Pest Control Inspection
There’s a reason our trucks come with 40 foot ladders! We inspect your property thoroughly to identify species, entry points, and nesting sites, ensuring accurate and humane removal plans.
When you need wildlife removal in Chattanooga, Critter Control offers trusted, local services to get animals out and keep them out. We specialize in humane wildlife control for squirrels, raccoons, rats, mice, and any other critters causing problems in your attic, walls, or property.
Not only can wild animals be extremely noisy and emit strong odors, but nuisance wildlife can also damage your house and introduce health risks to you and your family.
Critter Control provides professional wildlife control services. Our Chattanooga team of skilled professionals is trained to identify and handle a wide range of critters like raccoons, squirrels, bats, rats, mice, snakes, and birds.
Our wildlife experts provide safe and humane removal of all nuisance wildlife from residential and commercial properties. We prioritize the safety and well-being of our clients by employing humane and environmentally friendly techniques to address wildlife issues. Our long-term animal control solutions include animal trapping, removal, exclusion, and repairs.
There’s a reason our trucks come with 40 foot ladders! We inspect your property thoroughly to identify species, entry points, and nesting sites, ensuring accurate and humane removal plans.
Using safe, species-specific methods, our wildlife removal team humanely excludes or traps unwanted critters like squirrels, raccoons, rats, bats, or opossums.
Once we guarantee all animals are gone, we implement exclusion techniques. Exclusion techniques provide a safe, long-term solution to nuisance wildlife in your home. We create barriers to prevent animals from getting to resources. We only apply exclusions once we are sure all animals are gone from your home.
Wildlife will damage your home. Inside your home, animals build nests and dens out of readily available material. They will create runs through the insulation. Rodents will gnaw on anything including electrical wires and pipes. Animals can also spread diseases. We apply sanitation agents to clean up feces and urine. Mammals can host pests like fleas, ticks, and mites. Ectoparasite treatments exterminate those pests so you don’t become their next host.
Located on the Tennessee River in the southeastern section of the state, the city of Chattanooga is home to more than 180,000 residents and plenty of wild animals that can easily become pests if they get too close to homes and businesses.
Chattanooga has been named by the New York Times as one of the “Top 45 Places to Go” in the world! And with good reason. The Appalachian Mountains of Southeast Tennessee and the Tennessee River provide residents and tourists easy access to natural beauty, outdoor activities, and urban amenities such as hotels, restaurants, retail stores, galleries, and more.
Chattanooga underwent a remarkable transformation in recent years, spearheaded by a program to get artists and retailers to move into town. Highly successful, Chattanooga is increasing at an annual rate of 0.73% as of 2022. While this growth has been quite positive for Chattanooga, it begins to encroach on the habitats of the wildlife around it, forcing some to adapt to living close to people and industry. When this happens, wildlife sometimes becomes a nuisance that needs to be removed from homes and businesses.
The Tennessee Wildlife Federation has labeled the state “the most biologically diverse inland state.” The state is home to a variety of fish, mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, and bird species. And much of this wildlife is close to Hamilton, Catoosa, Dade, and Walker Counties, which comprise the Chattanooga metro area.
In addition, Chattanooga’s cool winters and hot, humid summers, along with the population growth of the area, create a need for wildlife to look outside of their usual habitats for food, water, and shelter.
Throughout the night, these animals are on the move looking for food and have been known to topple over trash bins and gobble pet food. If they’re not looking for an easy-to-access trash bin, raccoons may also make their way to your attic or chimney in search of the perfect denning site. If you live in the Chattanooga area and find a raccoon, or signs of the presence of raccoons on your property, reach out to Critter Control rather than try to remove the animals yourself. Although raccoons are a hunted species in Tennessee, keep in mind that raccoons can not only get aggressive—they also carry diseases such as rabies.
During the inspection, we determine the severity of the raccoon infestation. We look for physical evidence like footprints in or around the home, stains from raccoon feces and urine. On the exterior of the house, we look for damage like scratches on boards, broken vents and screens, ripped apart shingles, destroyed soffits, and every possible entry point.
Live trapping is one of the most efficient ways to get rid of a raccoon. Depending on the situation, a one-way door or excluder valve can be installed. An excluder valve works by allowing the raccoon to leave but blocks its reentry. The choice of device is largely dependent on the season and location of the raccoons on your property. Direct capture is not commonly used because raccoons are a rabies vector species. If we must trap, we place traps strategically to safely catch the raccoons and we check traps frequently, based on state laws.
We provide a wide range of repair and restoration services. We can repair raccoon damage like broken screens on vents and chimneys and broken boards on decks and porches. It is essential to apply cleaning agents and ectoparasite treatments on areas inhabited by raccoons.
Like all cities big and small, Chattanooga has rodent problems. Whenever humans, buildings, and food come together, chances are rodents will join in the mix. If you happen to notice signs of rats or mice on your around your property, reach out to Critter Control as soon as possible before the number of rodents present multiplies.
During a rodent inspection, we thoroughly inspect your attic and provide a complete exterior home inspection. The most common signs of rodent activity are gnaw marks, feces, rub marks, nesting material, runs in insulation material, and small entry points.
A Critter Control wildlife specialist will create a strategic trapping plan to remove the rodents found in your home. Critter Control specialists may use snap traps and live traps to capture and remove mice and rats. Rodent trapping can usually takes between five to fourteen days.
The best way to reduce the possibility of letting unwanted rodents into homes is to seal possible entrances. Exclusion methods include caulking cracks in foundations, capping chimneys, and installing mesh covers over vents and crawl space entrances. We also strongly recommend a maintenance service. Rodents have front teeth that continuously grow, which means they can gnaw a new way back into your home.
The state is home to five species of squirrels. Chattanooga residents are familiar with the sight of squirrels running across yards and parks. Many people enjoy watching squirrels; however, if they get too close to home, or worse, make their way inside your home, they can cause quite a bit of stress and make an unsightly mess. For many people, the simplest solution to a squirrel invasion is to scare the animal back outside. Instead of this, please call a professional to handle squirrel removal, safely, efficiently, and humanely.
We find all current and potential entry points for squirrel entry and identify all signs of squirrel damage and activity.
We install one-way doors or squirrel traps that humanely get the squirrels out of attics, chimneys, or walls. If kits are present, we remove them by hand.
Squirrel exclusions seal all current and potential entry points for immediate squirrel control
Tennessee is home to fifteen bat species, including the federally endangered gray bat, which can be observed when they emerge from Nickajack Cave in Chattanooga for their evening feeding flight. While many people enjoy watching bats take flight, they can become quite a nuisance if they happen to create a roost inside your attic. If this happens inside your home, please contact Critter Control as soon as possible. And please do not try to remove a bat yourself as the state of Tennessee regulates bat removal.
We perform a full interior and exterior inspection and search for signs such as rub marks, guano, a strong scent of ammonia, and small openings. The most common sign is the accumulation of guano (feces).
The most effective and humane way to remove bats is by utilizing a bat valve in conjunction with a full home exclusion. A bat valve allows for bats to exit your home but not re-enter. We follow all local ordinances for humane bat removal. We will never abandon flightless pups in your attic.
After removing the bat valves, we seal the entrance hole(s) so bats can no longer enter your home. If there is substantial guano in your attic, you should consider taking advantage of our attic remediation services to remove the soiled insulation and replace it.
Opossums are prevalent around Chattanooga. If you see an opossum in your yard, it is best to ignore it. They usually move on from a location within a few days. In the meantime, they will probably eat pests like ticks or rodents.
If you’ve got one in your home, you know it’s there. They are noisy animals. They scream, hiss, thump and bump. They can truly be annoying at any time during the day or night. Opossums will also leave feces and urine wherever they go. If you have a nuisance opossum in your house or under a deck, call us to evict opossums early.
Opossums can be found inside attics and basements or outside under decks and sheds. Common signs include unique paw prints and feces. Opossums are docile and usually easy to spot.
Opossums can be lured into cages for live capture. If it is maternity season, we follow all guidelines for removing mother and newborn opossums. We will seal entryways into the building to prevent opossums from reentering in the future. Opossums can be kept from getting under sheds and decks by installing fencing around the bottom edges and burying the fence underground.
Broken screens on chimney and roof vents are replaced with sturdier materials, and we properly seal all entry points, including crawlspaces. We clean and deodorize areas of opossum activity. Exclusion may include eliminating sources that attract bugs, like nighttime lighting, stagnant water, and livestock poop.
Both Eastern spotted skunks and spotted skunks are found throughout the state of Tennessee, and Chattanooga has plenty of them. Skunks often visit yards in search of food and a safe place to burrow. In Tennessee, both species can be legally hunted for their pelts. That said, if you have a nuisance skunk or two in your yard, it’s best to rely on professional handling and skunk trapping and avoid getting sprayed.
In addition to noting any pungent odors that signal the presence of a skunk, we will inspect the condition of your landscaping, as skunks are known for tearing-up lawns and shredding grass while hunting for grubs and insects. We will also inspect the perimeter of your building’s foundations and under decks, to locate burrows.
Never try to remove a skunk from your property yourself. Getting sprayed is a very unpleasant experience. Furthermore, these animals may carry diseases that can spread to humans and pets, such as rabies. Our specialists will use live traps to capture and remove skunks for you, or they’ll use a one-way exclusion device to evict skunks from their harborage areas. The most effective ways to control a skunk problem is exclusion and habitat modification.
The most effective ways to control a skunk problem is exclusion and habitat modification. Methods like sealing foundation gaps, replacing and screening broken foundation vents and installing hardware cloth (rat walls) around unprotected sheds and decks are the most effective and permanent ways to keep skunks out.
We recommend keeping pet food inside and securing any trash bins.