How to Get Rid of Mice in Your Walls (Without Poison)
You hear scratching in the wall at 2 a.m. and your first thought is to make it stop. Fair. Mice in a wall are a real problem, and a female can have 5 to 10 litters of five or six…
Category Wildlife
Raccoons in the trash, owls in the trees, a bat in the house. These guides cover who’s really a risk, who’s just misunderstood, and what to do when a wild animal turns up in your yard.
Winter Roost Boxes: How to Give Small Birds a Warm Place to Sleep
A small bird has to get through a long winter night without eating, and its body loses heat faster than a big bird’s does. Where it sleeps matters a lot. A roost box is a birdhouse built for that job.…
Before the First Freeze, Give Your Backyard Birds a Reliable Water Source
A bird can survive a night of subfreezing temperatures, but it still needs water the next morning. That’s a problem when every puddle, birdbath, and shallow stream in the neighborhood has frozen solid. A shallow bowl of fresh water is…
Why a Pet Opossum Almost Never Works Out, Even Where It’s Legal
Arkansas lets residents keep up to six qualifying hand-caught wild animals per household, including opossums, subject to additional rules. That’s the actual law, and it’s also a terrible idea. The reasons have much more to do with biology than with…
How to Get Rid of Raccoons Without Trapping (Trapping Backfires)
Raccoons leave when your yard stops paying them. Find what they’re eating and where they’re getting in, take both away, and most of them move on without a trap, a spray, or a fight. The popular alternatives range from short-lived…
Yes, Owls Eat Snakes. Even The Venomous Ones
Owls do eat snakes, and the more interesting question is how they manage it, particularly with venomous species, where the obvious follow-up is whether a rattlesnake or copperhead poses any real danger to a bird hunting it from above. The…
Are Owls Dangerous? When They Attack, Why, and What to Do
Owls aren’t out to get you. They can hurt you, though, if you walk under the wrong tree at the wrong time of year. Both things are true. Real attacks are rare, and nearly all of them come from a…
Possum vs. Opossum: Both Are Correct, But Not for the Same Animal
Wait, is it possum or opossum? Both are correct. Which one applies depends entirely on which animal you’re talking about, and most people in North America are casually using the wrong one without knowing it. The animal most Americans encounter…
What Eats Raccoons? The Natural Predators Missing From Your Neighborhood
Raccoons have plenty of natural predators. Coyotes, great horned owls, bobcats, red-tailed hawks, and in Florida even alligators all take raccoons regularly. The reason your neighborhood raccoon population doesn’t seem affected by any of this is simpler than it might…
How to Get Rid of House Sparrows Legally and Humanely
Before anything else: which sparrow are you dealing with? If the answer is house sparrows, the chunky, aggressive, brown-streaked birds that showed up from England in the 1850s and have been taking over nest boxes ever since, you have real…
