The animal is under my cottage actually. Our cottage is roughly 300 feet from the Mississippi River. Having raccoons on our property is know surprise but we have owned the place for 20 years and never had animals in the crawl space before other than mice. The cottage is a modular home where it was brought to the lot in two halves then bolted together.
Last July I observed the hardware cloth covering one of the crawlspace vents was pushed away like an animal had been under the cottage and made his own exit. I repaired the hardware screen over the crawl space vent a couple of times. Ten days to two weeks later it would be torn away again. It was obvious an animal made an exit. I'm fairly sure the animal is a raccoon or raccoons. I bought some snares thinking I could snare the animal on his way out but no luck with snares.
Finally setup a live trap and my trail cameral to capture the critter or take his picture. Never did get a picture of the animal coming or going into the crawl space vent. But, I did get lots of pictures of squirrels, possums, raccoons, local cats and one picture of a ground hog. Captured a possum, small kitten, and a squirrel.
Got desperate a couple of weeks ago and decided to place Decon and some fly bait (golden Malrin in coca cola) in the crawl space and hoped the varmint would exit my crawl space on his way to his funeral. They claim a raccoon will only walk 30 feet before Golden Malrin and Coca Cola kills them. A few days ago it was obvious something died in the crawlspace because I could smell some kind of dead animal down there. The raccoons ate the Decon cubes like they were candy so I put out 4 cubes at a time.
Tomorrow I have an exterminator coming to remove the dead animal and appraise the animal situation in the crawl space. My project will be removing a 6' X 16' deck on the front of the cottage and check for the entrance the animal has been using to access my crawl space.
Here is one of my questions. Hopefully I'll find the entrance the animal has been using. I already bought some 24" wide X 25' hardware cloth to screen off the entrance and all future possible entrances. How deep should I bury the hardware cloth so the animal does not just borrow under it. I'm thinking 8" to 10"
Thanks, Jim
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