How to Get Possums off the Roof

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Opossums do occasionally go on the roof. They are excellent climbers, with their opposable thumbs. The females often seek out a safe place to live once they have young, and a possum on the roof is often a possum that is seeking to live in your attic. In the wild, the opossum will usually live in the burrows created by other animals or in the hollows that trees have to offer, but with more and more opossums choosing to live alongside people, you may find that your roof is the perfect candidate for a new home. These creatures, once they are in, will prove to be rather difficult to get rid of, unless you use these very simple tips!

1. Try to encourage the opossum to live in an area of your property that you would prefer. This could be something as simple as a nest box attached to a tree at the edge of your yard. This basically provides the opossum with an alternative home and has worked well for other people.

2. Try to have a good crawl around inside your roof and see where the opossum has made its nest. You should grab the nest and place all the materials within the new nest box to encourage the opossum to follow its own scent and set up its new home in a place that better suits you.

3. You will want to ensure that your nest box is around 4 or 5 feet above the ground so that the opossum feels safe and secure against other predators and animals, especially your household cat or dog.

4. Place food around the nest box to encourage the opossum to use it, at least for the first few days. Fruit works well, and you can easily impale the fruit on various sections of the tree leading to the box itself.



After you read the below information, you may want to click on one of these guides that I wrote:
How much does opossum removal cost? - get the lowdown on prices.
How to get rid of opossums - my main opossum removal info guide.
Example opossum trapping photographs - get do-it-yourself ideas.
Opossum job blog - learn from great examples of opossum jobs I've done.

What if the opossum on the roof gets into the house, and the attic? Some people believe that an opossum will leave their attic by itself, and although this can sometimes be the case, such as with a mother opossum and her babies, you will usually find that the short time these animals spend in your attic will cause a whole host of problems that you are going to be left to sort out.

Take a look at all the things that you have in your attic. There could be personal belongings, family heirlooms, air conditioning duct work, dry wall, insulation – the opossum has the potential to pretty much destroy all of these things. He will nibble and claw its way through your dry wall and electrical wiring, the feces and urine that he will leave behind will destroy your personal belongings and insulation, and when the warmer weather comes, this stuff is going to smell to high heaven! Also, there is the risk of disease too – these opossums can carry some pretty nasty disease that are going to prove to be very dangerous to you and your family, including your poor pets.

You will also find that a lot of the damage that the opossum can do will be expensive to repair, especially in the rafters of your home and similar. These are things that you are going to want to avoid at all costs, so when you hear noises coming from the attic, call the local animal control people to give you a hand. These guys will not only help you to remove the animal itself, but will also help with things such as the clean up and making sure that any biohazard is gone at the same time, which in turn, could save you one hell of a job!

Read more about:
opossum repellent
how to kill an opossum
opossums in the attic

AAAnimalControl.com is written by me, David. I am a professional nuisance wildlife control operator. It is my goal to provide education about safe, responsible & effective solutions to human-wildlife conflicts. I provide a lot of "how-to" info, but in many cases, wildlife removal is complex, dangerous, and subject to local laws. Sometimes I recommend hiring a professional. I have spent over 10 years now training and investigating companies all over the United States, serving over 650 USA cities and towns. I believe my hand-picked list is far better than what you'll find on a standard web search by yourself. For my recommendation of a local critter trapper in your area, click here for my nationwide list of 100's of professional wildlife control experts.