Humane · Usually a fast job · Warrantied exclusion

Opossum Removal in South Jersey

Here is the honest opening most wildlife companies will not give you: the opossum under your deck is probably the least destructive animal that will ever visit your property. Opossums are North America's only marsupial, they rarely dig, they rarely chew, and they usually move on. Acorn Wildlife removes them humanely across Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, and Mercer counties when they do settle in, and we will tell you when you do not need us.

Short answer: We remove opossums with live traps or by hand, check for young in the pouch or den before anything else, and seal the deck, shed, or crawl space entry so the next animal cannot move in. Most opossum jobs finish in 1 to 3 days and cost less than people expect.

Sightings

Gray fur, white face, naked tail, cat-sized, out at night and slow about it. If cornered it may hiss with an open mouth or play dead. Both are bluffs; opossums almost never bite people.

Sounds

Shuffling and low scratching under decks, in crawl spaces, and occasionally in garages. Little to no gnawing, which separates them from every rodent.

Droppings

Larger and more irregular than a raccoon's, often smeared, usually near the den entrance under a deck or shed rather than in an attic latrine.

The Entry

An existing gap: open deck skirting, a broken crawl space vent, a shed base washed out by rain. Opossums exploit openings; they rarely make them.

The Honest Section: Maybe You Don't Need Us

Two more honest notes. First, rabies: opossums can carry diseases, but rabies is genuinely rare in them, likely due to their low body temperature, and they are not one of New Jersey's rabies-vector concern species the way raccoons and skunks are. Second, the real cost of an opossum den is usually not the opossum. It is what the open gap under your deck invites next: skunks in spring, groundhogs in summer, rats in fall. Sealing the opening is the part of the job with lasting value, which is why we quote it every time.

Sealing Opossums (and Their Successors) Out for Good

The fix that lasts is closing the ground-level openings: deck skirting with a buried hardware-cloth apron, rebuilt crawl space vents, and shed bases blocked off. That barrier stops opossums and everything that would have followed them, and it carries the Acorn Seal-Tight Warranty: if animals get back in through a repair we made, we come back at no charge.

See how we do ground-level exclusion on the foundation and crawl space page and the full approach on our wildlife exclusion page. Related situations: animals under decks and sheds and wildlife in basements and crawl spaces.