What is causing the scratching in my attic?

Scratching in the ceiling is the single most common call this company takes, and the animal is almost always one of four: a squirrel, a roof rat, a raccoon or a bat. You can usually narrow it to one or two before anyone goes up there, because each of them keeps different hours and moves with a different weight. What follows is how our technicians make that call on the phone, and how you can make it yourself tonight.

What time of day is the scratching?

This is the first question we ask, and it eliminates more possibilities than anything else. Squirrels run on a sunrise-to-sunset clock, so daytime noise is almost always a squirrel. Roof rats, opossums and bats are nocturnal. Raccoons are mostly nocturnal but will move in daylight when a female is nursing. If the noise is at 2pm, stop thinking about rats.

Is the animal nesting up there, or just passing through?

The pattern matters more than the volume. An animal that is only travelling produces short bursts in the same direction at the same two times a day, usually near one edge of the attic. An animal that has nested produces movement scattered across a wider area, at irregular hours, with quieter rustling in between as it settles into bedding. Nesting also brings a second sound: material being dragged. If you hear something being pulled across the ceiling, insulation is being rearranged, and that is a resident rather than a visitor.

How can you tell whether there are babies?

This is the question that changes everything, and it is the one homeowners most often miss. Young animals produce a distinct high, thin, repetitive call, quite unlike the movement noise of the adult, and you hear it most when the mother has left the attic to feed. Daytime activity from an animal that should be nocturnal is the other tell, because a nursing female breaks her normal schedule.

Why it matters: sealing the entry with young inside traps them to die in the structure, which is both inhumane and the fastest route to the dead-animal smell that brings people back to us weeks later. The mother will also tear a second hole trying to reach them, so the repair bill grows. Under Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission rules the young have to be removed by hand and reunited with the female, or the exclusion has to wait. For bats there is no discretion at all: Florida Administrative Code 68A-9.012 prohibits exclusion between April 16 and August 14 precisely because flightless pups are in the roost.

Scratching in a wall versus scratching overhead

Overhead noise means the animal is on top of the ceiling, in the open attic space, which is the easier case: there is room to work, room to set traps and room to inspect. Noise inside a wall cavity is different. It usually means a rat, because a rat can travel a stud bay comfortably, or occasionally a squirrel or a bird that has dropped down a wall from the soffit and cannot climb back out. Something trapped in a wall is on a clock, and that one is worth calling about the same day rather than waiting to see whether it settles down.

What the droppings tell you

If you can see into the attic from the hatch without entering it, droppings confirm what the sound suggested. Rat droppings are small, dark, pointed at the ends, and there are a great many of them scattered along travel routes. Squirrel droppings are similar in size but blunter and fewer. Raccoon droppings are much larger, tubular, often full of berry seeds, and deposited repeatedly in one latrine spot rather than scattered. Opossum waste is spread across the space rather than concentrated. Bat guano is finer, crumbles to a glittery powder of insect wings, and piles up directly below the roost.

Do not disturb any of it to get a closer look. Raccoon feces can carry Baylisascaris procyonis roundworm and dried bat guano can release Histoplasma spores when it is stirred up.

What to do tonight

Note the time you hear it, whether it is heavy or light, and whether it is overhead or in a wall. Those three facts are usually enough for us to tell you what you have before anyone visits. Do not open the attic hatch and put your head in, and do not put down poison: a poisoned animal dies inside the structure, which converts a noise problem into an odor and contamination problem.

Once you have a working guess, the species pages go into what each animal does to a Central Florida attic, when it does it, and what state rules govern the removal: squirrels, rats and mice, raccoons and bats.

Getting it out and keeping it out

No single clue settles it. Each one is a piece of the puzzle, and they have to be read together before you decide which animal to target, which is why the inspection comes before the trap rather than after it. Our team at Dr. Critter has spent years diagnosing attic activity across Central Florida, and the diagnosis is the part most homeowners get wrong. When you want someone to get the animal out of your attic and seal the opening it used so the next one cannot follow it in, call us at 800-932-7287.