Central Indiana Wildlife Calendar - What's Likely in Your Attic Right Now
Wildlife in Indiana follows a calendar. The scratching above your bedroom in February is a different animal than the scratching above your bedroom in October. This page is the month-by-month version of what the team sees, what we do, and what you should do about it.
Read the month you are in, then the month before
Wildlife problems get discovered weeks after they start. The raccoon you hear in March moved in during January. The squirrels you find in September arrived in August. Read the current month for what is likely active, and read the month before for what you may have missed. If you are in doubt, the team does free inspections.
January - Pregnant raccoons looking for den sites
Female raccoons are pregnant and actively scouting attic den sites in January. They are heavy, slow, and quiet, which means homeowners often do not notice the entry. The scratching you start hearing in mid-February is the same animal who walked in last week.
What to do: if you hear soft, intermittent scratching above a ceiling in January, do not wait. A pre-litter raccoon is a much cheaper removal than a post-litter raccoon family in March. Free inspection, fast removal, sealed entry.
February - Raccoon kits start arriving, squirrel litters begin
Raccoon birth season runs roughly February through June, with the peak in March and April. By late February, the team is regularly removing females with newborn kits. Eastern gray squirrels also start their first litter cycle in February.
What to do: any attic scratching in February gets treated as potentially active maternity. We use the reunite-box protocol for raccoons with kits so the mother retrieves and relocates her young rather than abandoning them.
March - Peak raccoon kit season, mole activity returns
March is the busiest raccoon removal month of the year. We are typically booked solid two weeks out. Moles also become very active as the ground thaws and earthworms move back to the topsoil layer. Lawn damage starts showing up.
What to do: book raccoon work early in March if you can. For moles, the team usually waits until consistent ground temperatures before running a full control program - April is more efficient than late March.
April - Raccoon work continues, coyote pup season begins
Raccoon kit work continues through April. Coyote denning season begins, with pups typically arriving mid-April through mid-May. Coyote work near homes is rarely about the coyote - it is about the den site, the food source, or the off-leash pet conflict.
What to do: if you have seen a coyote in the same yard three times in April, the den is closer than you think. The team does coyote habitat assessment and den-site exclusion, not lethal removal.
May - Bat maternity blackout begins, squirrel summer litters
May 1 is roughly when Indiana DNR rules treat bat work as restricted. Female bats are gathering in maternity colonies and giving birth. Exclusion work on bats is paused from May through August by law - and by ethics. Eastern gray squirrels start their second annual litter cycle.
What to do: if you discover a bat colony in May, the team does the dusk emergence count and the entry mapping in May, then schedules the actual exclusion for August. We do not break the maternity window. Anyone who offers to do bat exclusion in May, June, or July is offering to do it illegally.
June - Peak bat activity, peak garden conflict
June is when most homeowners first notice a bat in the living space - a single bat swooping through a hallway at 9 PM. Often that bat is a juvenile from a maternity colony already established in the gable. June is also peak groundhog garden damage and peak rabbit pressure on landscaping.
What to do: if you see one bat indoors in June, assume there is a colony. Schedule the dusk count now. The exclusion will happen in August, but the team needs June for the diagnosis.
July - The hardest month to do the right thing on bats
July is the month homeowners get frustrated waiting for August. We know. The pups inside bat colonies become flighted through late July, which means the colony stops being completely flightless in mid-to-late July. The team still waits until DNR maternity closure to start exclusion work. Squirrel summer litters become mobile, and second-wave raccoon issues start appearing in homes with poor attic sealing.
What to do: keep the dusk-count appointment. Confirm the August exclusion date. Do not let a panic contractor talk you into July work.
August - Bat exclusion season opens, peak squirrel entry
August 1 reopens bat exclusion work under DNR rules. The team's August calendar fills fast - this is the month every bat job that has been waiting since May actually happens. Squirrels also peak in late-summer entry behavior as juveniles disperse and look for their own territories.
What to do: if you have been waiting since June for bat work, your slot is in August. Squirrel work is also a top priority in August because juveniles caught in late summer rarely re-enter the same site if exclusion is clean.
September - Squirrel push continues, mice begin moving indoors
Squirrel entry continues through September. Mice and other small rodents start moving indoors as overnight temperatures drop. Flying squirrels - which are active year-round but nocturnal and quiet - get discovered most often in September when families return from late-summer travel and notice attic activity they had not noticed before.
What to do: an attic noise that is faint, high-pitched, and only between 9 PM and 4 AM is usually flying squirrels. The team handles them with a different exclusion approach than gray squirrels.
October - Groundhog hibernation prep, beaver season opens
Groundhogs are heavy and slow in October, prepping for hibernation. They burrow more aggressively into foundations and outbuilding crawl spaces. Indiana DNR beaver season opens November 1 for most water bodies, but the team starts taking beaver assessments in October. Opossum encounters also peak as juveniles disperse before winter.
What to do: groundhog work in October is more effective than in spring because the animal is committed to one den site. Beaver assessments scheduled in October become first-week-of-November work.
November - Beaver removal opens, attic discoveries spike
November is when the first cold weather drives homeowners into attics they have not visited since summer. We get a wave of "I went up to get the Christmas decorations and found - " calls. Beaver removal under DNR season is in full swing. Coyote sightings near homes increase because food sources are thinning in the wild.
What to do: if you find evidence of wildlife in your attic in November, do not store the Christmas boxes up there yet. The team does the diagnostic and the cleanup before you re-stack the storage.
December - Quiet month, insurance claim window
December is the team's quietest month for new wildlife activity, but the busiest for insurance documentation. Homeowners who discovered attic damage in October and November file claims in December for year-end. We write the documentation reports that go to the carrier. Beaver work continues. Late-pregnancy raccoon scouting begins again at month's end.
What to do: if you are filing a homeowner's claim for wildlife damage, the team's report goes in with the claim packet. December is the month to get that documentation finished.
When we are booked solid, when we have slack
Two months of the year the team is booked two weeks out: March (raccoon kit season) and August (bat exclusion opening). If you have flexibility, scheduling diagnostic work for the month before either of those - February for raccoon, July for bat dusk counts - puts you ahead of the queue.
Slow months are September weeks two through four, mid-October, and mid-December. Project work scheduled in those windows often comes in at the low end of our pricing range because the crew has open days.
Pricing flexes within the ranges shown on the pricing page. Season is one of the inputs, but the bigger drivers are entry count, building height, species protocol, and decontamination need.
Not sure what month you are dealing with?
Call. Describe the noise, the location, and when you hear it. The team can usually narrow it to a species in 30 seconds on the phone, and the inspection is free either way.
Schedule an Inspection → (317) 512-3779