Opossums are the animal people are most often wrong about. They are not aggressive, they are not rabid, and in a Costa Mesa yard they spend most of their night eating snails, slugs and fallen fruit. The problem is never really the animal. It is that they den under your house, they leave a mess, and if one dies in a crawlspace you have a serious odor situation on a property you cannot easily get under.
Costa Mesa specifically
The same raised foundations that make Costa Mesa a skunk city make it an opossum city. East of Harbor especially, a house from the 1950s or 60s sits eighteen inches to three feet above grade, and the crawlspace under it is dry, dark and completely undisturbed. An opossum needs nothing more than that. Where a skunk will dig its way in, an opossum simply walks through a vent screen that has already failed.
The other Costa Mesa pattern is garages and pet doors, and it catches people off guard. Opossums climb well and are entirely comfortable coming through an open garage or a pet door into a laundry room. We get calls from Mesa Verde and College Park several times a year from someone who came out at midnight to find one standing in the kitchen. That is a scared animal that walked in looking for cat food, not an intruder.
Where they actually are
Opossums are opportunists rather than engineers. They rarely dig their own den. They use whatever is already open, which makes the search a search for existing gaps rather than fresh excavation.
Crawlspaces come first, then under decks and raised patios, then sheds and detached garages, then dense ivy or overgrown bougainvillea against a fence line. Woodpiles and the space behind a stack of stored materials down the side yard both come up regularly. Unlike skunks they will also use elevated spaces, so an attic reached from an overhanging branch, or the void above a patio cover, is worth checking on Eastside lots with heavy tree canopy.
The signs people miss
- Cat or dog food disappearing overnight from a bowl left in the garage or on the patio, with the bowl left upright rather than knocked over.
- Droppings that are noticeably larger than a rat’s, roughly an inch to three inches long, often left in the same general area near the den entrance.
- A heavy, dragging sound rather than a scurrying one. Opossums are slow and clumsy compared with rats or squirrels, and people usually describe it as something walking rather than running.
- Torn or pushed-in vent screens with coarse grey-white hair caught on the edge, and a den entrance that is worn smooth rather than freshly dug.
How we handle it
The free inspection covers the full perimeter and the crawlspace where there is access. What matters most is establishing whether the den is currently occupied and whether there is a female with young on her back, because that changes both the method and the timing.
The work itself is cage trapping and exclusion. Once the space is confirmed clear we close it properly, which on a Costa Mesa raised foundation means new heavy galvanized vent screens, a buried barrier along deck and shed edges, and closing the settled gap between a patio slab and the foundation. Where a pet door is the entry route we will tell you honestly that no amount of exclusion work solves it and the door needs to be a locking or electronically tagged one.
On what opossums actually do to a property
It is worth separating the real damage from the imagined. Opossums do not chew structural wood the way rodents do, they do not tear open ducting the way raccoons do, and they will not attack you or your pets. Where they cause genuine problems is contamination and odor. A crawlspace used as a den accumulates droppings and urine that soak into soil and insulation, and that material has to come out.
The worst version of this job is the one that starts with a smell. An opossum that dies under a house is an unpleasant, difficult recovery, and it is the single most common reason we get called about them at all. If you are smelling something and cannot locate it, get someone under the house sooner rather than later, because it does not improve on its own.
Opossum removal in Costa Mesa, step by step
Humane live trap, no harm done
Crawl space cleared and cleaned
Tracing the entry point with a light
On a residential service call
Photos are from our own crews on real jobs across Orange County and Los Angeles — never stock. We run these same steps on every Costa Mesa call.
How we handle the animal
Cage trapping and exclusion, not chemicals. We do not apply pesticides, rodenticides or bait on any job.
Every trap we set is checked at least once every 24 hours. Where 14 CCR § 465.5(g)(2) applies it requires trapped animals to be handled in accordance with state regulation rather than moved somewhere else, and we will walk you through exactly what that means for your property before anything is set. We will not tell you a story about releasing the animal in the hills, because that is not how the regulations work.
Opossum young ride on the mother, which makes spring and early summer jobs materially different from the rest of the year. If there is a female with a litter on the property, timing the work correctly is the difference between a clean resolution and a set of dead young inside your crawlspace.
Where opossums turn up in Costa Mesa
Opossum calls are spread more evenly across Costa Mesa than skunk calls are, because opossums are far more tolerant of dense urban blocks and do not need open space nearby. What predicts them is not proximity to Fairview Park or the river but the age of the housing and whether there is food available at night.
That puts the Eastside, College Park and Mesa Verde at the top on crawlspace access alone. Blocks with mature fruit trees add a food source that holds animals in place. Apartment and condo areas around Harbor and the fairgrounds generate a steady stream of calls tied to shared trash enclosures and outdoor pet feeding rather than to structural entry. If you are in South Coast Metro on a slab, the animal is far more likely to be in your garage or under a deck than under the house.
Questions we actually get asked
We found an opossum in the garage. Is it dangerous, and do we need to worry about rabies?
It is not dangerous and rabies is extremely unlikely. Opossums have a low body temperature that makes them poor hosts for the rabies virus, and confirmed cases are very rare. What you are seeing when one hisses and shows its teeth is a bluff from a frightened animal. The practical advice is to leave the garage door open at night and give it a clear exit, keep pets inside, and do not corner it. If it is still there in the morning, call us.
Can we wait it out? We have heard they move on by themselves.
Often they do, since opossums are more transient than skunks or raccoons and will frequently use a den for a few days before moving on. The problem is that an open crawlspace which suited one animal will suit the next one, so waiting resolves this occupant and not the situation. It also carries real risk in spring, when a female with young stays put much longer. If the entry point stays open you will be having this conversation again.
There is a smell under our house and we think something died. Can you get it out?
Yes, and this is one of the more common calls we take in Costa Mesa. On a raised foundation we can usually get in and locate the source directly. We remove the animal and the contaminated soil and material around it, then find the opening that let it in so it does not happen again. What we will not do is promise a specific date the residual smell disappears, since that depends on how much material absorbed it and how well the crawlspace ventilates.
The rest of what we do in Costa Mesa
An opening that admits an opossum will admit other things. When we are under a house we check for everything using it, and these are the Costa Mesa services most often paired with this work.
Licensed for the work we advertise, and clear about the rest
Wildlife control, structural pest control and construction are three separate licenses in California. Plenty of companies blur that line. We would rather tell you exactly where ours sits.
- Wildlife trapping and exclusion — this is us. Tri County Trappers operates under California Department of Fish and Wildlife Trapping License TP-10188, and every technician on our crew carries their own CDFW trapping license. Not a company license with unlicensed helpers under it. Each one, individually licensed by the State.
- Attic cleanout and decontamination — this is us. Removal, bagging, vacuuming and cleaning of contaminated material. We do not apply pesticides, rodenticides or bait on any job.
- Insulation, wood repair and structural work — not us. Tri County Trappers does not hold a Contractors State License Board license. That work is performed by a licensed contractor. We inspect it, document it and hand over the photographs so nobody starts cold.
- Structural pest control (Branch 2) — not us. If your situation needs it, we say so and point you to a licensed structural pest control operator rather than stretching our own license over it.
General liability, professional liability, workers’ compensation and commercial auto, all current, with limits well above what the State requires of a licensed trapper. Certificates on request, before you let anyone on your roof.
Talk to the owner
Tri County Trappers is owner-operated. You work directly with the owner and our licensed specialists — opossum removal in Costa Mesa is never handed off to an unlicensed subcontractor. Every technician on our crew carries their own CDFW trapping license, the owner reviews every inspection and every completed job, and runs jobs himself. Someone answers every call, seven days a week — call anytime. Free inspection, no obligation, and a clear number before anything starts.
Call (949) 304-5445 Email [email protected]
California Department of Fish and Wildlife Trapping License TP-10188, valid through 6/30/2027, and every technician on our crew carries their own. General liability, professional liability, workers’ compensation and commercial auto coverage — certificates on request. Member, National Wildlife Control Operators Association. 4.9 average rating on Google. We check every trap we set at least once every 24 hours. Where 14 CCR § 465.5(g)(2) applies it requires traps to be visited at least once daily — we hold to a rolling 24-hour interval, which is stricter than the rule. Payment plans available on larger jobs.
Book a free inspection
Pick an arrival window and it goes straight onto our schedule. You get a written report of what we found either way — and if you don’t have a problem worth paying to fix, we’ll tell you that.
No payment is taken to book an inspection. California Department of Fish and Wildlife Trapping License TP-10188.