How to deal with Opossum under deck? (Fairfax: house, neighborhood)

[graceC]

Hello everyone, I need advise, please!

I have an Opossum living under my deck - our Ring camera caught it coming and going through our backyard at night. I don't think it's feral since it just seemed to be going about its business calmly.

My husband tried spraying Tabasco and put mothballs all around the deck, hoping the creature would abandon our property, but all it did was to make me abandon my deck as the smell was positively nauseating!

Then I went to Fairfax County Animal Control website to read up about options. Turned out they don't do small nuisance issues like this, and I also found out it's illegal in the State of Virginia to trap and relocate an animal to another area, so I will have to call an animal removal service to solve this problem.

Has anyone used such service before? Are they expensive? How does it work? We're city people through and through - I had to look up the internet to match the creature's image on my ring camera to identify it! So we're not going to do the trapping (or killing) ourselves.

Any advise will be greatly appreciated!

[North Beach Person]

An animal control guy will likely charge you a couple hundred dollars to remove the animal.

[brava4]

Call your animal shelter and see what they say. Is it bothering you?

[graceC]

Thank you. I'm looking them up and trying to narrow down my choices before calling. I also need to find out if they provide some sort of guarantee as I really don't know what to expect at this time.

[graceC]

Originally Posted by brava4

Call your animal shelter and see what they say. Is it bothering you?

I guess it's bothering me mentally more than physically, does that make sense? I'm just afraid of Rabies or something nasty like that.

[glenninindy]

A p0ssum lives under my deck too and it hasn't bothered me in years.

[brava4]

Maybe post this on the Pet forum on the chance someone might have info. Yes, I know it isn't a pet, but you never know.


Also, it might not be moving on because it has babies. Don't know what possums season for birthing is.

[Bungalove]

Originally Posted by graceC

I guess it's bothering me mentally more than physically, does that make sense? I'm just afraid of Rabies or something nasty like that.

Personally, I would just leave it where it is. The possum will only come out at night, and it is much more afraid of YOU than you have need to be afraid of it. Possums are voracious consumers of ticks, slugs, and other nasty critters, so it is actually beneficial for your yard. I used to have a possum that ate dry cat food on the back step along side of the stray cat that I fed - neither of them took any notice of the other at all. At my last house I had a huge possum I called "the Land Cruiser" because its body was so large that it concealed the legs so it looked like it was cruising on the grass. It never bothered a thing; just ate bird seed that had fallen from the feeder and then left for the night. I used to leave cat food out for it as well, but the raccoon usually got there early and ate it up first.

[Bigfoot424]

If you pay a couple hundred then you've been taken for a ride. While I understand NOVA is more expensive then living in the valley (I lived in NOVA for 42 years) we're seeing charges maybe in the neighborhood of around $50 to trap one animal. I wonder if you have a family there you don't know about.

[dpiccolo]

I wish I had an opossum living under my deck!! Check this out : "The study notes opossums are particularly good at grooming themselves, which leads them to swallow most of the ticks that attach themselves. Based on a study conducted by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, researchers estimated opossums can kill about 5,000 ticks in one season"