Safe and Quick Removal of Opossums from Under the Shed

You have a few different options when it comes to removing an opossum or opossums from underneath the shed, or any other space on your property. You can use repellents, which are designed to force the animal away from that one particular area. You could also look at using kill traps, designed to solve the problem in a quick, euthanised fashion. Alternatively, you might wish to look at trapping and then releasing the animal, but that will come with its fair share of problems and and concerns, including whether or not the law in that particular state will allow for release. 

In reality, the safest and quickest way to remove an opossum or opossums from under the shed is to call in wildlife removal experts. They've already done this job a hundred, perhaps even a thousand times before, so they'll not only have a lot more experience than the average homeowner, but they'll also have the right tools, even the really weird ones that you didn't think anyone ever used. 

Snare poles, for example, are great for reaching down into chimneys and retrieving trapped, angry, or injured animals, and they can also be used to reach under the shed, decking, porch, or other similar space, with the intentions of grabbing the opossum and bringing it out. This snare pole is also particularly useful when you're dealing with more than one animal, which you likely are with opossums. One female opossum can have as many as 20 young joeys (baby opossums) in a nest, in her pouch, or crawling around and holding on tight on her back, and she's not going to let you get too close to them. In fact, she'll do everything in her power to are sure that doesn't happen, including biting, scratching, hissing, making a lot of noise, and generally making your life quite difficult. And perhaps even a little more complicated. Although opossums are not linked to the rabies virus, there are certainly other problems when you come into contact with a wild critter. Wounds will need to be cleaned properly to make sure they do not get infected, and you may even need shots if you're not all up to date. Not only does that inconvenience you for an afternoon, at least, but it will have a detrimental effect on your bank balance too, especially if you don't have insurance that will cover any procedures. 

As well as being cheaper and probably easier, using a professional to remove opossums from your yard or property, no matter where it is, will also prove quicker, especially when you take the bigger job into the picture. Removing this animal doesn't just mean removing the animal; it also means removing any material that the animal may have left there, removing waste, removing biological matter and other disease threats, sealing up potential entry points, and even repairing damage that the animal has caused. As a general rule of thumb, many wildlife removal experts will offer this as a full package. You will likely need to buy a lot of equipment just to get as far as figuring out where the animal/nest is. 

There are other methods commonly advised on the internet for removing opossums from under a shed or porch, including using repellents. As someone who has been in the business for decades, I can personally tell you, with all honesty, that not a single repellent out there works long-term. The majority of them don't even work short-term. Anything granule, food or liquid based is going to need regular applications to keep them effective (if they are effective at all), and the more you need, the higher the cost will rise. If you are buying one bottle of opossum repellent at $10, that is a cheap fix, yes. However, when you need a second, third, tenth, or perhaps even twentieth bottle of the same repellent, you're looking at spending hundreds of dollars … And that's maybe even more than what an expert would have quoted you for the entire job, just for "repelling" the animal. 

Many repellents don't work because these wild critters have evolved a little. They're out almost as much during the day as they are during the night, despite being considered nocturnal. They follow the scent of food, whether that's during the day or night, and that's what led them right to our back doors in the first place. In your back garden, somewhere, there is a source of food that is acting as an attractant to wild critters. It might be ‘just' an opossum right now, but what about when that opossum has babies under the shed or porch? Or some of those opossums die and then rats are attracted in, as well as a bunch of other scavengers? And then you'll need to worry about flies and a bad smell, disease, etc. 

You could book at trapping the opossums, and there are both ‘live' and ‘kill' traps on the market. We urge you to get some information from local city or county officials before trapping or killing wild animals, especially if you've never done it before. You would be surprised by just how many laws there are surrounding animal removal. Opossums are generally considered okay to euthanise with kill traps, but it's still better to check for your local area just in case. A knock on the door from the cops wouldn't be a great way to end the weekend. 

The one thing that rings true for ALL methods of opossum removal, is that you must use a combination of approaches for maximum effect. You WILL need to remove all sources of food from the back garden, as well as making sure that the exterior of your home is fully sealed and doesn't let critters in. You MUST make sure that all traces of the animal have been removed, including invisible, biological traces that are not seen by the naked eye. If you do not do this, the animal is free to come back whenever it chooses, no matter how you choose to get rid of it.



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