Amphibians
A pet safety page more than a pest page. It does no building damage, and its secretions are cardiotoxic to dogs.
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Amphibians
Its skin secretions are potent enough to kill a dog that mouths it. That, not property damage, is why it matters.
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Amphibians
A nuisance measured in sound, not damage. A nocturnal tree frog the size of a coin, calling at 80 to 90 decibels.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
Docile in the water and defensive out of it. Every real problem happens on land, in late spring and early summer, when a female is nesting.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
There is no single desert tortoise. Genetics split the old species in two in 2011, divided by the Colorado River.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
The largest lizard native to the United States, and one of only two venomous lizards in North America.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
The green anole causes no damage and no health risk, and people still call about it.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
A large plant-eating lizard with an established breeding population along both Florida coasts.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
Hawaii has no native lizards. Every gecko you see arrived with people, and three of them account for most sightings.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
The three-horned lizard photographed on hedges above Kaneohe. It does nothing at all to a building.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
The turtle on the log. If you have a pond, a canal or a water hazard, this is what is lined up along it.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
The turtle stacked three deep on a log in a Pacific Northwest pond. Most complaints come down to being able to see it.
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Bats
If bats are in your attic in the Northeast or Midwest, this is now the likely species. Older guidance names the wrong one.
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Bats
White-nose syndrome reshaped which bat is in your attic. In much of the South this is now the one you find.
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Bats
For most of a century this was the default answer to what is in the attic. Across the Great Lakes it no longer is.
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Bats
The bat that draws crowds. Bracken Cave near San Antonio holds roughly 20 million animals in summer.
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Birds
A red-capped woodpecker with a white eye. It drills storage holes in siding and packs them with acorns.
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Birds
The one North American vulture that is not only a scavenger. It takes newborn calves and lambs, eyes first.
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Birds
The geese on your pond in July are almost certainly not migrating. Most problem birds are residents.
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Birds
A small white heron that follows livestock for the insects they stir up. It grows golden buff plumes for a short breeding window.
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Birds
The loud yellow-billed brown bird working every parking lot and trash can in Hawaii.
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Birds
An all-black bird up to 27 inches long, one of the largest songbirds in North America, and among the smartest.
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Birds
The bird in the dryer vent, and the flock of ten thousand over a feedlot in December. Same species, both problems.
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Birds
The rare nuisance bird with a fan club. On Kauai the birds are the unofficial mascot and a genuine nuisance at once.
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Birds
Alaskans call them seagulls. On a flat commercial roof or a cannery dock, two species drive most of the calls.
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Birds
One of only three US birds with no Migratory Bird Treaty Act protection, alongside the starling and the rock pigeon.
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Birds
You cannot remove them, but you can lawfully deter them. Hawaii's state bird is federally Threatened.
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Birds
A large brown woodpecker that feeds on the ground. It reaches pest control for hammering on the house.
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Birds
The bird most people stop seeing. On the ledge, on the sign, on the parking deck, and leaving droppings on all three.
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Birds
A roost on your roof or tower is a federal wildlife matter, not a homeowner project. It is protected.
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Birds
Several different woodpeckers arrive as one complaint: a hammering noise, a row of holes, or a cavity under the eave.
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Furbearers
A climbing member of the weasel family. Bushy tail, sharp claws, and a buff-to-orange bib across the throat.
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Furbearers
A digging problem that never comes indoors. It roots up lawns and beds and leaves the building alone.
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Furbearers
A South Asian deer given to Hawaii in 1867. Seven or eight animals became a browsing problem across several islands.
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Furbearers
North America's largest rodent, built entirely for water. The damage is flooding and felled trees, not the house.
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Furbearers
Back in at least 40 states. Almost every conflict starts with food a person left reachable.
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Furbearers
Brown bear and grizzly are the same animal. Coastal populations get one name, inland populations the other.
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Furbearers
Every state in the lower 48 has them, and the densest populations sit against cities. A daytime sighting is not by itself a warning sign.
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Furbearers
The animal behind most tunneling blamed on gophers. A mole is not a rodent and eats no plants.
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Furbearers
There is a documented path from cat feces on the ground to Toxoplasma in one of the rarest marine mammals on earth.
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Furbearers
Hawaii's native plants evolved with no browsing mammal at all. Goats arrived in 1778 and it shows.
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Furbearers
Feral hog, wild boar and razorback are all the same animal. States treat it as an emergency, not a nuisance.
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Furbearers
One of four terrestrial rabies vector species recognized nationally, alongside raccoons, skunks and bats.
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Furbearers
Whether the gray wolf is protected depends entirely on where you are standing.
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Furbearers
Groundhog, woodchuck and whistlepig are one animal. The whistle is a real alarm call you can learn by ear.
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Furbearers
Start with what everyone gets wrong: a javelina is not a pig. Different family entirely, and not a feral hog.
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Furbearers
The smallest wild dog in North America, and the ears are what you notice. They run three to four inches.
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Furbearers
The exception. Most yard wildlife is an annoyance, and this one can genuinely hurt you.
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Furbearers
Not a beaver. It is the only living member of its own family, and it is not closely related to one.
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Furbearers
A semi-aquatic rodent built for water: oily coat, part-webbed hind feet, and a flattened tail it sculls with.
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Furbearers
A large South American rodent brought here for the fur trade that never left. It eats marshes down to mud.
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Furbearers
Most calls start the same way: scratching in the attic or chimney in spring, and it is almost always a female with young.
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Furbearers
One of four terrestrial rabies reservoirs in the United States. Never handle one, and never attempt a home capture.
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Furbearers
The one semi-aquatic mammal here that is not a rodent, and almost everything a property owner needs to know follows from that.
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Furbearers
In the San Joaquin Valley a fox den under your shed is federally protected property. Start there, before anything else.
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Furbearers
Brought to Hawaii Island in 1883 to deal with rats in the cane. It hunts by day and the rats work at night.
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Furbearers
Almost every call starts with a smell or a hole. The holes are small cone-shaped divots punched in the lawn.
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Furbearers
The only marsupial native to the United States and Canada, which makes it the odd animal out among backyard wildlife.
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Furbearers
Two Midwest voles account for most of what people find. The prairie vole takes drier upland grass, the meadow vole the wetter ground.
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Furbearers
The same animal science uses to study pair bonding, and one whose local range you should not assume.
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Furbearers
Rock chuck is the common Mountain West name for it, and it describes the animal better than marmot does.
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Reptiles
There is no do-it-yourself tier with this animal at any size. Handling it is a legal question, not a skill question.
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Rodents
Not a foundation problem, whatever you have read. A grassland burrower that costs pasture rather than buildings.
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Rodents
California's most widespread pocket gopher, and the one that never comes into the house at all.
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Rodents
The burrowing yard rodent you actually see out in the open. That alone separates it from gophers and moles.
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Rodents
Not a mouse, and the tail settles it in one look. A stocky, short-tailed grass eater found in almost every grassy corner of the state.
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Rodents
Two Mountain West chipmunks that are easily confused. The least chipmunk is the smallest in North America.
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Rodents
Creeping vole and Oregon vole are the same animal, and confusing the two names is the usual mistake.
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Rodents
It looks harmless next to a house mouse, and that is the problem. This is the species that carries hantavirus.
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Rodents
You hear it long before you see it. Unusually vocal for a tree squirrel, with a whole vocabulary of chatter and rattles.
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Rodents
It does not chew into walls or nest in attics. Scratching overhead at night is something else.
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Rodents
Squirrels are cavity dwellers. When they cannot find a hollow tree they take an attic, usually in late summer.
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Rodents
The biggest tree squirrel in North America, and across the Midwest and South Central it is the one in your attic.
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Rodents
Two burrowing rodents South Central homeowners lump together, the Mexican and the spotted ground squirrel.
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Rodents
It fits through a quarter-inch gap, nests within 30 feet of its food, and has five to ten litters a year.
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Rodents
The pocket gopher you are not allowed to kill. Four subspecies are federally Threatened.
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Rodents
Not a mouse and not a house pest. A stocky short-tailed grass eater that lives its whole life at ground level.
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Rodents
The widest ranging pocket gopher in North America, and the one of Mountain West rangeland and high meadows.
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Rodents
The vole with a red stripe down its back, and in Alaska the one you are most likely to actually have.
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Rodents
It digs at ground level. Burrows along foundations and holes in the yard separate it from the roof rat.
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Rodents
Pack rat and woodrat are the same animal, and neither name means one species. It hauls objects back to a stick nest.
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Rodents
The vole you almost never see, and that is the whole problem. It works below ground instead of in surface runways.
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Rodents
Look at the mound before you look for the animal. This one fans soil to one side from a tunnel angled at about 45 degrees.
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Rodents
The rat that reached Hawaii first. It does not live in the mainland United States.
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Rodents
It cannot shoot its quills, whatever the story says. What it does do is chew salt-soaked wood and vehicle wiring.
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Rodents
The small loud one. Under a third the mass of a gray squirrel, with a white eye ring it keeps all year.
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Rodents
The ground squirrel that burrows into your rock wall rather than your lawn. The largest of the desert ground squirrels.
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Rodents
It rarely burrows. It climbs a tree, crosses a branch to the roof, and moves in above your ceiling.
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Rodents
The name is the identification. A long narrow tail, round in cross section, on a plain sandy body.
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Rodents
Two flying squirrels, and across the Midwest and Northeast they share states and arrive as one problem.
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Rodents
Flying squirrels do not fly. They glide on a membrane from wrist to ankle, about 30 feet at a time.
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Rodents
Count the stripes and there are thirteen. The name is a description, not a flourish.
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Rodents
The dark one. West of the Cascade crest, a chipmunk in the yard is almost certainly this species.
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Rodents
West of the Cascades, if something is eating your lawn, bulbs, or the roots of young fruit trees, this is the usual answer.
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Rodents
A native squirrel rather than a nuisance one, and that distinction matters more here than usual.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The snake most often killed by mistake in the middle of the country. Cornered, it does a rattlesnake impression.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
It eats rattlesnakes and is immune to their venom. Killing one does your yard no favors.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
A common, completely non-venomous snake found across most of California. For any other snake that would be the whole story.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
A fast, alert, non-venomous snake found only in California and northern Baja. One pale stripe down each side.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
One of the fastest snakes in North America, and completely non-venomous. It hunts across open ground in daylight.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
It eats other snakes, venomous ones included, and there is peer-reviewed evidence its presence changes the neighborhood.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
Harmless and killed on sight far too often, because its black-bordered blotches read as copperhead at a glance.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
One of the smallest and most common snakes in its range, usually turned up under a board or a flowerpot.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The harmless snake most often mistaken for a cottonmouth. Heavy, dark and harmless, not a cottonmouth.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The striped snake in the flower bed, and the honest answer to whether it is dangerous is simply no.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
Harmless, and killed anyway. Its reddish-brown blotches on gray read as copperhead to people in a hurry.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The fast, plain-colored snake that crosses a driveway in daylight and is gone before you finish reacting.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The one snake that is genuinely working for you. Florida Museum of Natural History calls it extremely beneficial.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
A pale, blotched, entirely non-venomous constrictor of the Southwest. Slow moving and mostly active after dark.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The snake Westerners mistake for a rattlesnake, and the one they mistake a rattlesnake for. It is harmless.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
A red, black and white ringed snake of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Completely harmless and almost never seen.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The most widespread watersnake in North America, killed in places where cottonmouths have never lived.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
Four Pacific Northwest garter snakes, because in Washington and Oregon they arrive as one identification problem.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
A true boa, and the only one most people in its range will ever see. Slow, blunt at both ends, and harmless.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The non-venomous snake that behaves least like people expect one to. It stands its ground and it climbs well.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The striped snake you find in a mountain yard or a sagebrush flat, often a long way from any obvious water.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
Two heavy-bodied dark snakes on one page, because in practice they arrive as a single identification problem.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The snake people in the desert Southwest see for two seconds and never identify. Fast, alert and out in daylight.
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Snakes - Venomous
The desert Southwest's own member of the cobra family. Small, banded and venomous, and rarely a house problem.
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Snakes - Venomous
The venomous snake homeowners in its range are most likely to actually meet. It damages nothing and bites rarely.
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Snakes - Venomous
Very likely the most misidentified venomous snake in its range. Most cottonmouth sightings are watersnakes.
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Snakes - Venomous
The largest rattlesnake in the world, and it holds that record on documented measurements rather than folklore.
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Snakes - Venomous
A small, shy wetland rattlesnake. Its legal status matters more than anything else about it.
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Snakes - Venomous
A small rattlesnake with a very tight range. Adults rarely pass 30 inches.
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Snakes - Venomous
The one venomous snake here whose venom does something the others do not. It threatens no building.
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Snakes - Venomous
Described as the northernmost viper in the Western Hemisphere, and the only snake in Washington or Oregon whose venom is dangerous to people.
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Snakes - Venomous
The rattlesnake that lives farthest north and highest up, from southern Canada down through the Great Plains.
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Snakes - Venomous
The smallest rattlesnake in the United States, and almost everything that follows from that, people get backward.
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Snakes - Venomous
The one rattlesnake in California that state regulation says you may not kill. Every other one carries a bag limit.
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Snakes - Venomous
The most narrowly specialized rattlesnake. Almost everything about it traces back to loose wind-blown sand.
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Snakes - Venomous
The one venomous snake here that homeowners are documented to meet inside a major city rather than at its edge.
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Snakes - Venomous
The only member of the cobra family in Texas. It damages nothing and almost everything about it runs against the usual script.
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Snakes - Venomous
A forest and rock-outcrop snake, not a yard-and-basement one. Its legal status matters before anything else.
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Snakes - Venomous
The rattlesnake that lives closest to where people actually live, and it adapts to disturbed ground well.
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Snakes - Venomous
A small rattlesnake with a large naming problem. It stopped being a subspecies in 2011 and the old name persists.
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