Hearing noises in the house at night is a pretty good sign that animals are living in the home. It’s likely nocturnal wildlife that’s moved into your home while looking for food, warmth, and shelter. Let the sounds below be your guide to determining which critter is making those noises in the house at night.
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A Chirp and a Flutter
These sounds are likely to come from one or two animals. Luckily, chirping is one of the easier noises to identify and clearly indicates it’s a bird, which you’re likely to hear earlier in the day than at night.
Bats, however, are another likely culprit when you hearing noises in house at night. You’ll hear a fluttering of wings throughout walls and vents, along with babies’ chirps when the mother comes back with food.
Bats and birds love attics and roofs because the ledges are easy places for them to set up camp. These spots are also safe from predators, making them perfect to raise young.
Scratching and Scampering
If you’re hearing scurrying at night, you can rule out daytime critters, such as squirrels. Scampering, scurrying, and scratching are signs of a smaller rodent roaming throughout the home, but it can be hard to distinguish exactly which tiny critter is there.
A quick scurrying is often a sound of small wildlife running across the ceiling. Scratching is one of the noises in the house at night heard when animals build their nests or are tearing at a home’s wooden beams.
Thump in the Night
Unlike the light pitter patter of a small critter, a heavy step from upstairs is a sure sign of a bigger animal. While a home’s acoustics are sometimes deceiving, causing one to mistake the scratch of a mouse for a raccoon, a lead foot is hard to mistake. The slow, meticulous steps of a raccoon can help eliminate the possibility of another animal making noises in house at night.
If you’re hearing this noise, it’s likely a raccoon or an opossum. It could be moving from one area of the attic to another, dragging something heavy across the ceiling, and possibly destroying whatever material it got its hands on.
Vocal Power
Some mammals make their own sound effects, but not all animals have vocal noises. Squirrels are an example of animals that don’t make too much vocal noise and can probably be ruled out early on.
If you hear a chirping, there’s some sort of bird up there. Squeaking is often a mouse or possibly a rat, with their singing chatter a constant reminder of their presence.
Bats make a few squeaking noises as well, but you’re less likely to hear them squeak inside unless there’s a large number of them living in the attic. Raccoons are actually the chattiest of them all. They’re quite vocal, and you’re likely to hear growling, chirping, and crying. Raccoon babies, in particular, have a distinct crying chatter. If this is one of the noises in the house at night that you’re hearing, you’ll know even sooner what animal you’re dealing with.
Your Next Move
You can take some preventative measures to stop wildlife noises in the home. Installing mesh and wire covers over vents and repairing holes and gaping cracks can keep animals from getting in, but it doesn’t solve the problem when animals are already in the attic.
Sealing holes now could mean trapping animals inside, leaving babies behind or finding yourself disposing of a decaying carcass. At this point, the wild animals have likely established their presence with a permanent nest and remnants of leftover food. They’re in no rush to leave.
Enlist the help of humane wildlife removal professionals. They have both the best interests of you and the animal in mind, with the equipment, knowledge, and experience to handle animal removal effectively and safely.
Do you need wildlife removal services? Request a quote today!