Raccoons: Dealing Humanely With The Masked Bandits

You may have picked up tenants over the winter.

Perhaps they left insulation on the ground, damage to soffits or shingles, or a stain on the ceiling. Perhaps you hear noise in your chimney or attic.

Raccoons are smart and resourceful, according to the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, which also notes their ability to thrive in close proximity to humans. Adults seek warmth in winter and a protective nest for the kits that will be born from March through May.

An attic or an unused flue can make an especially cozy nursery.

“Most of the calls we get are when they start making a nest in people’s attics,” said Virginia Frati, executive director of the Hampton Bays-based rescue center, which fields some 200 to 300 such calls about raccoons and squirrels combined each spring. Raccoons tend to take up residence in houses that are old or abandoned, or whose owners have been out of town for the winter—often surprising them when they return.

Boat owners are not exempt from a similar scare. Nests can be lurking in shrink-wrapped boats, Ms. Frati reported. And when the wrap is ripped off, there is nothing more terrifying for the mother raccoon—forget about the invader.

“Just please leave—don’t do any more work on the boat,” she advises people in such a situation, “and the next day they’ll be gone like magic.”

The masked bandits can do plenty of damage, according to a nuisance wildlife fact sheet from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Cornell Cooperative Extension. They “den” in sheds, barns, crawl spaces, chimneys and attics. They tear at buildings to gain entry, knock down gutters, block vents, chew wires, pillage gardens and garbage cans, dig up turf, and annoy people with noise and odors. Their scat may contain parasites and they’re the main carrier of rabies in New York—which is why the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center is not allowed to rehabilitate them. And they can be dangerous when cornered.

Even so, the Suffolk County Health Department’s last record of a rabid raccoon was near the Nassau County line back in 2009. Distemper in raccoons, which cannot be transmitted to humans, is often mistaken for rabies, and so is daytime foraging for food by a perfectly healthy mother.

Dell Cullum, owner of the Hampton Wildlife Removal and Rescue Service in East Hampton, has a soft spot for the animals.

“They’re beautiful creatures that are just very misunderstood,” said Mr. Cullum, who with his wife, Dee, raised and released four baby raccoons after their mother was killed by a car.

A “100-percent humane” trapper of 25 years in several states, Mr. Cullum has noted a different “intelligence” in South Fork raccoons as opposed to those living upstate in relative wilderness. “Their methods of survival are different here,” he said, referring to how they find shelter, food and water.

“Out here, they’re pushed into the situation they’re in,” Mr. Cullum said, explaining that residential development leaves them “no choice but to find shelter in some place like under your shed or in your attic.”

When raccoons stumble across an empty house and don’t get shooed away the first couple of nights, they may take advantage, launching an inter-species interaction that seems even more natural to any offspring who start their lives inside the building. Unlike possums, raccoons like roofs, Mr. Cullum said. Up on the crown, they can get a good view of anything threatening, such as a dog, as well as potential things to eat and drink.

Raccoons often use tree limbs and gutters to get to roofs, and take advantage of the slope, “where they can wrap their hands and shimmy up like a pole.”

“When worse comes to worse, and if a raccoon really wants to, it can—and I’ve seen it—a raccoon can physically climb up the side of your house with the claws, Mr. Cullum said. "Just Spiderman it up your house.”

Raccoons are less likely to reach the roof if nearby trees are kept trimmed, if the house has eaves, if gutters are protected and if lower portions of access points, including trees, are covered with sheet metal.

The creatures are strong and dexterous. Once they scale a house, they can peel a shingle off a weak spot “like we peel a banana,” according to Mr. Cullum. They can also chew through a louver and enter a gable vent to get indoors, also taking advantage of lower points of entry, such as open basement windows and doggy doors. A raccoon needs only a space as large as its head, as that seemingly bulky, bushy body is mostly fur.

A female raccoon might also make a nest in a chimney with a flue left open by property owners who were away for the winter.

“The mothers like it. They like to go and sit on the flue, spend a little time there. Then they come back and make sure nobody’s there,” Mr. Cullum said. If the house has stayed quiet, the raccoon might return to give birth, and “by the time people come back, it’s [no longer] time to light a fire. I tell people, 'You missed the show.'"

However, it’s not like the raccoons necessarily stay in the house all day, or forever.

“People panic and call a nuisance wildlife removal service,” Ms. Frati said, many of which will kill the animals. “If they do nothing at all, the raccoons will leave on their own ... Any kind of noise will scare them to death.”

She suggested leaving lights on in the attic, putting a radio there or in the fireplace, and making plenty of loud sounds in general.

“We really try to get people to be tolerant of them since we’re not allowed to take them for rehabilitation,” Ms. Frati said. The wildlife center will give advice over the phone and its website, wildliferescuecenter.org (click on “mammals,” then “raccoons”) has tips as well.

In any event, most houses lack the kind of long-term accommodations a raccoon will need. Possibly, an attic will contain mice and insects, perhaps even water condensation on pipes, but most raccoons need to get out to find provisions. Omnivorous, raccoons especially like berries and pumpkins, but will eat basically anything, Mr. Cullum said.

In summer, when an attic gets too hot, the raccoons may have to move out completely.

Both Mr. Cullum and Ms. Frati advised homeowners not to seal up the raccoons’ points of entry—which are also their exits—until they are certain all of them have vacated the premises. Trappers, Mr. Cullum noted, sometimes use thermal imaging cameras to make sure no animals have been left behind.

“The time to make repairs is in the fall or early winter,” Ms. Frati said of sealing off access points for raccoons, which can be an important tool for keeping them out. “Just ask people to please be patient. All of a sudden, they’ll leave on their own anyway.”

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