Wildlife experts explain how to deal with neighborhood critters

By Cynthia Pegram

Published: June 27, 2008

It’s critter time.

Wildlife living quietly in the suburbs and urban areas of Central Virginia are more noticeable these days as they pair up and have little ones.

That can mean a skunk and kits under your house, a raccoon family parked in your garage, or a groundhog in your backyard.

Just how you react depends whether you think in terms of nuisance species or wildlife neighbors.

But remember — state law draws the line on what you can do to remove wild animals.

Wildlife specialists say maybe the first thing is to relax a little.

“Wildlife in your community means something is going on right in your community, not something wrong,” said Ed Clark, director of The Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro.

The presence of wildlife is not abnormal, he said, but shows how the animals — the original residents — have had to adapt to the presence of humans.

Not everyone feels that way. Lots of calls come into Larry Faust, Lynchburg’s chief animal warden, and although he doesn’t keep track of the number, they include concerns about small- and medium-sized mammals, reptiles and birds.

“There’s more wildlife in Lynchburg than the national forest,” said Faust, whose department focus is mostly domestic animals.

“We have no jurisdiction over wildlife in animal control,” he said.

State law prohibits trapping and then relocating wild animals, although different laws apply to orphaned and injured animals.

The law also prohibits selling a wild animal you’ve trapped. However, wildlife can be trapped, and then released on the same piece of property.

Jim Bowman, wildlife biologist manager for region II of Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries, said homeowners have options to deal with squirrels, opossums and other small animals. If an animal has gotten into the attic, he said, “Sometimes the solution is sealing it up at the appropriate time when the animal is out.”

It is not legal to use a live trap, and then haul the animal to the country and release it, no matter how frustrating the situation, Bowman said. Doing that “is simply moving a problem animal for someone else to have to worry about.”

Oftentimes county laws allow the killing of some wild animals on private property, but others require a permit, so it’s best to check local restrictions. Virginia also issues nuisance animal permits to businesses that specialize in removal.

Clark said people who find wildlife in their neighborhood often make a series of assumptions not based on fact. Rather, he said, they should consider them as they would a neighbor coming from another culture. What seems like threatening behavior can be demystified, and understood not as threatening, but fascinating.

“If children are being supervised, and dogs and cats are properly supervised, there’s no reason to believe the presence of a fox, skunk or raccoon is in anyway a threat to children,” he said.

Just as parents warn children not to try to pet an unfamiliar dog, they should warn a child not to try to touch a wild animal, he said.

If removing the critters is the best course of action, extermination isn’t the only answer.

Clark said state law says that if an animal is living under your house, for example, it can be trapped and removed from the space, then released on your property. It doesn’t have to be exterminated.

And there are other ways to convince an animal to move out from under your house — putting a battery-operated radio in the space and turning it on so it runs continuously, or a battery-operated light. Even a big bass stereo placed on the homeowner’s floor above the animal den may do the trick.

Sometimes attitudes put people in conflict with animals because they treat nature like a catalogue, Clark said — they want this animal, but not that one — “Songbirds, but not crows.”

Lt. Tony Fisher of the law enforcement division of Game and Inland Fisheries said the best thing to do when wildlife is in your yard “is to leave it alone, let it go its own way.”

“We live in a part of Virginia with a lot of wild animals,” he said. “It’s part of the environment and the society we live in.”

The best general advice, Fisher said, is to “leave the animals alone. Keep pets away and food out of reach. They’re wild and do not want to be around us.”

What to do about baby animals

Most often this time of year, it’s baby animals — baby rabbits, squirrels, opossums and fawns — that bring folks to contact wildlife specialists.

Nathou Attinger, director of the Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary, said caring people often bring orphaned wildlife to her.

While the people are well-meaning, she said there is a lot of confusion about what is or isn’t an orphan.

- Fledging birds: Their feathers are out, but they aren’t good flyers and they’ve jumped from their nest and are on the ground.

“The mom feeds them on the ground, depending on the species, from two days to a month,” Attinger said. The mother will continue to feed them until they learn to fly and can escape predators. “It is a dangerous time.”

Put the bird back into the nest, if possible. If it has only a few feathers, call a wildlife rehab person for help.

- Fawns: In the wild, the mother deer leaves the fawn in a safe place and goes to find food, then returns at dusk to nurse.

Just because the mother isn’t in sight, doesn’t mean abandonment.

But sometimes the mother has been killed, as in a recent case brought to Attinger. The fawn had been at the side of the road for two days. “The mom would never leave her baby on the side of the road where everyone could see it.”

- Raccoons: Mother raccoons move their babies every five days, Attinger said. If she has two or three, she can’t move them all at the same time and will park two in what looks like a place safe from predators.

People find the babies, and think they’re abandoned, Attinger said. “If they wait for three hours, the mother will have moved all of them.”

What about rabies?

Rabies is always a concern. Family pets — dogs, cats and ferrets — can be vaccinated against the disease, but wildlife have no protection.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after being bitten by an infected animal, skunks, foxes, raccoons, bats and groundhogs can carry the virus for a period of time, before becoming ill. The animal usually dies within a week once symptoms appear.

Any wild animal bite to a human should be reported to the local health department. If a raccoon or other wild carnivore acts injured, but you can’t see any injury, call Game and Inland Fisheries, Attinger said.

Elaine Witt, of the Wildlife Care Alliance, takes in mostly squirrels and opossums and keeps them in her wildlife room at home until they are big enough or healthy enough to be released back into the wild.
CHET WHITE/THE NEWS & ADVANCE