What�s the Best Way to Get Rid of Opossums on the Property?

There is no right and wrong way to get rid of opossums on your property; each individual case will need to have a removal method that has been tailored specifically for that animal, in that exact situation. An opossum will hide in a very different place in one house than she will in another, and the unpredictable nature of wild critters just like opossums makes trying to make your home critter-free a difficult job. 

We'll start by telling you that repellents do not work against opossums, unless you're lucky enough to find some raccoon or wildlife eviction fluid, which mimics the scent of a male raccoon. If a female opossum is hiding on your land, she will move her babies if he believes that a raccoon is hanging around, particularly a male one. Her joeys are no match for an adult male, and he'll devour those youngsters in a heartbeat if they are left unsupervised or he can get one over on the mother. 

Apart from that, very few repellents have actually shown to have much of an impact of ANY wildlife species, opossums included. Anything that tastes or smells bad can't smell bad enough to keep a hungry opossum from a garbage bag full of food, particularly if she has 10 to 20 young opossum joeys to feed and nurture at the same time. The same can be said for lights and sounds, too, even the ultrasonic sound devices. Lights and sounds don't have that much of an impact on an animal that is starting to become more daytime active than nocturnal, and no longer has the biggest fear of humans. Once upon a time, we would have been one of the opossums biggest threats. We still are, especially in vehicles, but opossums have grown less scared of us the more they associate us with food. 

In reality, the only really good way to get an opossum out of your home is to find it, remove it, and then seal the spot and rest of said building. The trouble is, you might not know where that opossum is, at which point you'll need to use every sense you have to try and figure it out. And then you'll need to work out whether or not the opossum is a female, if she has babies in the pouch, and if not, why not? Where are they? In a nest? You'll need to find those too. 

You'll need to make a choice between live traps or kill traps, and if you're going with live traps, what you are humanely and lawfully allowed to do next? Do not assume that you can just catch and then release this animal back into the wild. In some States, that act is actually unlawful and could see you fined or faced with a more serious sentence. 

There are times when exclusion traps or devices can work for opossums, but if there are young joeys in the nest, this is not an approach you can take. If you do, you are locking the joeys inside your home and locking the mother outside. If those joeys are too young to take care of themselves, it'll just be a matter of time before they die. 



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