Do Repellents, Like Mothballs, Get Animals Out of an Attic?

Having an animal in your attic can be scary, confusing, and ultimately unpleasant, but that should not inspire you to act irrationally. When you need to get rid of an animal that has taken to living in your house unabetted, you need to trap the creature using bait or utilize more lethal methods. Despite how appealing the idea of repellents is for people who do not wish to get actively involved, at the end of the day, these contraptions do not work effectively and continuously. Ignore your disappointment and allow this information to inspire you to get down to business. If you are incapable of getting past this horrifying realization, however, here is why you cannot trust repellants to do your job for you.



Animals Have Freedom of Movement

Have you ever walked near a portable toilet, shuddered, and proceeded to quicken your pace in order to pass it? Animals may not have the same level of mental processing power that we do, but you can rest assured they’re more than capable of avoiding something that smells unappealing to them. Even if you place enough of the repellant to perpetually annoy the varmint, you’re only creating a new problem.

Critters Are Adaptable

When a creature is repeatedly exposed to the same unpleasant thing over and over again, it is not going to give up and leave unless that unpleasantness escalates to life-threatening. The more you expose the animal to the repellant, the more familiar the stench will become to it.

People Are Easily Confused

Sometimes, repellents aren’t necessarily ineffective, but they don’t work because their instructions are far too complicated for the average individual. This circumstance can dramatically reduce their potency, thus rendering them useless. When you combine this accidental incompetency with the likelihood that animals will adapt to their merely unpleasant circumstance with relative ease, then the efficacy of repellents is completely null.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

Animals have far fewer things to care about than their human counterparts. Food, aversion of predators, and reproducing are the major issues on their lists. Because of this general lack of personhood, these creatures will essentially eat anything if it means they will not starve to death, even if that food is only accessible after it has been covered in repellant. Unless it’s poisonous, that animal is just going to suffer in order to survive.

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