Does a polecat live 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 settled under my house and I didn’t even know it was there.

My wife and I were surprised to find that we had one or more polecats living under our house even though the signs were there. For several years, every time we went out and returned home, there was the hen smell of a polecat on the door of the house from inside the garage. You may know a polecat. The other name by which it is called is skunk.

It was always in the same area. The door was 20 feet from the nearest outer wall, so the smell was meaningless. I looked around and then the scent dissipated before I found something. It was never the full scent, just a puff from time to time.

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 he thought there was a cat living under our house. My attitude was that if the cat didn’t pay the rent, it 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 discernible access points. It turns out that in the inside wall of the crawl space, there was a hole about two feet long and six inches wide that sloped down and then turned outward. The hole appeared under our deck, near the house, under a broken plastic covering that covered the ground behind the deck lattice.

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

The plastic floor covering under the house had been removed and no longer provided good barrier protection against moisture. So, I tightened it up 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 some black and white hairs in a corner next to some concrete blocks. Suddenly it all made sense. That was what we smelled 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 640 pounds of concrete into the hole to keep the skunk OUT. New soil was introduced to finish filling the hole and a new plastic floor covering was stapled. A new one-inch opening plastic lattice was installed around the deck.

We believe the skunk entered from behind the deck steps and crawled across the support boards. We also added galvanized 1/4-inch mesh wire behind the lattice to keep all but the smallest critters out. This year there have been no aromatic smells.

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

If you think an occupant is home when you need to enter your crawl space, call animal control and ask them to verify that the infestation is gone. Better them than you!

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