Mosquitoes
The West Nile virus mosquito. It breeds in stagnant, often dirty water rather than the clean containers Aedes wants.
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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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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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Rodents
It does not chew into walls or nest in attics. Scratching overhead at night is something else.
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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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Rodents
Squirrels are cavity dwellers. When they cannot find a hollow tree they take an attic, usually in late summer.
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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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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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Termites
Almost every termite page on the internet quotes the same annual damage figure. That figure traces to no primary source, not even in the university extension publications that print it. The best-sourced estimate is a 2012 review in Annual Review of Entomology by Rust and Su, which put the worldwide cost of termite control and repair near $40 billion a year, roughly half of that in the United States, with subterranean termites responsible for about 80 percent of it. That number was built backward from termiticide sales, multiplied by a repair-to-control ratio borrowed from Formosan termite work in New Orleans. Nobody has actually measured it. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a measurement, and be skeptical of anyone who quotes you a damage total to the dollar.
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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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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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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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Ants
A stinging ant whose mound has no opening. They come and go through tunnels that surface somewhere else.
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Fleas
The fleas on the pet are the small end of it. Most of an infestation is eggs and larvae in the carpet.
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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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Cockroaches
One egg case releases up to 40 nymphs, and a single mated female can put thousands of offspring into a building in under a year. This is the one cockroach that does not live outdoors at all, so if it is inside, it is breeding inside.
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Furbearers
One of four terrestrial rabies vector species recognized nationally, alongside raccoons, skunks and bats.
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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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Furbearers
Groundhog, woodchuck and whistlepig are one animal. The whistle is a real alarm call you can learn by ear.
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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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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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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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