Raccoons take up residence in many different habitats, such as hollow trees, attics, crawl spaces, and sheds. However, another place you might find raccoon pests living on your property is inside your home’s chimney. This article discusses the dangers of a raccoon in chimney problems and the best strategy for how to remove a raccoon from a chimney in the safest way possible.
How and Why Raccoons Get in Chimneys
Like many wildlife pests, raccoons need a safe and dry place to live, and they are also excellent climbers. This makes your chimney an ideal habitat for raccoons to live, nest, and give birth to baby raccoons.
Raccoons can easily climb onto the roof of a house and then scamper down the chimney if there is no chimney cap to block the entry point. When you have a racoon in the chimney, you may hear sounds coming from your roof or the chimney itself, see tracks in nearby mud, or notice unexplained holes in the yard.
The Dangers of a Raccoon in Chimney
Having a raccoon in any part of your home, including the chimney, can be very dangerous and hazardous to your health. Raccoons are known disease carriers and can become aggressive when threatened.
This is especially true for mother raccoons protecting the babies they just gave birth to in your chimney. Raccoons commonly carry and can spread diseases to people and pets, such as rabies, giardia, leptospirosis, and roundworm. They spread diseases by biting and scratching, which requires immediate medical attention.
The Issues with DIY Raccoon in Chimney Removal
DIY removal techniques are not recommended because of these high-risk health dangers and because of the extreme level of difficulty of trying to get a raccoon out of a chimney. Homeowners can become severely injured and infected by trying to set their own traps, removing the baby raccoons to drive the mother away, or turning on the fireplace to smoke them out. These strategies are often inhumane, provoke raccoon attacks, and do not prevent raccoons from reentering your home again later.
Precise Termite and Pest Control’s Raccoon Removal Services
A much better way to handle a raccoon in the chimney problem is to contact Precise Termite and Pest Control for a free inspection and raccoon removal consultation. Our talented team of exterminators specialize in safe, humane, and effective raccoon removal from chimneys using professional traps that mount on top of the chimney flue and perhaps utilize a pole and trap system to move the raccoon upwards into the trap. Once we’ve addressed your concern of how to remove a raccoon from the chimney, we will take preventative measures to ensure that the same raccoons or different ones don’t go back into your chimney.
If you suspect raccoon activity in your chimney or anywhere else on your property, call us today at 866-971-2847.