Do you hear the pitter-patter of little feet in your attic and the morning is still young? You probably have squirrels in the attic.
Squirrels are very active in the morning and afternoon. If you hear noise in the attic during that time frame, it is likely a squirrel. A tiny footstep in the night is apt to be a mouse or a rat hunting something to eat. Both critters could be damaging your home, but we’ll concentrate on the squirrel.
The first step in squirrel removal is to find out where they are getting into the house and plug the hole. The entrances to homes are usually in or near a rotted piece of wood on the fascia board. They will also build nests in the soffit.
In older houses, those that have not been modernized by vinyl siding and aluminum, squirrels can enter the house at the attic ventilation louvers as well as the fascia and soffit.
Squirrels like to build their nests in the soffit of a house.
It’s good to make sure there are none of these critters living in any of those places before you seal off their exit holes or you will have an unusual aroma in your house when they die.
A stinky attic is also a good reason not to put out poison to kill the rodents. After about four days of lying lifeless in soft insulation where it has made a nest, a dead squirrel can create quite a stench.
I have a neighbor who boasts of the effectiveness of a gadget that looks like a small’50′s radio and puts out a frequency that is too high for a human to hear, but drives the squirrels crazy. It also makes neighborhood dogs go bonkers if they are in range of the little soundless gizmo.
I could use squirrel traps provided by the city animal control people, but my cat Spike would probably wind up in the cage, just like he did with the raccoon traps.
That time the squirrels watched him make a fool of himself.
There are quite a few commercial squirrel baits at feed and seed stores, as well as some large discount stores in their outdoor departments. Many of these solutions to squirrel problems have some of the same ingredients; crushed cayenne, serrano or jalapeno’ peppers.
Since I grow those in my garden, I run them through a vegetable grinder and reduce then to a red powder. I spread them around plants that I don’t want to be dug up by squirrels hiding nuts. I also scattered it around the vents of my house. The only drawback is that you have to do that each time it rains.
My cat Spike does a pretty good job of keeping my house and yard free of mice and rats. His record is not very good when it comes to squirrel eradication problems. He actually likes to watch the critters scurry from tree to tree.
Spike has learned to live in peaceful cohabitation with the squirrels on our property. He will lie in his sunny spot on the front porch and watch the antics of these rodents as they practice their aerial artistry high in the oak trees in our back yard.
This was not always the case. When Spike was younger, he would lie in wait for the squirrels to come down from the trees and then he would try to pounce on them. Fortunately for them, they were always faster than my cat and as far as I know, he never caught one.Now, thanks to Spike’s inability to chase these varmints away, I have at least eight squirrels in my back yard.
I have a theory as to why I haven’t had any squirrels try to invade my house.I feed them a lot of corn and sunflower seeds that I have left over from my garden. They are not fool enough to risk losing their free handouts by damaging my home! That’s how I get rid of squirrels in the attic.
Article by Ena Clewes
If you have unwanted animal invaders in your garden, then you have to decide how to battle them before your well planted garden is destroyed. Eliminating slugs and snails may be as hopeless as dealing with those lovely little burrowing creatures that we all love in the pet shop; rabbits!
If rabbits are in your garden, you will soon see them sitting in the grass, perhaps in the sun on a summer’s evening, enjoying their surroundings and feeding happily on your plants. Rabbits are interested in anything newly planted, not just their favorite dish; like Campanula served on a bed of clove pinks with helianthemum dressing. They like to dig up new plants and to dig holes to see what you have just spent hours digging in!! They are curious to see what you have been trying to bury there. We, as gardeners, mystify them.
If you have the type of garden that cannot happen without rabbits around, then you will have to deal with them. One solution is getting a couple of good cats or, if you don’t like cats, then try chicken wire at least 30inches tall and with another 12 inches buried horizontally on their side of the fence.
The sooner you start to exclude rabbits, the better. Once gardens become unknown territory to a new generation, keeping them out is always easier. They seem to forget as they are not terribly bright.
If you want to live with the rabbits and not exclude them from your garden, you could still have cats (the rabbits breed so terribly fast), but you must work with a limited selection of plants. Living with them is not really so bad. As they get used to plants being there, their curiosity and appetite eventually refocus on grass.
If you decide to plant new shrubs I suggest you wire them off until they get a chance to mature. Deer are a different story as tall barriers do not keep them out. To work reliably, deer fencing has to be 9feet tall and strong. It costs a fortune and makes your garden look like a concentration camp! You could plant a thicket or hedge around the garden and narrow down their entry point, when you notice where they are breaking through your defenses.
There are also squirrels that dig up your bulbs and aphids that eat your rose leaves, and the list goes on. Until you start to live in your garden, you never know what is lurking there and you can be sure that there are more there than you can visibly see.
I always enjoy seeing my four legged visitors, well, maybe not always! They have their need for finding food and I don’t begrudge them a small feast (except if my lettuce has just come into it’s own and they enjoy it before I do). Then there’s my Gooseberry bush which has just produced its fruit and I can’t collect the berries quick enough before the birds devour them. And I think only once in 4 years have I collected any raspberries before they are decimated.
I do have cats, so my mouse population has decreased, but why do I feel so bad when I see my cat with a mouse in its mouth? Maybe it has babies. So then, I catch the cat and release the mouse defeating the whole purpose. I also hate flies, but when I go to swat them I can hear their little cry “Mummy!”!
Oh well, that’s life in the garden, for better or worse.