Things to know about a wild animal under the porch

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There are some simple modifications you can make to your porch to prevent animals from crawling in under it and setting up home. This only really works BEFORE you have an animal invasion problem, however, and won’t help you if some critter has already moved in. If you seal the porch space before you are sure you have removed the animal, the animal will be trapped and likely die. You will have a very unpleasant smell wafting from your porch for a rather long time, and it’ll also attract all sorts of other nasty creatures too.



If you already have a wild animal under the porch, you’ll need to get rid of it first, and the steps you take will usually depend on the kind of animal you're dealing with. Rats and mice can be somewhat easily eradicated with rat and mice traps, but you can’t use those for larger creatures.

Before we go any further, we would just like to say that you should NEVER use poison. It is ineffective and inhumane. This applies to ANY wild animal — rats and mice included.

Wildlife eviction fluid has the potential to work, but only in certain cases. If you have a female opossum or skunk who has set up home under the porch, or perhaps even a raccoon, the wildlife eviction fluid can fool them into thinking larger, predatory male animals are nearby. If they believe that, and they have a small family in tow, they will be more inclined to move them. This saves you the hassle of having to do that, and then you can just seal up the porch property once they have left.

Wildlife eviction fluid is generally made up of the urine and other secretions from these larger, predatory males, usually foxes. The larger males will prey on the females and her young from various other species, especially when food is scarce or it would be easy for them to do so. Most mothers will move their youngsters away from danger, but out of all the repellents you could look for, for help, this one has the only chance of working. Do not waste your time with light machines, noise devices, pieces of rope, fake cats, birds, or foxes, bottles of water, or anything like that. Chances are you'll be wasting your time with them. And in some cases, quite a lot of money. We’ve seen how expensive these ‘wild animal deterrents' can be, and we think it's shocking when you consider the majority of them don't work in the slightest.

When you have a wild animal under the porch, you need to get rid of the animal before sealing up the space. If eviction fluid hasn’t worked, or you’d rather try a method that is tried-and-tested, and almost guaranteed to work, you should call in the professionals. If you were to call in our company, for example, we would perform a 32-point inspection around your home, identifying ALL patches of damage and holes that ANY wild animal could use to get in. When we have identified animal invaders, we remove them, using the best method for that space, that animal, and that time. A squirrel stuck under the porch could be removed using cage traps for some of the larger culprits, or perhaps even a pole snare trap for those really hard-to-reach spots. These are tools that require training to use properly. It would be easy for something to go wrong if you were to use these traps in the incorrect manner.

Once the animal has been removed, you can then go ahead and seal up the space. You can use chicken wire to create a boundary that not only goes underneath the porch, but also right down into the soil. Many of these wild creatures can burrow and dig just as well as they can tear apart and chew, so by including some of the chicken wire material a foot or two into the ground will prevent them from gaining access from below. To make life even more difficult for them, create an ‘L’ shape in the wiring that goes beneath the soil. Even if they were to get as far down as the bottom of the wiring, they still wouldn't be able to get inside because of the bottom of that ‘L’ shape you have created.

If you aren’t sure how to wild animal proof your home, or just need a hand getting things started, give us a call. We have the right information to help you, we can share that information with you, and we have been doing what we do for over a decade. There’s a reason why we’re one of the number one wildlife removal companies.

For more information, you may want to click on one of these guides that I wrote:
How To Guide: Who should I hire? - What questions to ask, to look for, who NOT to hire.
How To Guide: do it yourself! - Advice on saving money by doing wildlife removal yourself.
Guide: How much does wildlife removal cost? - Analysis of wildlife control prices.
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