An Opossum dug a huge hole next to our home's foundation!

[mafibisha]

So we just discovered that an opossum (colloquially 'possums' ) dug a fairly large hole (big enough for him) next to our home's foundation / basement.

It happened over night because it wasn't there yesterday. We actually saw him this morning as he ran back to it.

Googled and called a wildlife company to catch & release. It's illegal in our state to trap & release them. Not that I'd want to try LOL Of course they're not in on sundays.

While we wait to hear from them, any thoughts or advice?

 

[justcruisin]

Can you shoot it or get someone to shoot it for you?

 

[tinkerone]

we had a problem with racoons last year. our bylaw allows us to trap them however we can not move them farther than 2 miles away.
what good is that? i mean really, that's like driving them home!

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

We had an opossum take up residence in our garage one year. Opossums are nocturnal. To get it out we left the garage door open a few feet at night, waited for it to leave and then shut the door. Once it was gone we were able to check and make sure we were not shutting it off from any babies. After that we were very careful to not open our garage door at night any more.

You could wait until the animal leaves the hole at night, check for babies and if there aren't any, fill the hole back in before the opossum comes back.

 

[mafibisha]

We had an opossum take up residence in our garage one year. Opossums are nocturnal. To get it out we left the garage door open a few feet at night, waited for it to leave and then shut the door. Once it was gone we were able to check and make sure we were not shutting it off from any babies. After that we were very careful to not open our garage door at night any more.

You could wait until the animal leaves the hole at night, check for babies and if there aren't any, fill the hole back in before the opossum comes back.

Thanks for the replies all.

Re the above post: its a really deep - dark hole and can't tell whats in there. Also sort of afraid to get too close LOL

Called the wildlife dude again and still no reply.

Open to any and all ideas. Sigh ....

 

[luvmy3]

We had one that kept coming up on our deck to eat the junk in the grease trap of our grill. They are the creepiest looking things. I read that to repel them can use predator urine that you can buy. We never did that, we just got rid of the grease trap.

 

[momfeez]

We had an armadillo that dug 2 holes by our foundation - one in the front yard and one in the backyard. DH put a radio in the front yard and backyard near the holes and put it on every night for about a week on a talk radio station. The sound of human voices was suppose to keep the armadillo at bay. We also filled in the holes with concrete. That was a few years ago and so far, fingers crossed, he hasn't been back.

We now have geese and ducks EVERYWHERE and haven't found a way to keep them off the lawn yet. If it isn't one thing it's another