Squirrel in the attic

farmguy · #1 03/23/14, 05:38 PM

My wife has heard noise in our ceiling and when I checked the outside of the house I discovered a small hole under the eave. From the animals around our farm I would assume it is a red squirrel or chipmunk. Closing the hole would be no problem but of course I do not want the little critter trapped inside or if I used poison have it die inside our attic. Any ideas? I thought about mothballs or maybe a trap on the roof. Thanks in advance.

swamp man · #2 03/23/14, 05:49 PM

Mount a rat-trap on the outside near the hole & bait it with peanut butter , then seal up the hole after you catch it .

**Roadking** · #3 03/23/14, 06:01 PM

Live trap and remove. Hav-a-hart traps are a good item to have...in several sizes.

Matt

PS: don't do this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCEBaGJnyFY
From "ratatouille"...old lady using a shotgun in the house for rats.

fishhead · #4 03/23/14, 06:02 PM

When do you hear the noise?

farmguy · #5 03/23/14, 06:08 PM

My wife hears them at different times day and night. I cannot hear very well due to my time in Viet Nam.

squirrelwhisper · #6 03/23/14, 06:38 PM

If you can place a radio on a talk radio show in the attic at night, if you make noise (radio) while the animal is trying to sleep, it will move out. Squirrels always have an
emergency nest. Do not block the whole in which it is getting in until you no longer hear and noise. Otherwise if it is a female squirrel and she has babies in there and you block up her entry way, she will do what ever she has to, to get her babies.

Brighton · #7 03/23/14, 07:33 PM

Put a live trap in the attic, bait it with peanuts rolled in peanut butter, you will have your critter by the next morning, then seal up the hole. More than likely given your location it is a Red Squirrel.

fishhead · #8 03/23/14, 07:48 PM

If it's at night I would expect a flying squirrel.

Harry Chickpea · #9 03/23/14, 11:19 PM

The idea of a radio or other noise source is under-appreciated. Animals do not like having that in a secure hidey-hole as it means that they can't tell when a predator is near.

Rectifier · #10 03/23/14, 11:24 PM

We used to keep a little CPU-style fan at the base of the chimney in our woodstove in the summer to keep the creosote smell from backdrafting.

One day it was making a funny intermittent buzzing. I looked in the stove to find a terrified squirrel lodged in the pipe... he would slip down until his nose got clipped by the fan and then jack himself back up into the pipe.

Being a child I switched off the fan and tried to catch the squirrel in a bag. You can imagine how well that went. There were squirrel-shaped charcoal marks all over the entire room by the time it escaped out a window.

So, uh, don't do that.

blooba · #11 03/24/14, 07:09 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POUfAsJ1Jjg

^Squirrel exclusion device

Harry Chickpea · #12 03/24/14, 11:54 AM

Now THIS is a squirrel exclusion device.

simi-steading · #13 03/24/14, 12:24 PM

LOL!!!! I'm rolling.. I need to make me a treerat slingshot...

Now if I could just figure out how to aim it at a frying pan full of hot oil..

PricklyThistle · #14 03/24/14, 12:24 PM

Sure it isn't a raccoon? I've had (not kidding) a family of ten of those in my attic at one time. Used to come up there to find a few just hanging out, enjoying a tin of catfood.

Xplorer · #15 03/24/14, 04:23 PM

We had squirrels in our attic also. Middle of the night we had squirrel bowling going on. Really got old fast. Covered the holes & they just chewed new ones. Tried to shoot them with my .22 rifle and only ended up with little holes in my siding. Finally just started to shoot them when they were in my yard. Now, no squirrels within a hundred yards of my house. Problem solved.

TheMartianChick · #16 03/25/14, 05:28 PM

I like to put baggies of poison in the trees to keep the squirrel herd thinned. Our squirrels have very few predators and multiply like crazy. Seeing 2 or 3 in the yard is one thing, but when I see a gang of 14...We have a problem.

barnbilder · #17 03/25/14, 06:48 PM

Poison is a terrible idea, not only illegal, but a good way to kill someone's pet or something else.
Might do a google search for "wildlife control professional" in your area. They can tell exactly what you are dealing with and have the equipment and more importantly, the experience to handle it properly, legally and quickly. Usually for less than it will cost you to do it yourself, once you factor in holes shot in ceilings, etc. It could be flying squirrels, which are very hard to deal with. Remember, rodent chewed wires are one of the leading causes of house fires. Setting a havahart on the ground outside will probably be unsuccessful, most out of the box havaharts won't trigger for an elephant, let alone a flying squirrel. I've even seen some of them made with gaps around the door that flyers can walk right out of. Good for skunks though. In addition to the whole house burning down thing, flying squirrels can transmit Typhus, raccoons can transmit the raccoon roundworm, squirrel fleas can carry the bubonic plague, so be careful with droppings or nest material. Not that you can't take care of it on your own, but it is far from a simple fix. Sound devices are completely ineffective as people who live near railroad tracks or airfields could vouch for.

TheMartianChick · #18 03/26/14, 05:21 PM

In our area, many of the wildlife control "professionals" release animals in the country, making them someone else's problem. It takes a lot of time to catch 12 smart squirrels in a single Havahart trap...and then what do I do with them? I'd have to hire a professional a couple of times per year to deal with this. If I could legally discharge a firearm in the city, I'd do it in a heartbeat to rid myself of them.

After having squirrels break into my attic repeatedly and spending thousands on the repairs and water and energy leaks that they caused, I reluctantly turned to poison. I place the baggie of poison in the crotch of a tree or on one of the lower portions of my roof, where other critters aren't likely to reach it. The squirrels see everything and usually pull the baggies out within 5 minutes of my vacating the area. The baggies keep the poison from spilling and they either finish it or take it with them. Within a few days, I set another round of bags out. Within a week, I am back down to only a few squirrels in the yard. More squirrels start to move in from other blocks within a couple of months or so and I do another round in the fall.

Our neighborhoods are overrun with squirrels and we don't have much recourse. To us, they are just roof rats that cause an incredible amount of damage to homes and property.We didn't graduate to the use of poisoning lightly. Though I live in a city, we have roving herds of deer, an astounding number of crows (they darken the skies in the evening and morning and foul the ground with feces when they roost in neighborhoods at night) and a ridiculous number of squirrels that wreak havoc on our community. There are no animal controls in place in our city and the over population issues are difficult to deal with.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention the skunks and groundhogs, too! All of these animals breed unchecked in the city with the only predators being the vehicles that happen to take one out now and then.

SRSLADE · #19 03/26/14, 05:34 PM

I'm sorry, but it needs to be said. Better than bats in your belfry!

TheMartianChick · #20 03/26/14, 05:38 PM

When you have squirrels running around in the attic, it will cause you to feel as though you have bats in the belfry! Who knew that they could make such a racket?

Our downtown area is infested with bats, too! Whenever they start renovating an old building, we start seeing disturbed bats flying around in the middle of the day.