Is a polecat living under your house? This is how I got rid of mine

In this article, I’d like to share what I learned about a polecat that took up residence under my house and I didn’t even know it was there.

My wife and I were surprised to discover that we had one or more polecats living under our house despite the fact that the signs were there. For several years, every time we left and came home, there was a bird smell of a polecat at the front door from inside the garage. You may know a polecat. The other name it goes by is skunk.

He was always in the same area. The door was 20 feet from the nearest exterior wall, so the smell made no sense. I would look around and then the scent would dissipate before I found anything. It was never the full scent, just a breath every once in a while.

The way we found the real problem was when our HVAC unit needed some work. While our HVAC repairman was working on our unit, he said that he thought there was a cat living under our house. My attitude was that if the cat didn’t pay his rent, he was out. So, I went to see how the cat got under our house.

We live in a brick house with a concrete foundation and no noticeable access points. It turned out that in the interior wall of the crawl space, there was a hole about two feet long and six inches wide that ran down and then turned outward. The hole appeared under our terrace, near the house, under a torn plastic sheet that covered the ground behind the terrace lattice.

The hole, on the outside, measured two feet by two feet and tapered to about ten inches in diameter. We couldn’t see under the platform and therefore didn’t see the hole. The hole went down two feet and under the footer of the house, then up and into the crawl space.

The plastic ground cover under the house had been lifted and no longer provided a good moisture barrier. So, I squeezed it down hard and stapled it to the ground with landscape staples.

In the process of stapling, I found the home of the skunk. It was directly under the garage steps. There were a few black and white hairs in a corner next to some cement blocks. Suddenly it all made sense. That was what we would smell from time to time when we got home.

With all the evidence of the skunk removed and with the help of my son, we proceeded to pour 640lbs of concrete into the hole to keep the skunk OUT. New soil was brought in to finish filling the hole and a new plastic ground cover was stapled down. A new one inch opening plastic lattice was installed around the deck.

We believe the skunk entered by going behind the platform steps and crawling past the support boards. We also added 1/4-inch galvanized mesh wire behind the lattice to keep all but the smallest critters out. This year there have been no aromatic odors.

It turns out that skunks are very good at digging. They have large front claws, but cannot climb. Can you imagine under a house in a space three feet high, face to face with a skunk? Well, I’m happy to report that the skunk wasn’t home when we went looking for the cat under the house.

If you think an occupant is home when you need to get into your crawlspace, call animal control and have them check to see if the pest is gone. Better them than you!

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