NWR Field Notes

Health Risks of Raccoons Living in Attics

So, you’ve decided an attic restoration is in order, because you own an older home, you’ve recently purchased one that needs a bit of work or the attic has simply been neglected. Suddenly, while you’re in the attic, you come face to face with a set of glowing eyes and low hisses that signal your hasty retreat. A raccoon, or even worse, several of the critters, have taken up uninvited residence in your attic. This isn’t simply a scary encounter with nature, it can be downright hazardous to you and your family’s health.

A raccoon is notorious for making itself right at home in your attic. This typically means they need to make a bed for themselves as well as their often impending offspring. Destruction, in the form of a raccoon tearing apart insulation, wood, wires and anything else it can get its paws on, can be extensive, especially if it occurs over a period of weeks, months or years. Because the raccoon urinates and defecates pretty much anywhere, your attic becomes filled with fecies and urine that can make your family ill.

The first step to get rid of the offending materials is to document the attic in its current condition. This can be done on your own, with a digital camera, or with the help of an insurance claims specialist. In addition, you will likely need to find a professional who can remove the animal and seal off areas where they can come back into your home. Your home insurance company will determine the amount of compensation they will provide for your attic restoration. Once you’re armed with the compensation and your attic has been cleared of damaged materials and the raccoon, you’re ready for attic restoration.

Insurance will typically cover damage caused by a raccoon, including any destruction caused by their fecies. This is because unlike rats, the raccoon isn’t a rodent and insurance companies understand that infiltration isn’t akin to infestation. A competent attic restoration professional will work with you to make sure every potential health hazard left behind by the animal is removed, including fecies. Attic restoration doesn’t have to be a hassle. In fact, insurance can make sure that your attic restoration is easy and effective. Dealing with offending things like animal fecies isn’t just disgusting, it can be downright hazardous. Attic restoration professionals will remove everything safely and dispose of the fecies and urine-soaked insulation and wood properly.

How I Defeated a Cold Weather Rat Attic Infestation

Noises in Attic

It had always been my dream to be able to drag race professionally, and I was finally on my way. I had assembled the best team that I could ask for, my Mustang was almost ready to go, and I had been able to find a house in Bradenton, minutes from the drag strip. My parents were a little upset that I was moving away, but since I was only moving about an hour from Tampa, they decided to help me out with the rent so I could follow my dream.

The Saturday I moved in everything went great. The movers got there and unloaded my things fairly quickly. By night time I was ready to take a shower, relax and take care of a few details for the racing event the following day. That’s when I heard a knock on my door. I hurried to look outside to find an old sweet looking lady standing there, with what seem to be a pie in her hand. I opened the door, and with a big smile she said: “Hello, I’m Rose, your next door neighbor, came to introduce myself and give you this homemade pie. You can eat it tonight, when you are not able to go to sleep”. She laughed, gave me the pie and went on her way.

I barely had any time to thank her before she turned around and started walking away. What she said had struck me in a weird way. Why would this lady tell me that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight? Weird, I thought, as I closed the door and headed to the bedroom. And that is when noises in attic started.

She was right. I wasn’t able to sleep. Coming from the attic the weirdest noises started coming out. It was almost like some sort of animal, running around and making weird and loud noises. I was scared, I didn’t know what was up there, how big it was and if it could hurt me. All I know is that it was alive, and trying to figure out a way to get out.

The next morning the noises stopped. I was exhausted. I was barely able to perform at the racing event, being so tired. That night I got home and went to bed with the hopes that the animal had left and died. But again, the noises in attic continued to keep me awake. It was terrifying. The following morning the noises stopped again. It was weird, for the next few nights it continued to happen, and I started to go crazy.

I had no choice but to leave the house in Bradenton and move back with my parents. But in the back of my head, the intrigue of wanting to know what was up there, and why the neighbor knew about it always hunted me. I hope I can find out some day.

In neighborhoods where coyotes are prowling, experts suggest people keep their pets indoors, lock up their trash and outdoor pet food and, most of all, don’t feed the wild visitors.

That advice is prudent for anyone in Florida, but especially to people in places like the small fishing village of Cortez, west of Bradenton in Manatee County, where residents say coyotes, once the icon of the American Southwest, are increasingly showing up in back yards and snatching up family pets.

Statewide, the range of the coyote continues to expand. Over the past few months, coyotes have been spotted at an airport in Martin County, at a school in Pasco County and along waterways in Gainesville and Venice.

Cortez residents fingered coyotes as a new predator after they began hearing strange yipping and yowling at night. Eventually, the coyotes revealed themselves, sometimes snatching up puppies right in front of cortez residents’ eyes.

Now, residents say the cortez coyotes have decimated the local pet population. Those keeping track estimate the number of pets believed eaten by coyotes is nearing 60.

And there does not appear to be much anyone can do about coyotes. Guns cannot be fired in residential areas. Poisons are banned. The use of traps is limited.

Residents have been advised to keep pets indoors, lock up trash and outdoor pet food, and not to feed the coyotes, which look like dogs and some people consider cute.

“We would prefer not to have to kill them, but if push comes to shove, I’ll buy a gun,” said Cortez resident Linda Molto, who is convinced she lost two of her cats, Malcolm and Wahoo, to coyote attacks in the past six months.

Coyote numbers are not on the rise in Southwest Florida, according to Breanne Strepina, a wildlife biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. But they are more visible this time of year because adult coyotes are pushing their offspring into independence.

Combine that with a coyote’s need to establish its own territory and the steady spread of urban neighborhoods into rural areas, and suddenly coyotes are being seen in Florida backyards and along canals.

Firm estimates of Southwest Florida coyote populations are hard to come by. Yet Strepina said her agency gets about 20 calls a month this time of year in the 13 counties she oversees, which stretch from Hernando to Charlotte.

Nationally, coyotes are being seen in ever more urban areas, from downtown Los Angeles and Chicago, to pop singer Jessica Simpson’s backyard, where a coyote grabbed and ran off with her toy dog as she watched.

Coyotes, which weigh about 30 to 35 pounds and have the body structure of a medium-sized dog, eat just about anything, including watermelons, Strepina said. But what they really like are mammals under 10 pounds — squirrels, rodents and cats.

In Cortez, residents are horrified by the loss of their pets. Feral cats that used to hang around the post office or the fish restaurant for scraps have been all but wiped out.

The community fears the coyotes are getting bolder, and some worry they could attack a small child.

However, coyote attacks on humans are very rare, and only two fatalities have ever been reported — one a 3-year-old child in California whose parents were feeding local coyotes, the other a 19-year-old Canadian folk singer who was killed by two coyotes in 2009.

Police in a small Florida town had to kill four raccoons in a week, after they were seen exhibiting signs of dysentery. All four adult animals were subsequently buried after police consulted with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “We contacted FWC because these (raccoons) all had the same symptoms, like lethargy and just kind of walking around during the day,” said the police chief.

The animals were all found within a half-mile of each other.

FWC experts told the chief raccoons go through cycles of diseases and that what occurred in there was likely part of the cycle.

The chief said the animals did not pose an immediate threat to humans but that the incident provided an opportunity to remind people not to approach wildlife, especially animals that appear to be acting in unusual ways, and instead to report such situations to their nearest law enforcement agency.

When people think of bats, they usually imagine them in caves. But attics and other dark places can offer an appealing home for bats. If you have an infestation, they might even move into the walls.  A family found hundreds of bats living in the walls of their Houston, Texas house over the summer.  And unless you have an infestation like that, you might not even know you have bats in your home.

“People don’t really know they have a bat problem until they see them coming in and out of the house. Or when they’re selling their home and an inspector goes up in the attic,” says Jeff Norris, of Nuisance Wildlife Removal. And if you’re lucky enough to only have one bat, “You should play the lotto,” jokes Jeff.  Well, not exactly, but you can relax a little knowing that at the very least that bat is a worthwhile defender from other pests. “Bats eat their body weight in insects in one night,” he explains.

If you think you might have an infestation, call a qualified professional like Jeff Norris at Nuisance Wildlife Removal to take care of the problem for you, so you don’t end up contracting rabies or, worse, Histoplasmosis, a lung infection transmitted by airborne spores.

And, Happy Halloween..

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Dry weather like what has hit northeast Florida over the past few weeks is known to bring Florida’s wildlife out, especially reptiles.

If it doesn’t start raining soon, it’s likely residents will see a lot more snakes and other wildlife on the move. Heather Ogler, who enjoys taking her children outside in the sun, said she’s worried about their safety knowing the drought may bring the wildlife out. Ogler said she’s had wildlife coming close to her family’s home in her Fernandina Beach neighborhood.” Two separate occasions we had two bobcats come and look into the house,” she said.

As the skies remain clear and blue and the rain sparse, animal experts said it’s likely residents may have similar experiences to what Ogler described. “It does appear that it is happening more often, especially with the gators more so than the snakes,” said Dino Ferri, a reptile expert at the Jacksonville Zoo. Ferri said he hasn’t necessarily seen a change in animal behavior, but is hearing about it from other experts. A snake was spotted outside Channel 4′s building Monday night. While Ferri believes it is a nonvenomous water snake, he said it was probably searching for a larger body of water than the ponds near the TV station. Encountering animals in not-so-wild places isn’t uncommon, but many animal experts believe wildlife encounters may be on the rise if rain doesn’t fall soon.

By Kristy Wolski, Reporter
Last Updated: Saturday, August 7, 2010
SAFETY HARBOR –
A day on the job could have been deadly for a group of landscapers on Saturday afternoon.

The group was cutting down a tree at a house on 3rd Street South when killer bees started to swarm.

Anthony Cimillo was one of the landscapers who was attacked.

“The whole branch like seven feet of it was a nest,” he said. “We didn’t know that. We thought it was just at the end and when it came down it just exploded and bees just came out from everywhere.”

One of the workers immediately called 911 and emergency crews arrived quickly, but three men still had to be taken to the hospital.

Cimillo and fellow worker Mike Foster suffered between 50 and 75 stings each, but their co-worker Ralph St. Pierre was in the tree when the nest fell and took the brunt of the attack.

He was tied to the tree when the bees began to swarm. St. Pierre’s co-workers had to cut him loose, after which he fell about eight feet to the ground.

St. Pierre was stung more than 150 times.

Beekeeper Rodney Tyoe said there were around 50,000 bees inside of the tree.

“He had his eyes closed, bees were in his mouth and his ears,” said Foster of St. Pierre’s attack. “They stopped counting when they pulled like 200 stingers off of him in the ER. He was lit up. He looked like he was on fire, the way his hands were going over his whole body.”

After Foster and Cimillo were treated and released from the hospital, they went back to the scene to finish their landscaping job.

St. Pierre, however, is still recovering at the hospital, far away from the bees.

“Those guys ran into a real serious bunch of Africanized bees,” said Tyoe. “They’ve got a bee comb down that tree about six to eight feet.”

According to the Tyoe, 85 percent of bees that live in the U.S. are Africanized, or killer, bees.

A bee removal service was brought in to help exterminate some of the bees.

By Angeeneh Adamian, Reporter
Last Updated: Sunday, August 8, 2010
ST. PETERSBURG –
After a weekend killer bee attack, a beekeeper says Florida may be at the beginning of a dangerous trend.

Rodney Tyoe is a beekeeper who runs his own bee removal business.

On Saturday, Tyoe responded to the scene of a bee attack after more than 50,000 bees attacked three landscapers and sent them to the hospital.

“This is a typical one where they got themselves in over their head thinking they had the bees killed out,” Tyoe said. “They thought they had it under control.”

Tyoe says the bees were no ordinary honey bees like the ones he keeps in his backyard. He says they’re Africanized killer bees, which are quick to swarm and very aggressive.

According to Tyoe, this type of bee is relatively new to Florida after migrating from Brazil in the early 90s.

The bees have only been in Florida for five years, but now they’re keeping Tyoe busy. Last week he responded to another hive in Safety Harbor.

“They were just pouring out of there,” he said of a beehive. “That was last Monday and to have this thing here three blocks away.”

Tyoe says part of the reason the tree trimmers in the most recent bee incident may have been attacked was the noise from their chainsaws.

He says lawn mowers and chainsaws have been known to provoke the bees.

And after 52 years of working with insects, he says he’s learned one thing.

“The biggest thing for anybody is if you get stung, don’t stand there and swat,” Tyoe said. “Run! Get out of there now.”

Tyoe says that even just one bee sting could have killed a tree trimmer, but fortunately, none of them were allergic.

The only way to tell an Africanized bee from a honey bee is after it stings.

Africanized bees tend to sting and release a chemical that causes more of them to attack, whereas honey bees only sting once and do not release anything under the skin.

We’ve been getting a lot of Raccoon removal jobs lately, as well as attic restoration work. Thats where we have to go in and vacuum out all the contaminated insulation from the attic of a home, scrub down every surface with anti-bacterial enzymes, and then replace the attic insulation with all new. Why is this necessary?

It’s important to know how dangerous raccoon poop is if the raccoon is infected with the Baylisascaris roundworm. This is a common parasite in raccoons, some areas of the country have a 70 to 100 percent infection rate.

This parasite goes straight for the brain tissue, and that includes human brain tissue. Whats worse, the microscopic eggs that are the infective stage can live in the environment for probably 10 years or more. Because children are the most likely people to touch the tainted surface and then put their hands in their mouths, they are the most likely to be infected.
 
These eggs are very resistant to environmental degradation. Raccoon feces should be treated as hazardous waste. And we do just that. Our professionals wear haz-mat suits and respirators whenever dealing with the aftermath of a raccoon infestation.