Animal In the House - Get it Out!

10.07.2005 - It usually starts with a late-night phone call. I'm one of the few wildlife trappers who 1)carries his phone with him at all times 2)answers it 24/7/365 3)has no life outside of wildlife removal to distract me. Thus, when that call does come in at 2:00 AM, I cheerfully answer it.  This particular call came in at midnight.  As usual, the caller didn't want to pay me to get out of bed, get dressed, and drive a half-hour away to remove the critter.  They never want to pay me.  That's okay, I don't mind, it's all part of the job. I simply tell them that they can come to my house when I get a water leak at 3:00 AM and do my plumbing.  They agree, and all is settled. I arrived at this house to find an opossum backed in the corner.  Opossums aren't smart or fast, so their best defense mechanism is to stand in the corner and bare their teeth.  I got a holding cage and my trusty white snare pole and approached the beast.  I attempted to snare it around the body, but that sneaky possum grabbed ahold of the snare loop and held on for dear life, preventing me from snaring it! No problem, I lifted the pole, and the animal grabbed the pole with its prehensile tail.  Then the homeowner took a photograph of me. The easiest way to get an animal out of the house is usually to open all the doors and windows and let it go out on its own.  But if the animal is tired or injured or just too confused to leave on its own, then the best way is to catch it with a safe snare pole and transport it to a carrying cage, which is what I do to ensure immediate removal. Most people would prefer not to have an animal in the house, but it's unlikely that the animal will attack.  It probably wants to get out as much as you want it out.  Most of the time, animals in homes are the result of openings from the attic space, where animals were living.  So you should have a pro like me inspect the home and seal off all entry points. The opossum, (Didelphis virginiana) is a nocturnal animal that lives in North America. It is a marsupial, which means that the females give birth to tiny young, who grow in a pouch. These young eventually cling to the mother's back and drop off when they are large enough. Opossums are unique for many reasons. They have opposable thumbs, prehensile tails, 50 teeth, and several other unusual features. They are omnivores who eat almost anything, they have excellent immune systems, and they rarely live more than 2-3 years in the wild. They are most commonly considered a nuisance species when they live in an attic or other structure, such as under a shed, or steal pet food or threaten animals.

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