Raccoon Removal in Toronto

Toronto has one of the densest urban raccoon populations anywhere, and the reasons are built into the city. The Don, the Humber and the Rouge, and the smaller ravines that feed them, run past the back fences of York Mills and Hoggs Hollow, the Kingsway and Humber Valley Village, Guildwood and the Scarborough Bluffs. Mature oaks and maples reach over the roofs of Don Mills, Sunnylea and Cliffside. And the housing, from the century homes of East York and downtown to the postwar bungalows of Willowdale and Rexdale, has wood soffits, old chimneys and roof vents that have been through sixty or more winters.

A raccoon doesn't need a ravine, though. It needs somewhere dark, dry and quiet, and an attic is exactly that. The raccoon that visits your green bin at night may well be denning a few doors down, and from late winter to early summer a female will be looking for a place to have her kits. Our Toronto page covers the city part by part; Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke each have a page of their own.

Raccoon kits are born in spring, mostly in April and May, and they stay with their mother into late summer. A mother raccoon picks a den that is dark, dry and hard to reach: an attic, a chimney, the space between two floors, the ground under a deck or shed. Bird-like chirping or crying from the attic in spring is usually the kits.

This is the most important thing to know before anyone touches the roof. If the opening is closed while the kits are inside, the mother tears at the roof, the soffit or the vent to get back to them, and the kits die inside. Hearing one animal doesn't mean there is one animal. We check for young before removal and take care to avoid separating them from their mother, so the family leaves together.

Raccoons rarely find a way in. They make one. They climb a downspout, a tree or the corner of the brickwork, then go to work on the weakest point of the roofline: a plastic roof vent pulled right off, a soffit pushed up where the roof meets the eaves, shingles lifted at the edge, a chimney with no cap. On an older Toronto home the trim is wood and gives way quickly; on a newer one, the aluminum soffit lifts at the corners.

Once in, a raccoon settles in. It flattens the insulation into a bed, uses one corner of the attic as a latrine, and comes and goes through the same hole every night. The damage is at the opening, in the insulation, and sometimes in the ceiling below. Our damage repair page lists exactly what we fix.

A raccoon in the attic doesn't leave on its own, and the longer it stays the more there is to repair: more soiled insulation, more droppings, a bigger hole. Raccoon droppings can carry raccoon roundworm, so don't handle them, and don't go up to look. Keep pets and children away from the attic hatch and from the spot outside where the raccoon comes and goes.

Sealing the hole yourself is the one thing we'd ask you not to do. A raccoon closed in chews and tears a new way out, sometimes into the house, or it dies in the attic, and a dead raccoon in the insulation means a smell and flies for weeks. A raccoon closed out, with kits still inside, does more damage to the roof than it did getting in. The fix is a full inspection of the roofline, because raccoons often get in far from where you hear them, and a removal done from outside with the young accounted for first.

To a raccoon, an uncapped chimney looks like a hollow tree, and the ledge above the fireplace damper is a favourite spot for a mother and her kits. If you hear scratching or chirping from the fireplace, don't light a fire and don't open the damper; keep the room closed and call. Once the raccoons are out, we fit a chimney cap so it doesn't happen again.

Under a deck, a porch or a shed, a raccoon has a dry den with a roof over it. These are solved the same way as an attic: find the animal, make sure any young are accounted for, get the family out, then close off the space it was using. Decks, porches and sheds get wire mesh along the base, dug into the ground, so the next animal that tries meets a barrier instead of an opening.