Ok, not really. I do indeed hate squirrels, but that's not all. Our house has cedar siding, which was never really an issue for us until we started having issues with woodpeckers. Thankfully, we've been pretty successful in scaring them off so they've been coming around less and less. The squirrels, on the other hand, have gotten worse.
Last fall, we had squirrels in our attic. They would scamper around, chew on stuff, make a bunch of racket, and just be all around annoying. We tried traps, and they avoided them. We also tried a sonic sound deterrent. That seemed to help for awhile, but now, they don't seem to care anymore. We've been trying to figure out ways to get them out of their little holes so we can patch them and get rid of them. We know we have at least 3, possibly 4, and that at least one of them is a baby. Here's the progress so far:
First, we patched the original hole they were getting in. Travis found a piece of heavy mesh, and using some small nails and a staple gun, he covered up the hole. That kept them out of the attic at least.
Travis:1; Squirrels: 0
"Woohoo!" we thought! We beat them! They can't get in anymore...or so we thought. Then, we noticed that they had discovered the knot hole that the woodpeckers had pecked out of our chimney.
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| Notice the other hole on the left we had to patch last year |
Although it sucks to have them in the chimney, it appears that they can't get to the rest of the attic from where they are. That's a good thing because there aren't any wires in the chimney for them to chew through, but it doesn't make them any less annoying. We've been trying to figure out a way to patch the hole, or scare them off. Unfortunately, this hole is 10+ feet above our roof, which means Travis would have to bring a ladder up on the roof. We've both decided that this isn't a good idea. So, what to do?
Travis came up with this idea last night (I think he's enjoying this a bit) to take a stink bomb, soak a cotton ball in the solution, and somehow get it up in the hole. He decided to try using PVC pipe.
You can only imagine how well that went. After 2 failed attempts (and tons of giggles from me!), mainly because his PVC pipe kept breaking, he finally got the cotton ball in the hole.
If you've ever smelled stink bombs, they smell like rotten eggs. After putting the cotton ball in the hole, Travis found out that squirrels apparently hate sulfur smells. We were quite excited that maybe, just maybe, we had gotten them out. The downside is that our house smelled like rotten eggs last night. We have vents in our fireplace, and the smell was permeating into our living room. Thankfully, the smell wasn't super strong, and dissipated pretty quickly.
And the squirrels? Yeah, they didn't care. In fact, they could have cared less. And this morning, they're still popping their heads out, scampering around on our roof and being annoying.
Travis:1; Squirrels: 2
Ideally, we'd like to just patch the hole with some chicken wire and spray foam insulation and just leave it at that. Unfortunately, because of the height of the hole, that's probably not an option for us to do ourselves. That means hiring someone to do it...which costs money. Let's see what happens. So far, the squirrels are ahead, but we have other tricks up our sleeves. Stay tuned.
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