5 Things that attract wildlife pests to your yard
Read this article to learn why wildlife is attracted to your property and what to do about it.
30/03/2021
Do you often wonder why wild animals are always in your yard? While it can be alluring to watch butterflies and birds fly around your home, you don’t want to have wild animals living and breeding on your property. Not only do they make a mess around your home, but they can also infect you with diseases and cause you to spend extra money on healthcare and wildlife removal. Read on to learn why wildlife is attracted to your property and what to do about it.
Exposed Foods
Wild animals are natural scavengers roaming about looking for food. These wild animals have a strong sense of smell, and some can smell food from miles away. When you leave pet food exposed around your property, you are naturally attracting wild animals. Leaving the kitchen window open with exposed food all over is another invitation for wild animals. If you do it often, the wild animals will not only visit, but they will also burrow on your property and live there permanently, since they are guaranteed constant nourishment.
Water Source
Just like the food case, wild animals also need water from time to time to quench their thirst. When you leave your pets’ water bowls filled and exposed, it is a nice invitation for wild animals to visit your yard. Having a water fountain and a birdbath on your property can also be an invitation to wild animals. Although having a fence around your home can keep large wild animals away from your property, it does nothing to good climbers and diggers like squirrels and raccoons.
Dead Animals
Sometimes, an injured or aged animal may crawl or work its way onto your yard and die there. Once you notice this, have the dead animal removed immediately. Failure to do this will attract wild animals to your home. Scavengers will feed on any source of meat, either dead or alive. A dead animal gives off odors that are easily picked up by foraging wild animals. When a dead animal is not removed from your property, its carcass will attract all sorts of wild animals. These animals might invade your home or even attack your family or pets. You can learn more about the threats dead animals cause and how to remove them at deadanimal.org.
Landscaping
Often, we want to beautify our homes with natural additions like the planting of trees, hedges, flowers, shrubs, and gardens. As beautifying as these additions are, they can also be an invitation to wild animals. Some animals can make nests on your trees, while others can burrow holes into your garden or beneath the shrubs and hedges. Fruit trees are another problem as most homeowners find it difficult to keep up with picking the ripened fruits. The ripened fruits, when not picked, drops to the ground and attracts wild animals.
Dead Wood and Compost Piles
Although composts are beneficial to your garden, rotting is known to attract a few wild animals, especially those that feed on maggots and insects. Similarly, a dead woodpile can attract animals looking for shelter and also breed insects that attract insect-eating wild animals like opossums and skunks.