klia, you probably don't want to read this one, either... 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 duck and run space for klia!
When we moved in our house, it had a colony of flying squirrels living in it. They lived in the attic and used the walls as roadways and playgrounds. We would lie in bed at night and hear them scrabbling right behind our heads, and over the baby's crib. They stripped all of the insulation out of our attic and left piles of feces and discarded squirrel nibblies in the heating ducts, the water heater closet, and both sides of the attic.
We were finally able to get the construction gaps in our house closed and shut out the final two, after we dispatched six others in ways I won't describe in deference to tender sensibilities. We actually worked with a Wildlife Refuge expert, who was prone to taking home the varmints she evicted and re-introducing them to the wild, and she tried everything she could think of before finally recommending dispatching. They were wily, wily creatures, and we're pretty sure we dispatched the dumb ones and the smart ones were getting ready to breed again.
At the time we had a 14-month-old baby, and between the damage they had done, and my concern that eventually one of them was going to get into the house itself, and not just the walls, no way was I going to risk my floor-level kid to a panicked squirrel!
We still have a gray squirrel trying to chew his way into the bathroom, a chipmunk who managed to chomp his way into the outside wall by the utility room (we waited for him to leave and put chicken-wire over the hole), brown recluse spiders still have a claim on one side of the attic, and a woodpecker is driving himself crazy on my cypress siding.
All in all, I'm less an animal lover than I was two years ago. ;)
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8 duck and run space for klia!
When we moved in our house, it had a colony of flying squirrels living in it. They lived in the attic and used the walls as roadways and playgrounds. We would lie in bed at night and hear them scrabbling right behind our heads, and over the baby's crib. They stripped all of the insulation out of our attic and left piles of feces and discarded squirrel nibblies in the heating ducts, the water heater closet, and both sides of the attic.
We were finally able to get the construction gaps in our house closed and shut out the final two, after we dispatched six others in ways I won't describe in deference to tender sensibilities. We actually worked with a Wildlife Refuge expert, who was prone to taking home the varmints she evicted and re-introducing them to the wild, and she tried everything she could think of before finally recommending dispatching. They were wily, wily creatures, and we're pretty sure we dispatched the dumb ones and the smart ones were getting ready to breed again.
At the time we had a 14-month-old baby, and between the damage they had done, and my concern that eventually one of them was going to get into the house itself, and not just the walls, no way was I going to risk my floor-level kid to a panicked squirrel!
We still have a gray squirrel trying to chew his way into the bathroom, a chipmunk who managed to chomp his way into the outside wall by the utility room (we waited for him to leave and put chicken-wire over the hole), brown recluse spiders still have a claim on one side of the attic, and a woodpecker is driving himself crazy on my cypress siding.
All in all, I'm less an animal lover than I was two years ago. ;)