Wildlife Removal near you

The animal determines the method, the timing and the repairs, so identification comes first. The sounds, the time of day you hear them and the damage outside usually point to the culprit.

Humane exclusion lets the animal leave on its own and makes sure it can't come back, without anyone handling it. Moving animals far from where they were found is restricted in both Ontario and Quebec, which makes exclusion the usual first approach. A typical job follows these steps.

Late winter and spring are when many raccoons, squirrels and skunks have their young, often in an attic, a chimney or under a deck. The young can't follow their mother through a one-way door, so an exclusion done without checking can trap them inside, where they die and cause odours, or push the mother to tear a new hole to get back to them.

A good company adapts the plan: waiting until the young are old enough to leave with their mother, carefully moving them to a spot where she can retrieve them, or scheduling the exclusion after the nursery period. Bats need particular care in summer, when young that can't fly yet stay in the roost, so bat exclusion is timed for when they are able to leave.

In Ontario, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act lets a landowner have an agent deal with a wild animal that is damaging their property. A wildlife removal business can capture and release the animal but not kill it, must release it within 1 kilometre of where it was caught and within 24 hours, and must treat it humanely.

In Quebec, the government's guidance on wild animals on your property covers species such as squirrels, skunks and raccoons, and favours scaring animals off and preventing damage. A landowner who captures a nuisance raccoon, striped skunk, fox or coyote may release it on site, outside the building, with killing only as a last resort, and no permit is needed in that situation. In municipalities around known cases of raccoon rabies, moving or relocating live raccoons, striped skunks, foxes and coyotes is prohibited.

The Public Health Agency of Canada notes that any mammal can be infected with rabies, including bats, foxes, skunks and raccoons, and its first advice is to avoid touching or feeding stray or wild animals. That applies even to an animal that looks tame, injured or orphaned: keep children and pets away and let a professional deal with it. After a bite or scratch:

Bats get special attention because their teeth and claws are so small that a bite or scratch can go unnoticed. The Public Health Agency of Canada says even tiny, hard-to-see bites from bats can transmit rabies. Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization considers that any direct contact with a bat generally calls for preventive rabies treatment as soon as possible, so anyone who has touched a bat, or woken up with one in the room, should get medical advice promptly.

If a bat is flying in the house and nobody has touched it, Québec's health guidance is to close the interior doors to confine it to one room, open a door to the outside, turn off the lights and leave, shutting the door behind you. Never pick up a bat with bare hands. A bat that keeps coming back, droppings in the attic or bats in the walls call for professional exclusion rather than repeated evictions.

Once the animals are out, the damage they leave behind needs attention. Raccoons flatten and tear insulation and often use one corner of the attic as a latrine, squirrels chew wood, wiring and vent ducts, and bats leave droppings that build up under the roost. Soiled insulation performs poorly and holds odours that can draw other animals.

Small, localized damage can sometimes be cleaned and patched, but heavily contaminated insulation is usually removed, the area cleaned and disinfected, and new insulation installed by an insulation contractor. Animal droppings carry their own health risks, so this cleanup calls for protective equipment and a professional crew rather than a weekend project. Have an electrician check any chewed wiring.