Squirrel fracas

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

On Christmas Day my mother discovered that there was a squirrel in her basement. The neighbors across the alley knew of a critter rescue group and two folks came over that very day, captured and released the furry tailed rat.

Yesterday another showed up on the first floor of the house. My mom startled it and it ran through the kitchen downstairs. The door at the top was closed. Traps were set and the critter people came back, but were unable to find it.

Today a guy from a pest control business came over, looked all over the house and in the basement, and concluded that somehow the squirrel has left the building. This second incident is strange, as the place we figure the first on got in is still blocked and undisturbed.

I’m annoyed at the critter(s) because it’s stressing out my elderly mother. If I could corner it I’d kill it, not capture and release.

Tell about your in house critter encounters. My mom will probably be having the chimney capped, so maybe the squirrels won’t be back.

2

My Little Girls (dogs) just kill them if they can reach them.

3

That parenthetical is a really important clarification.

4

Whatever you do, don’t call the squirrel cop. (One of my favorite This American Life stories)

5

I had a HUGH centipede in my laundry room. I actually screamed, a little at it’s countenance. It sorta lifted it’s front end (head area) and wiggled those antennas. Gah!!!:eek:
Cats went berserk. I threw a bowl over it. And called for help.

6

I think I wrote about this last summer, but what the H? We were getting ready to move and all was chaotic. And we left the front door open. Suddenly my wife shrieked that there was a giant rat in the house. Eventually, I saw it and it was too large to be a rat, but I could not identity it. I called our local civil patrol. They are not cops; they can give parking tickets and otherwise enforce local bylaws but have no role in criminal actions.

Anyway, they came over and they located the animal, it was a baby hedgehog, under a radiator in the living room but could not get it to move. We also built, using boxes packed with stuff ready to move, a closed path to the front door which we left open. Then my wife saw mama hedgehog outside apparently thinking of joining the party. Finally one of the patrolmen got a net from his car and somehow snagged terrified animal and let him loose outside where he took off for parts unknown. Clearly wanted to get out as badly as we wanted him out.

7

According to Christmas Vacation, you need a coat, a hammer, John Randolph, and a rottweiler. And possibly, uptight yuppie neighbors.

8

My parents’ house has or had mice in the attic, and sometimes I hear what sounds like them gnawing on the drywall above my bed. (I would lie there in bed thinking that one of them is going to gnaw his way through the drywall and land in my bed.)

Several years ago, the gnawing sounded metallic and seemed to come from the range hood. (Slightly disturbing, particularly at night.) One day, one of them gnawed a hole through the metallic range hood filter and started to run around the kitchen. The hole was still there until the other day when I ordered a replacement filter from Amazon. I’m not sure if the mouse was attracted to the grease in the filter or the smell of the food cooking below.

And then about 25 years ago, I was living a few hours away and visiting on the weekends, when I’d do laundry in the basement. Once, I was sure I smelled something foul near the washing machine, but we didn’t find anything. A week or so later, my mother said the housekeeper (who came weekly) found a dead raccoon behind the washing machine.

9

I lived in a very rural place ( photo ) where field mice were routine guests. I put snap-traps at several places under the floor and inside, and checked them weekly and replaced as needed. That succeeded in keeping them reasonably under control.

I had one mouse, though, who was somehow trap-smart. He simply would NOT take the bait. After putting up with that for a couple of weeks, I decided it was time to get serious. For this guy, I went and got a GLUE TRAP! :eek:

Poor little mouse didn’t have a chance. Somehow he knew to avoid snap-traps, but the glue trap quickly got him! I hated to do it. Glue traps seem so gruesome. Snap-traps may seem gruesome at first thought, but they are fast and probably relatively merciful.

Once a mouse died under the bathroom sink. Usually, dead mice just dry up. But this one putrefied and stank up the whole place. Fortunately, I found it quickly, and with the help of rubber gloves and lots of Clorox got the cupboard cleaned and decontaminated.

Being out in the wilderness, I had plenty of company: Mice, flying and crawling bugs galore, chipmunks in the nearby trees, the occasional skunk, possum, bobcat, and snake passing by. The landlord’s dogs and the neighbor’s horse came by now and then. Ants by the bazillions all around, but they hardly ever came inside. And, according to local lore, a resident mountain lion in the vicinity. I think I caught a shadowy glimpse of him once in the twilight.

I left the light in the living room on at night, which attracted the swarms of flying bugs out the bedroom at night.

Oh, and did I mention the frogs? There’s a creek bed nearby (better visible in this photo where it crosses the road), full of tadpoles in the spring and frogs after that. That’s in addition to the little green tree frogs, which got inside regularly. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LOUD LITTLE GREEN TREE FROGS ARE? You’s think you had a flock of macaws!

I hated, hated, hated having to leave the place. It was like living in a Garden of Eden as far as I was concerned. But I began to have some health problems, and it became problematical to live way out there in the wilderness.

10

We have a revolving-door ceiling-possum hostel. Generally possums hang out there for about two or three months, scrabbling around in our (closed up) chimneys. At some point they discover the power lines, we discover fried possum on the footpath, and the possum hostel is again vacant for the next occupant.

There are also mice and lizards about. Kitty-cat has discovered that when we see her with a mouse we pat her and tell her how clever she is, but when we see her with a lizard we take it off her and put it outside. Her response to this has been that last time she found herself a little Lizard Friend she … mewed loudly at it until I came and took it outside. Smart kitty!

11

My mom will be getting her chimney covered with a screen.

I once had bats get into tmy own house. One flying around the living room looks just like the fake bats in old movies.

12

I had a squirrel in the attic/basement for about four awful days. On a Monday morning, I woke up before the alarm. While dozing in bed, I heard the unmistakable gait of a squirrel in the attic. In a panic, I put a radio on in the attic with the hope it would be scared back outside. It didn’t work and the little guy set to work tearing shit up to make a home in the wall at the front of the house. I borrowed a cage trap which it snapped but didn’t trap for about three days in a row. The way my house is set up, the attic leads down to the basement but there’s a door to the primary living quarters of the house. The squirrel apparently had a great week of eating archival Twinkies, pooping EVERYwhere and leaving cute pawprint tracks in the lint on my dryer.

I did trap it on the Friday that week and released it miles away but never figured out how it got into the house. It was the dead of winter and it seems unlikely that it got in through a door. No signs of squirrels before or since.

Elderly relatives, too.

13

Thanks for posting that, it’s delightful.

14

I’ve been in my house for 15 years, and have had to repair the end of the eaves on all 4 corners of the house due to squirrels clawing their way into the walls. I fully expect that there is not much insulation in the walls, and it is mostly replaced with walnut shells from the giant black walnut trees in the yard.

Last spring, I went to throw something away in the kitchen trash can (it’s one of those pull out the from inside a cabinet ones) and what do I see staring back at me from the bottom of the trash bin? A baby possum. Not the best way to start a day. Fortunately the bag was empty and I just took the whole thing outside. But, man, a baby possum at 7 AM is not ideal.

15

In a former house, we had mice move into the attic. I heard the scrabbling noises and got the stepladder and opened the trap up into the attic and looked around with a flashlight to see if I could locate them. There was a flash of fur as one of our cats raced up the ladder and into the attic, to return shortly carrying a dead rodent. This appeared to be the only one, as the noises didn’t recur.

The cat, however, decided that ladders meant mice to catch, and every time I got a ladder out after that, she would climb up looking for mice. She would even climb the extension ladder when I was cleaning the gutters. (After checking out the entire roof several times, she would go and sit over the back porch and meow piteously until someone came out with the stepstool and took her down. She was good at climbing ladders, but not at going down them.)

16

There was still a squirrel down there and it has been caught. It’s nose was bloody from thrashing against the cage, but that’s it’s own damn fault. My mother was getting really nervous, that furry tailed rat deserved pain. But it was released a few blocks away by my BIL.

17

This story just popped up in my local newspaper this morning:

Any relation to the OP? :smiley:

18

Did anybody else see the thread title and think “Band name”?

19

I just recently (last week) took care of business related to a squirrel in the attic. The damn thing would be out all day foraging, but would climb the stucco exterior of the house as if it had velcro paws, and find egress into the attic, where he would stay the night. There it would dig around where I could hear the scratching and movement just above my head at my desk, and right on the other side of the sheetrock, probably less than an inch between me and him, but oh so difficult to get at that spot. The attic is crowded with various lumber meant to hold up the roof, so not easy to move around for someone my size. I do not have a ladder long enough to reach the outside roof. Oh, and he and his friends seem to love tormenting my dog by sitting at a specific spot on the fence where they are seen from the back sliding door, swishing their tails.

Anyway, I went up there (attic) a few times to determine a strategy, and then brought some tools, lumber, metal, lights, etc. for a session sealing up the entry points. I found his little nest - a dug-out hole in the insulation next to one of the openings under an eve. Not much was chewed, thankfully, but I still do not want a squirrel getting comfy up there. Anyway, after my crawling around in the dust, between the timbers, sweating, I went outside around sunset when the little bastard returned from his day. He could not get in, and hung there on the outside wall looking at me, like “Uh, I can’t get in.” Went and got the webster on a pole and swatted at him - he jumped off the roof right in front of me and I gave him a spanking with the broom, and he just ran to the fence and over the other side.

Happy to report no evening visitors in my attic at the moment.

We also had a mouse in the pantry a couple years ago - I captured him with the 5-gallon bucket drop-trap and drove it to the edge of town about 3 miles away and let him go near a creek.