Last year we had some unwelcome guests, two squirrels in the attic. I ran us out of the house by converting our home into the sweet smell of my grandmother’s closet. By the end of the summer, the moth ball smell had final dissipated and the critters had not returned. When this year’s cold came, so did our boarders. Eventually I will get them out of the attic.
All day today I’ve heard scampering in the bedroom. I finally figured it out! We have squirrels in the woodstove! My solution? I grabbed a string of firecrackers, lit it and threw it in. Unfortunately, I have to come realise that my woodstove is more of a crab trap for squirrels than a home. Now I have a trapped and very frightened squirrel. It is Christmas. Maybe I’ll name him Ches and simply light a fire…
Update for clarity’s sake: For the record, a Fisher wood stove will comfortably house two crazy squirrels and contains a fist full of fireworks very well but will not keep the smell of gun powder from permeating throughout the house.
[…] It’s time for round three of Doug’s war against the squirrels. A quick recap of previous battles of wit had Doug nailing a board over the entrance the squirrels chewed into the attic which the squirrels promptly chewed through again. Doug-0 squirrels-1 Doug then tossed an entire box of mothballs all over the attic, which chased squirrels AND humans out of the house for days. Let’s call that round a tie. Now, the squirrels are in the attic AND the wood stove. While part of me would like to just give them food and live in harmony with them, another part of me wants to borrow one of my father’s guns, nail the little buggers and hang their corpses from the eaves as a warning to future house-hunting squirrels. No Comments so far Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> […]
Here’s your sign!
Hehe. I almost spewed coffee all over the monitor when I read that!
[…] So the bedroom is starting to get a little gamey. I’m thinking a dirty diaper is under the bed or something. Then it occurs me to that I forgot about the squirrels in the woodstove! […]
[…] can’t get the squirrels out of my attic. How do you capture trained spying squirrels?! Perhaps Boris and Natasha were on contract! […]
Hello, Reality Me. Seems I made the same mistake as you with the moth balls in the attic. How long did it take for the oder to go away? Do the go inert or disolve after a while? It does seem to be better after 24 hours. I’m really worried about breathing this stuff, but the squirrels seem to be tolerating it. They are still up there.
Hello Squirrel Brain! It probably took 6 months. The worst was the first week and it did drive the squirrels away but I delayed my repair of the hole that let them in and they have since returned. Over time moth balls dissolve. I had ghost smells of moth balls for awhile. We would not smell anything then out of the blue you’d catch a whiff of something and convince yourself that the smell was moth balls. It was maddening! But it gets better. I really do not think it harmed us but it scared me.
Live trapping seems to be the suggested method for removing squirrels.
Good luck!
To get squirrels out of your attic, check my new invention on ebay. Search for squirrel attic repellent. It’s cheap and effective.