Polecat Menace - How I stopped them climbing into my ceiling!

The above Google sketch is only an impression to show how a polecat looks.

Only once in my lifetime I have seen a polecat alive. It was about sunset time and the animal was moving outside my house on the parapet wall, and its tail impressed me as it looked hugely furred. Most part of its body looked blackish. What annoyed me was its presence in the nights inside our ceiling and their excreta had to be cleaned up every now and then with the help of some hired labor.

For several years my family had been harassed by polecats getting into our ceiling in the dead of the night, freely moving on the wooden panels, making eerie noises and even urinating, the strong odor obviously proving presence of these animals under our roof. The urine falling into our bedrooms through the ceiling panels, sometimes even on our beds wetting and breaking our sleep making us spend many sleepless nights. The sheets and mattresses had to be washed and dried before reusing them.

For several years we were tolerating their noise, smell and urine not knowing how to chase them away as no amount of our making noises seem to scare them away from the ceiling.

On a friend’s advice, I fixed a powerful “calling bell” inside the ceiling with the switch located in the bedroom. Whenever we heard their movement in the ceiling, we rang the somewhat powerful calling bell, thus they were made to run away, however they came back in no time after we fell asleep. So this device helped us only temporarily.

Then I got this bright idea from a carpenter who suggested to fix some aluminum sheets on downpipes where we could see clear foot prints. I identified three such down pipes and fixed the sheets around them. The sheet is polished and slippery and the animal cannot get a foothold on to them in order to climb up. There is no need to fix the sheet from bottom to top, just about a few feet where they make their initial climb is quite enough.

The trick worked and now the nocturnal noises and urine smell stopped completely.

I am sure many households especially in the tropical countries must be having this problem and hopefully my Post might be of use to them.

Note the paw marks on the bottom part of the downpipe.