoon control page.

If you don't live in Orlando FL, click here for the National Directory of Wildlife Trappers.

I operate a professional wildlife removal and pest animal control business in Orlando Florida. I deal with wild critters and control them via trapping, exclusion, and prevention techniques. If you have to know how to get raccoons out of the attic and need to know how to get rid of raccoons on your property, give me a call any time and I can professionally take care of your Orlando raccoon problem.