How do I tell a raccoon from a squirrel from a bat?
Listen for three things: weight, timing and rhythm. A raccoon sounds heavy and unhurried, like someone rolling over in bed upstairs, and it works at night with long pauses. You may also hear chittering that sounds almost like birds, which is a litter. A gray squirrel is light and fast. The noise starts at first light, involves rolling and dragging sounds as it moves food, and goes quiet by mid afternoon. If you hear scratching at 6 a.m. and nothing at midnight, you have a daytime animal. Bats make almost no walking noise at all. What you get instead is a faint fluttering or a soft squeaking around dusk near one wall, plus droppings that build in a neat pile below a single spot outside. Rub a dropping between gloved fingers: bat guano crumbles into shiny insect fragments, while a mouse dropping stays solid. Getting this right before anyone sets equipment saves you a wasted service call, because the legal and practical playbook for each of these three animals is completely different.
Why the same problem looks different in Seattle and Spokane
The Cascades split Washington into two wildlife problems that happen to share a species list. On the west side, Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue and Vancouver share mild wet winters and roughly 38 inches of rain a year. Animals stay active in every month, and the constant damp does slow structural damage: fascia softens, soffit panels warp away from the wall, and crawlspace vent screens rust through. Many west side calls start at ground level rather than the roof. East of the mountains, the arid climate zone around Spokane runs colder and drier. Wood stays sound longer, so entry points are more often built in rather than rotted in: an unscreened gable vent, a gap where a new roof met an old chimney. The calls also bunch up. When nights slide toward the median winter low near 35 degrees, everything that was living in a woodpile starts testing the house. Ask any company you call how much work it does on your side of the mountains. A crew that spends its weeks in Seattle crawlspaces is solving a different problem than one working Spokane attics in October.
What Washington's bat rules mean for your schedule
Bats are protected native wildlife in Washington, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife publishes specific guidance for handling them in buildings. Two practical consequences follow. First, no one can simply kill a colony to solve your problem. Second, the work is bound to a calendar rather than your convenience. Summer is the blackout. From roughly early June through late August, big brown bat colonies in this state are raising pups that cannot fly, and closing the exits during that window kills the young inside your structure. Reputable companies will tell you no and put you on the schedule for later. That leaves spring before the females gather and late summer into fall once the pups are flying. A good outfit uses the wait productively: a dusk watch to count animals and find every exit, a written map of the openings, and materials staged so the exclusion goes up quickly when the window opens. If a company offers you a July bat exclusion, that is a reason to stop and call someone else.
What a first visit should actually include
A useful inspection spends more time outside than inside. Expect the tech to walk the full perimeter, get on the roof or use a ladder at each corner, and check the places gaps actually form: soffit returns, roof to wall intersections, ridge cap ends, chimney flashing, dryer and bath vents, and every crawlspace or foundation vent. Inside, they should get into the attic far enough to see the insulation, not just poke a head through the hatch. Trails, latrines, chewed wire and stained framing all tell them how long this has gone on and whether restoration belongs in the quote. What you should walk away with is a list of openings with locations, a proposed method for each, a repair material named specifically, and a schedule including the return visit to pull one way doors. Vague quotes that say removal and sealing with one number are hard to compare and easy to underdeliver on. Ask what happens if the animal gets back in after the work is signed off, and get that answer in writing before you pay a deposit.
Who pays when you rent, and what to do about it
Structural exclusion is the property owner's job, because it is a repair to the building. Screening a crawlspace vent, replacing rotted fascia and capping a chimney are all improvements to the structure, and no reasonable reading puts them on a tenant. What helps you get action is documentation. Note the date and time you hear activity, photograph droppings where they fall, and record the outside of the house where you can see a gap. A message that says there is a hole at the northeast soffit with animals entering at dusk gets a different response than a complaint about noise. A bat in living space changes the urgency completely. Report it in writing the same day and mention that public health guidance treats a bat found in a bedroom as a possible exposure, because that reframes the request from a nuisance to a safety issue. If the property owner hires the work, ask to be present at the inspection. In a state with a median home value near $530,000, most owners would rather fix a roofline properly than defer it twice.