Scratching and heavy movement overhead, a torn vent screen, an animal you have already seen on the roof. If you have raccoons in Costa Mesa, we get them out, get any young out with them, and seal the way they came in.
Costa Mesa specifically
Costa Mesa sits against the Upper Newport Bay and has real open space inside the city at Fairview Park, plus canyon and bluff terrain along its eastern edge. The housing runs from small post-war homes on the west side to larger properties near the bluffs. That mix of genuine habitat and dense residential is why we get such varied calls here.
The Back Bay and Fairview Park hold established raccoon populations, and the neighborhoods bordering them get regular activity. These are animals with real habitat, not scavengers, which means they are healthy, persistent, and entirely willing to come back to a food source or a den site they liked.
Why raccoons are not a wait-and-see problem
Raccoons are the most destructive animal we deal with in a residential attic, and it is not close. They are strong enough to tear open a vent, pull back roof sheathing, or work a soffit loose. Once inside they flatten insulation into nesting beds, chew wiring, and establish a latrine — raccoons repeatedly use one spot as a toilet, and the accumulation soaks through ceiling drywall and creates a genuine health concern rather than just an odor.
The other reason not to wait is timing. Most attic raccoons are a female choosing somewhere safe to have young, mainly from late winter into spring. If you remove an adult and leave a litter behind, you have created a much worse problem: young that cannot leave, do not survive, and have to be found and removed from inside the structure. Anyone who traps an adult raccoon in spring without checking for young is not doing the job.
How we handle it
We inspect first, including the roofline, the attic itself and the ground-level perimeter, because the entry point is often not where the noise is. We identify whether young are present before anything else happens — that single decision drives the whole job. We remove the animals, and where there is a litter we remove them together so the female does not tear back into the structure trying to reach them.
Then we seal. Raccoon exclusion has to be built for the animal’s actual strength, which means heavy-gauge material properly fastened, not screen and foam. We finish by dealing with what they left: contaminated insulation and latrine sites.
What not to do
Do not try to trap a raccoon yourself. California regulates who may trap wildlife for hire and how it must be done, and getting it wrong exposes you to liability on top of a cornered animal that is significantly stronger than people expect. Do not seal an entry hole you have found until you are certain nothing is inside — sealing an animal in is how a bad week becomes a very expensive one. And do not use poison; it is illegal for this purpose, ineffective, and leaves you with a dead animal somewhere inside your house.
Raccoon removal in Costa Mesa: what the job involves
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
Humane trapping, done to the standard the state sets. California regulates the disposition of every trapped animal under 14 CCR § 465.5(g), and we follow it — we will tell you plainly how your situation will be handled before we set a single trap. Anyone who will not answer that question directly is telling you something. Beyond that it means live-capture equipment appropriate to the species, traps placed where the animal actually travels rather than where it is convenient, and every trap checked at least once every 24 hours. The regulation at 14 CCR § 465.5(g)(2) sets a daily minimum; we hold to a rolling 24 hours, which is stricter.
No animal we trap sits in a trap overnight past that window. In summer heat that is not a small detail, and it is one of the few things in this trade you can actually judge a company by.
We will walk you through exactly how we plan to handle your situation before we set anything, and we work under a current California Department of Fish and Wildlife trapping license. If you have questions about the process, ask — we would rather answer them up front than have you wondering afterwards.
Raccoon pressure in Costa Mesa runs river to bluff
Two corridors feed most of our raccoon work here. On the west, Talbert Nature Preserve and the Santa Ana River trail put heavy cover within a few blocks of the streets off Placentia and Victoria, and the Greenville-Banning Channel gives an animal a covered route north. On the east, the Back Bay bluffs along Irvine Avenue and the Santa Ana-Delhi Channel push raccoons into the older streets around Del Mar and Orange. Water keeps them here through summer: the ponds at TeWinkle Park and the Costa Mesa Golf Course stay wet when everything else is dry.
What they find when they arrive differs by neighborhood. The pre-war Eastside cottages still have original masonry chimneys, and the eucalyptus windrows left over from the lima bean ranches put a climbable trunk beside a low roof. In Mesa Verde and Mesa del Mar the 1960s rooflines are shallow and easy to walk, and the gable vents on that era of tract are usually the first thing torn open. We check both ends of the house before we set anything.
Questions we actually get asked
We back onto Talbert Nature Preserve. Are raccoons just going to keep coming?
Probably, and that is the honest answer. Talbert holds a resident raccoon population with water and cover year round, so the supply does not run out. What changes is whether your house is an option. Removing the animal in your attic without closing the opening buys a few weeks at best on that side of the city. Seal the roofline and the vents properly and the next raccoon walks past instead of in.
There is an old brick chimney on our Eastside house. Could that be how they got in?
Yes, and on the older Eastside streets it usually is. Cottages from the twenties through the forties around 19th, Orange and Santa Ana Avenue were built with open masonry flues, and a lot of them have never been capped. To a raccoon that is a hollow tree with a floor at the damper. If you hear movement low in the house rather than overhead, check the firebox before the attic, and do not light a fire to move her out.
Something heavy is walking on our Mesa Verde roof at night. Raccoon or opossum?
Weight and rhythm tell you. A raccoon sounds like a small child crawling, with pauses and dragging. An opossum is lighter and more continuous. On the low-slope 1960s roofs around Mesa Verde Country Club, a raccoon will usually stop at a gable or eave vent and work at it, so look for bent screen and dark rub marks at the vent frame. Opossums rarely tear a vent. They use a hole something else already made.
The rest of what we do in Costa Mesa
Most jobs here turn out to involve more than one of these. If you are not sure which one you have, call and describe what you are hearing — we will tell you straight, including when it is smaller than you think.
- Skunk Removal in Costa Mesa — denning under decks, sheds and raised foundations
- Rat & Mouse Control in Costa Mesa — roof rats, Norway rats and mice, and why bait alone does not end it
- Rodent Exclusion & Proofing in Costa Mesa — sealing the building so the next ones cannot follow
- Attic Cleanup & Insulation in Costa Mesa — clearing and decontaminating what they left behind
- All wildlife & pest services in Costa Mesa
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 — raccoon 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.