Pet doors: the welcome mat
A standard flap pet door is not a pet door — it's an animal door. Raccoons learn to push through them in a single night, and they bring friends. Opossums walk through like they pay rent. If you must have a pet door, use an electronic one that unlocks only for your pet's collar tag — and lock it entirely at night, when raccoons and opossums are active. Better yet, go back to letting the dog out yourself. The 3am raccoon-in-the-kitchen visit isn't worth the convenience.
Crawl spaces: the forgotten frontier
Crawl space vents with torn, rusted, or missing screens are open doors for opossums, armadillos, rats, snakes, and feral cats. Most homeowners never look at their crawl space vents — which is exactly why animals love them. Walk the perimeter and check every vent: intact screens, no gaps, no digging underneath. Replace damaged screens with heavy-gauge hardware cloth, not flimsy fiberglass mesh that a raccoon shreds. If digging is happening under the foundation edge, that's armadillos or opossums — trap first, then barrier.
Under sheds and porches: prime den real estate
The gap under a shed or porch is dark, dry, and undisturbed — perfect for opossums, armadillos, and skunks (rare in Central Florida, but the principle holds). The fix is trench-screening: bury wire mesh in an L-shape around the perimeter, 12+ inches deep. Do this only after confirming nothing is living underneath — screening in a denning opossum creates a desperate animal that digs deeper or chews through the floor. Lattice alone doesn't count; animals push through or dig under decorative lattice easily.
The checkup habit
Add these three to your twice-yearly perimeter walk: push on every crawl space vent screen, look for digging under sheds and porches, and check that the pet door still latches. Five minutes, twice a year, prevents the most common den-site problems we get called for. Found digging or a torn screen? Send a photo — we'll tell you what's likely behind it.