# Animal Control in Orlando, FL Source: https://drcritter.com/animal-control/orlando-fl/ Type: Local service page Service: Animal Control Area served: Orlando, FL --- Professional Animal Control services in Orlando, FL. Dr. Critter specializes in the nuisance wildlife that gets into Central Florida homes, mostly attic rodents, raccoons, snakes, and bats and provides expert wildlife control throughout Central Florida. **Animal Control in Orlando, FL — key facts:** Dr. Critter has been Florida's licensed wildlife specialist since 1996 — nearly three decades of wildlife control work across Central Florida. Our team holds the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Nuisance Wildlife Trapper credential required to legally trap, exclude, and relocate nuisance wildlife in Florida. We serve Orlando and the surrounding area with same-day response, lifetime warranty on structural exclusion work, and a 4.8-star rating across 365 Google reviews. Most wildlife intrusions in Central Florida structures need both the active animal removed and the entry point sealed, and often remediation of contaminated insulation — we handle it as part of a single quoted job rather than billing the cleanup as a surprise second invoice. **Wildlife in Orlando (Orange County):** Orlando runs from the downtown chain of lakes east to the Econlockhatchee River, and the calls change with the neighborhood. In the older canopied districts like College Park, Colonialtown and Delaney Park, mature live oaks put limbs over rooflines and squirrels and roof rats use them as a bridge. Those two account for most of the attic work inside the city. Roof rats are the harder of the pair to finish: the streets planted with citrus and other fruit trees decades ago still feed them, and one unsealed soffit gap is enough to keep a population going. Water sets the other pattern. The lake-district streets around Lake Eola, Lake Ivanhoe and Lake Underhill, plus the retention ponds that came with every subdivision built since, keep raccoons and opossums moving through yards after dark. Snakes follow the same edges: the Little Econ greenway, Shingle Creek on the south side, and the conservation land around Moss Park and Split Oak Forest out toward Lake Nona. Most of what a homeowner asks us to identify beside a pool cage turns out to be harmless. Opossums get blamed for a lot of damage they did not do, since the hole they walked through was almost always opened by a squirrel or a rat first. Bats are a downtown and near-downtown problem, concentrated in the older masonry buildings, and they change what is legally possible rather than just what is difficult. Every native bat species in Florida is protected, and exclusion is illegal from April 16 through August 14 under Florida Administrative Code 68A-9.010. A June bat call in Orlando gets a written plan and an August date rather than a same-week exclusion. One thing worth knowing before you call anyone: county animal services in Florida deal with domestic animals. An animal in your attic is the property owner's responsibility under FWC rules, handled either by the owner or by a nuisance wildlife control operator working under FAC 68A-9.010. **Florida wildlife facts & law:** According to the [Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission](https://myfwc.com/conservation/you-conserve/wildlife/bats/bats-in-buildings/), all 13 of the state's native bat species are protected, bat maternity season runs April 16 through August 14, and Florida Administrative Code 68A-9.010 makes exclusion during that window illegal. April 15 is the last day a building can be cleared without a permit, and the work cannot resume until August 15. The same rule governs how: FWC requires an exclusion device to stay up a minimum of four nights, and the work to be done when overnight temperatures are forecast to reach at least 50°F, so the colony can actually leave. According to [University of Florida IFAS Extension](https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/topics/rodents), a roof rat female produces litters of five to eight pups after a gestation of only 21 to 23 days and can raise four or five litters a year, which is how one unsealed roofline gap becomes 20 to 40 rats inside twelve months. UF/IFAS also reports that the nine-banded armadillo, the only armadillo species in Florida, gives birth to four genetically identical young per litter, so one breeding pair is enough to leave an entire yard pocked with digging. On snakes, UF/IFAS puts Florida at roughly 50 native species of which only six are venomous, and records that just four of those six occur in central and southern Florida: the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, the pygmy rattlesnake, the cottonmouth, and the harlequin coral snake. So most of what turns up beside a pool deck here is harmless, and under FAC 68A-4.001 it is protected too. Because raccoons and bats are the state's principal rabies-vector species, FWC requires nuisance wildlife to be handled by the property owner or a licensed trapper and, under rule 68A-9.010, released on the capture property, taken to a licensed facility, or euthanized humanely rather than relocated. Sources: [Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission](https://myfwc.com/conservation/you-conserve/wildlife/bats/bats-in-buildings/); [UF/IFAS Extension (rodents)](https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/topics/rodents); [UF/IFAS WEC220 (snakes)](https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw258); [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/causes/). ## Why Choose Dr. Critter for Animal Control in Orlando? - **Emergency Response 7 AM–11 PM** - Seven days a week, including weekends and holidays - **Licensed & Insured** - Professional service you can trust - **Lifetime Warranty** - We guarantee our work - **Humane Methods** - Safe for animals and your family - **Local Expertise** - We know Orlando and its wildlife challenges ### Emergency Animal Problems? Don't wait if you're experiencing: - An animal loose inside the living space - A trapped or injured animal - Aggressive wildlife near children or pets **Call 800-932-7287 immediately for emergency service!** ### Our Control Process in Orlando - **Free Inspection** - Complete property assessment - **Humane Removal** - Safe extraction of all animals - **Entry Point Sealing** - Prevent future intrusions - **Cleanup & Restoration** - Remove contamination and odors - **Lifetime Warranty** - Guaranteed protection ### Common Animal Issues in Orlando Our experienced technicians regularly address these problems: - Attic and crawl space intrusions - Structural entry points - Droppings and contamination ### Get Professional Help Today Don't let nuisance wildlife damage your Orlando property. Contact Dr. Critter for immediate, professional assistance. **Call 800-932-7287 now for your free estimate!** **Reviewed by:** Steve DeMoor ("Dr. Critter"), founder, Dr. Critter Wildlife Control. Florida wildlife control professional since 1996. [About Steve DeMoor →](https://drcritter.com/about/) ## What animal control actually covers in Orlando, and what it does not Animal control in Orlando means nuisance wildlife: the raccoon in the attic, the roof rats in the soffit, the armadillo under the pool deck, the snake beside the lanai. It is not the county animal services department, which handles stray dogs and cats and does not remove wildlife from a private structure, and it is not pest control, which is licensed for insects and works to a different scope. If you are hearing something overhead at two in the morning, the wildlife side is the one you want. Our [roof rat guide](https://drcritter.com/animal/rats/) and [attic animal removal](https://drcritter.com/services/attic-animal-removal/) pages cover the two most common versions of that call. ## Why Orlando properties get the calls they do The city is not uniform, and the wildlife pressure follows the building stock rather than the postcode. The older tree-canopied districts north and east of downtown, the neighborhoods threaded through the Chain of Lakes, and anywhere with mature oak overhanging a roofline give squirrels and roof rats a bridge straight onto the structure, which is why those areas generate most of the attic work. Newer subdivisions further out trade that problem for a different one: open retention ponds, fresh sod over sandy fill, and construction-disturbed ground, which is armadillo and snake territory. Barrel tile roofs anywhere in the metro add bats to the list, because a lifted tile is an entry a bat can use and a homeowner cannot see from the ground. ## When the calls cluster through the year Raccoon work peaks from March into June, when females move litters into attics and the job stops being a trapping job and becomes a hand-removal job. Rat calls climb from October as nights cool and the population moves indoors. Armadillo digging tracks rainfall rather than the calendar and gets worse for the two or three nights after any hard rain, in any month. Bats are the one species with a hard legal date attached: exclusion is barred from April 16 through August 14 under Florida Administrative Code 68A-9.010, so a bat call in June is a call about scheduling August rather than about starting work. The [Central Florida wildlife activity calendar](https://drcritter.com/blog/central-florida-wildlife-activity-calendar/) maps the whole year, species by species. ## What an Orlando job actually involves Inspection first, and it is free. That establishes the species, the entry points, and whether young are present, because all three change the sequence. Removal follows, and it is not the end of the work. Sealing every entry the structure offers is what stops the next animal moving into the space this one vacated, and it is the part a cheap quote leaves out. Contaminated insulation and droppings come out after the building is closed. Most jobs run one to three weeks end to end, longer for bats because the colony has to empty itself over several nights rather than be removed. ## What it costs We quote after the inspection rather than off a price list, because the two things that drive the number are how much sealing the structure needs and how much contaminated material has to be replaced, and neither is knowable over the phone. What we can say up front is that the inspection and the phone estimate cost nothing, and that exclusion work carries our lifetime warranty: if an animal gets back in through work we sealed, we come back at no charge. For the ranges and the factors behind them, see [what wildlife removal costs in Central Florida](https://drcritter.com/blog/wildlife-removal-cost-central-florida/) and our [pricing and guarantee](https://drcritter.com/pricing-guarantee/) page. ## Cite this page **Plain text** Dr. Critter Wildlife Control. "Animal Control in Orlando, FL." Last updated August 18, 2026. https://drcritter.com/animal-control/orlando-fl/ **Link** Animal Control in Orlando, FL — Dr. Critter Wildlife Control Copy link ### Methodology and reuse The Florida wildlife figures and legal dates on this page come from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and from University of Florida IFAS Extension, each linked inline at the point it is used. The bat exclusion window and the disposition rules are quoted from Florida Administrative Code, not paraphrased from a secondary source. The Orlando detail (neighborhoods, water bodies and the species mix associated with each) describes the work this business actually takes in the city, and the review figures shown on the page are read live from the Google Business Profile rather than typed in, so the page cannot quote a rating it no longer has. Last updated August 18, 2026. You may republish these figures with attribution and a link to [https://drcritter.com/animal-control/orlando-fl/](https://drcritter.com/animal-control/orlando-fl/). --- Dr. Critter Wildlife Control, FWC-registered Florida nuisance wildlife control operator since 1996. Sanford, FL, serving Orlando and Central Florida. Phone: 800-932-7287.