A thump overhead at dusk and a scrabble overhead at sunrise are usually two different animals. Squirrels run on a daylight schedule — you hear scratching and rolling pecans in the attic early morning and again in late afternoon, and the sound is light and fast, often right above a soffit or along the eave line. Raccoons work at night, and they sound like what they are: something heavy walking, dragging, occasionally chattering. In raised houses around Chalmette the noise sometimes comes from below instead, under the floor, which points at raccoons, opossums or feral cats using the open underside of the house rather than the roof. Getting the identification right before anyone sets a trap matters, because the two jobs are not the same at all.
Squirrel removal is mostly a roofline problem. They get in through gaps where the soffit meets the fascia, through rotted corners of boxing, around gable vents, and at the dormer and roof-to-wall junctions where flashing has lifted. The hole is small — fist-sized or less — and they will chew it wider. Raccoon removal is a structural problem. A raccoon pulls shingles back, tears vent screening off, bends up roof edges, and in older Arabi and Meraux houses will push through a soft spot in the soffit with sheer weight. It also leaves far more behind: raccoon latrines in insulation are a real sanitation issue, and the volume of urine and droppings from one female and her kits will soak and flatten the insulation under them.
The sequence that works is inspection first, then exclusion, then repair, then clean-up. The inspection means walking the roof and the attic, finding every entry and the ones that are being used, and figuring out whether there are young. That last part is the step that gets skipped on cheap jobs. Squirrels have litters in late winter and again in late summer; raccoons den in spring. If you one-way-door a mother out in March and her kits are still in the attic, you get a dead-animal problem in your ceiling in a week, and the mother will tear a new hole getting back to them. Juveniles have to be removed by hand from the void before the adult is excluded.
Once there are no dependents, one-way doors over the active entries let the animals leave and not return, with trapping used where the layout makes a door impractical. Then every opening gets sealed properly — not with spray foam, which both species chew straight through, but with metal flashing, hardware cloth behind vents, and replaced wood where the fascia or soffit has gone soft. Humid years and wind-damaged roofs leave a lot of wet, punky trim on houses in this parish, and an animal hole in that trim is also how water gets in. Wet structural wood is an invitation to the Formosan subterranean termite, which has been established in the New Orleans area since the 1950s and is the most destructive termite here — the USDA has put the local control and repair bill at roughly $300 million a year. Fixing the hole properly is cheaper than the chain of problems it starts.
Cost tracks the number of entry points, how much carpentry the repair needs, the pitch and height of the roof, whether young are involved, and whether the attic needs insulation removed and the area sanitized. A single squirrel entry at a low eave is a small job. A raccoon that has been in a two-story attic for a season, with a latrine and chewed ductwork, is not. Crawl space work under a raised house adds access difficulty rather than materials.
Before you book anyone — here or in Poydras, Gentilly or across the parish line — ask whether the quote includes sealing the entry points or only removal, ask what the plan is if young are found, and ask who handles the repair carpentry. Removal without exclusion means the next animal moves into the same hole.
Cypress Perimeter Group works in Chalmette, Arabi, Meraux, Poydras, New Orleans and Gentilly. The work is done by licensed contractors, licensed and insured, estimates are free, same-day appointments are available, and several payment methods are accepted. Call during office hours — Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm, Saturday 8am to 1pm — to describe what you are hearing and when you are hearing it.