No smoke, ever · Humane removal · Capped for good

There's an Animal in Your Chimney: Don't Light a Fire

Before anything else: do not light a fire, and don't open the damper. Chimney animals in South Jersey are usually a raccoon mother with kits on the smoke shelf, chimney swifts glued to the flue wall, or a squirrel that fell in and can't climb out. Each has its own removal path, one of them is federally protected, and every one of them ends the same way: with a proper cap. Acorn Wildlife handles all of it.

Short answer: Never smoke an animal out of a chimney: it kills babies that can't climb and can drive a panicked adult into your house. Acorn Wildlife identifies the animal by sound, removes raccoon families and stuck squirrels by hand, waits out federally protected chimney swifts when the law requires it, and installs a stainless cap so it never happens again.

Chittering and Rustling (Spring)

Almost always a raccoon mother with kits denned on the smoke shelf, the ledge just above your damper. The chirping-cooing sound of kits is unmistakable once you've heard it. See raccoon removal.

Loud Mechanical Chattering (Summer)

Chimney swifts: small, federally protected birds whose nests are glued to the flue wall. The whole flue erupts in chatter when a parent arrives with food. See bird removal.

Frantic Scratching (Anytime)

A squirrel that fell in and can't climb the slick flue tiles back out. This is an emergency for the animal; it will exhaust itself within a day or two. Same-day call. See squirrel removal.

Raccoon Mothers Love Chimneys. Here's How We Remove Them

The removal itself is careful, unglamorous work: kits are lifted from the smoke shelf by hand or with a chimney-adapted retrieval tool, staged in a heated reunion box at the base of the house, and the mother relocates them one by one to her backup den, which she always has. It takes a night, sometimes two, and it's the only version of this job we'll do. Trapping the mother off the roof and leaving kits in the flue turns your fireplace into a dead animal odor problem inside two weeks, and it's cruel besides. New Jersey also tightly restricts relocating raccoons as a rabies-vector species, which is one more reason this is a job for a licensed operator (NJDEP #92411B), not a rented trap.

Chimney Swifts: The Honest Version

We know that's not the answer anyone wants to buy, and plenty of companies will happily sell you something illegal instead. Here's what waiting actually looks like: swifts nest inside the flue, one nest per chimney, and the noisy phase (that loud mechanical chattering at feeding time) lasts about two weeks before the young fledge and the family moves on for good in late summer. We can inspect to confirm it's really swifts, close the damper so nothing ends up in your living room, and schedule the cap install for the week they're gone. Swift populations have declined for decades partly because capped chimneys removed their habitat, so if you're feeling generous, hosting them for a month is a real contribution. If you're not, the cap still goes on in September either way.