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As we sat in the living room watching tv, the unmistakable smell of skunk wafted into the room. We thought nothing of it, assuming that a skunk was wandering through the neighborhood. Unfortunately, this occurrence happened a few more times in the next week. When I wandered outside, it was apparent that the smell was coming from inside, and not outside of the house.
I walked around the perimeter of the house and came across a vent whose screen had been ripped open. Something was clearly getting under the house from this vent. I put a board over the vent and covered the gap with the broken wires of the vent, hoping that the skunk was just wandering under the house at night and that this would dissuade it from going under. The next morning, I went back to examine the vent. The board had been flung aside and the wires of the vent had been pushed open again. The animal, I assumed a skunk, was clearly getting back under the house every night.
Torn vent cover leading under the house
This began my long battle of trying to remove these skunks from under the house, and later, from under our tool shed. I would find out how stubborn and smart these skunks could be. I’m still not sure why they chose my house to want to nest at, and why they chose my yard to want to wander through every night.
So, the next morning, I went through and covered all of the vents except for the one that was ripped open. I had some boards and pavers so I used those to cover the vents. As I closely inspected all of the vents, I noticed a few more that had been broken into. So, at least now there was only one way in and out from under the house.
Next I decided to buy an outdoor security camera. I found one on Amazon from a company called ieGeek that was battery powered and worked on wifi. It was inexpensive and probably one of the best purchases I’ve made. They no longer have this specific model on Amazon, but they are now selling models that are slightly different. Basically, I could move the camera anywhere I wanted to. I wanted to find out for sure what was living under my house. I pointed the camera at the vent hoping that the motion sensor on the camera would capture anything wandering out from under the house. To entice whatever was under the house to come out, I left peanut butter on a paper plate right outside the vent.
At around 10:00 my camera triggered. I quickly opened up the iphone app and looked at the recording. It was unfortunately, just a rat, munching on the peanut butter. Ok, there were more creatures than I expected out in my yard at night. The camera triggered again at midnight, and sure enough, this time it was a skunk. The camera had a delay so I didn’t actually see it emerging from the vent, but it was now wandering around the area. After several more video captures, it looked like skunk parents and two smaller skunks as well.
I knew from research that skunks had their babies in the spring and by now, late fall, the babies were grown and would be wandering out with their parents. So, all I needed to do was to get them out from under the house, and to keep them from coming back in. My original plan for removing the skunks was simple. Wait for the entire family to be out, then block up the entrance. Unfortunately, their pattern wasn’t easy to track, even with a camera. They would leave and come back at irregular hours, sometimes not leaving until early morning. Sitting there watching them on camera all night waiting for all of them to leave didn’t seem feasible.
I found on Amazon the perfect solution. It was a cage, but with one side open and the other side with a one way door. So, things could pass through this wire frame but would not be able to return. I ordered this excluder and couldn’t wait for it to arrive.
When I got the Excluder (One way door), I examined it to see how it works. It was a really simple concept. The door was on a hinge but was angled so that you could push it open from one side, but once it snapped shut behind the animal, they wouldn’t be able to pull it back open. It also had hinged wings on all for sides so that you could anchor the cage to the opening.
Wire Pest Excluder – One way door
Spring door on excluder for one way passage
I had a bunch of pavers so I was able to create a base for the excluder so that it sat right in front of the hole in the vent. I also stacked pavers around the cage so that the wings were secured against the wall. Since all of the other vents were blocked, I knew that the skunks needed to come through the Excluder.
The first night that I had the Excluder in place, there were tons of triggers on the video camera. Because of the camera delay, I missed the first skunk coming out from under the house. I did see it linger in front as three more skunks appeared from under the house. The smaller skunks were also in the video so I was relieved that they were all out.
Skunks trying to go back under the house
Just to make sure that all of the skunks were out, I left the excluder in place for several more days. I had no idea that there were so many animals wandering around the house at night. I was able to catch a possum and a rat wandering in front of the camera. I also saw a few of the cats from the neighborhood as well.
More visitors than we expected including a possum
A rat interested in the flour that we used to lure out the skunks
I then took some heavy gauge chicken wire, cutting them to size to fit the vents. I screwed them into place on all of my vents. There was a wooden border around all the vents, making it easy to screw the new barrier into place. I was pretty confident that this heavy gauge wire would keep animals out.
Screws holding super thick wiring to patch vents
To be safe, I also decided to take a look under my house to make sure that all of the skunks were out and that there were no babies left behind. I almost immediately found out where their nest was, and it explained why several of my heater vents stopped working in the winter. A large section of flex duct had been ripped to shreds. I looked to see if I could just patch it but it was badly torn in several places. There was also a section of aluminum vent that had been pulled apart. In short, it was a mess. So, the good news was that there were no skunks under there. The bad news was that my heater vent was now toast.
I was tempted to just call someone to fix the vents under the house. There was very little space to work in under the house so doing work under there would be tough. In the end, I decided to just do it myself. You can follow the link below to read that story.
Well, I thought that this was the end of the evicting the skunks story, but it turns out that another family, or perhaps the same one moved under the storage shed that we had in our yard. At least now we knew how to evict them. First, I set up a camera to see how many skunks were in this family. We only saw 3 – A large one, a medium sized one, and a smaller one. Now we knew how many we needed to remove. We used the same excluder, and after finding a few backup entry points that they were using to get under the shed, we were able to evict them from there as well.
Round two to get another family out from under our shed
Not too thrilled about the eviction
My final step was to prevent them from coming into the yard at all. I found several places where the skunks were digging under the fence to gain access to the yard. When I filled one in and blocked it with a paver, they would come in from a different spot. Finally, I ran a foot wide length of chicken wire throughout my back yard, securing them with lawn staples. I was able to use the camera at night for a week without it picking up any skunks! Finally, I was rid of them!
Video References
I actually learned about the pest extruder by wandering around Amazon but here are a few interesting videos on the subject
I bought my excluder on Amazon, but this video shows you how to make your own.
This video shows the same Excluder (one way door) to remove a skunk
