The Real Cost of Using Opossum Repellents


How many of you have called up a wildlife removal technician or company, received a quote, and decided to do it yourself because you can do it for cheaper? We won't be offended if you answer honestly and ALL put your hands up, because it's a tactic that both commercial and residential property employ, all over the world. 

A fairly simple opossum removal job can cost $150-$500, depending on what needs to be done. In many cases (although we urge you to check with your technician before making a final decision), this fee will include using traps or exclusion devices to trap the opossum, before then disposing of it in the appropriate way, releasing it if the law allows for this, or euthanising the animal if that is the legal alternative. 

The bigger the job, the more it will cost you - the more work/labour/man-hours are necessary to get the job done. 

The smaller the job, the less it will cost you - the less work/labour/man-hours are necessary to get the job done. 

In most cases, a professional opossum removal technician or operator will be able to get rid of the animal(s) in a few days, perhaps a week with larger or more complex jobs. 

Now let's imagine you're going to do this job yourself, getting rid of opossums using repellents or deterrents. You will need to have a few things figured out first, such as, how much of an area do you need to protect? Which repellents or deterrents are you using? Or are you going to use a combination of two or three? Maybe even more than that?

What do you want the outcome to be? Because certain repellents for opossums are going to work in certain ways, and encourage the critter to leave in a certain direction. (And perhaps not even the one you wanted them to.) 

There are a large number of opossum deterrents on the market, ranging from the cheap to the ridiculously expensive. You'll want to invest your hard-earned cash in the right ones, obviously, but even the ‘right' ones might not have the ‘right' effect for you - getting the opossums to go away and stay away. 

Let's say that you buy a noise device - an ultrasonic sound device. These can range from $20 to $100, and in some cases, with more technology, perhaps even more than that. Some are plugged in to the mains, others run on batteries, and you can buy outdoor units that are solar-powered too. You will need to look at the cost of running the device, alongside the cost of buying a certain amount of devices outright. One device might not be enough to protect the entire house, and you may need two or three, plugged into different rooms on different levels. If you're spending, for example, $60 on one device and you need to buy three to give you half-decent coverage of the building, you're already spending $180, plus potential shipping costs, without even looking into the running costs. If they're not overly cost-effective, you may find that the running costs are too expensive for you to be able to afford. What you'll need to remember with mains-operated devices is that they will need to be plugged in and turned on pretty much all the time in order to have the best results. That's even more so the case if you don't know where the animal is actually residing within your home. 

Light devices can be just as expensive, requiring the initial upfront cost alongside running costs, but solar-powered intruder lights on the exterior of your home can actually help quite well to keep various interlopers out, including wild critters and burglars. Anyone or any animal who would rather be protected by the cover of darkness won't have the cover of darkness to hide behind when a powerful night light comes on. You must ensure that the light doesn't become a problem for other households, however. You wouldn't appreciate loud banging on the front door in the middle of the night when your neighbors have finally had enough of that beaming light right through their window. 

On their own, lights, no matter what kind of lights you buy, are not going to be enough to keep opossums away from your home. When used in conjunction with other approaches and modifications, however, might just be enough to keep the majority of critters at bay. 

In reality, the cost of attempting a touch of DIY opossum removal at the weekend is probably going to outweigh what it would have cost you to hire in a professional right at the beginning. The entire job could have been done and dusted in a week, for a couple of hundred bucks, and with everything at the end like the animal was never there at all. Trying to do this yourself is probably going to result in numerous trips to the hardware stores or online orders, trying different things at different times (or all at the same time) and not getting anywhere fast, and still needing to call upon a professional at the end of it because you didn't actually get the job successfully done at all. 

The REAL cost of using opossum repellents is going to be a lot more than just your bank balance - time, effort, patience, and failure.



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