I hate Squirrels

[Jerryr]

Not RV related but it could be

4 days ago I woke up to no internet but good WiFi at our house. I didn’t think took much about it, just thought it was a Fios outage that would be resolved shortly.

Then I went into my garage and hit the wall mounted garage button and the garage door opener did not respond.

Then I pulled up my security cameras to check to see if the garbage had been picked up yet and my front camera was offline.

Ok, I decide to call my ISP, Frontier communications and wow, no dial tone on my home phone.

What the heck is going on. I use my cell phone to call in a service call on the internet. They cannot ping my router and tell me they will get to me in 3 days. No internet, no phone for 3 days.. Ugh.

I decide to check out the garage door button. I find that the wire going into the attic is cut clean. Oh no. I then go into the attic and find that the coax to the failed camera is cut clean where it enters the attic.

We live in an area where squirrels are plentiful. I find a place in the roof soffit that’s pushed in. So I call my pest guy and he sets a squirrel trap and a couple of rat traps in the attic yesterday. This morning one of the rat traps is sprung but no sign of anything. 3 hours later the 2nd rat trap is sprung but again nothing in the trap.

My pest guy comes back and resets the rat traps and puts some Sausage meat in the squirrel trap/cage. I put a security camera in the attic. 2 hours later I go to my computer and pull up the camera and see a cute squirrel captured in the cage. About that time the internet guy shows up and we run a new fiber optic cable through the attic.

The pest guy takes the squirrel a few miles away to a park and releases him, then comes back and baits and sets the trap again.

Now I have a strong ammonia smell in the attic where the squirrel pee’d.

I HATE SQUIRRELS. Lucky the RV was not in the driveway and did not get attacked by squirrels. These critters can create real damage very quickly.

[Clay Richardson]

They are good with dumplings and gravy.

[Buckskin]

I buy moth balls at Walmart and throw inner bags around areas where I want to keep squirrels from chewing. They work; however do not use them inside your house or camper - only outside. I always throw some bags under camper, tractor, water hoses and golf cart. Had to start putting bag on steering wheel of tractor to keep squirrels from chewing on it.

[Houndbb]

I buy moth balls at Walmart and throw inner bags around areas where I want to keep squirrels from chewing. They work; however do not use them inside your house or camper - only outside. I always throw some bags under camper, tractor, water hoses and golf cart. Had to start putting bag on steering wheel of tractor to keep squirrels from chewing on it.

Buckskin, what is up with that? The knob on our deck height adjuster on our “Cubby” mower is half chewed off with teeth marks. First bite should have told the critter it wasn’t a nut!

[gbkims]

Nightime roof rats (roof rat (Rattus rattus, a.k.a. citrus rat, fruit rat, black rat, or gray rat) are what got into my attic years ago.
First sign was loss of network between to rooms. Found they'd chewed thru a fiber optic cable I'd run.
They bored little tunnels thru the insulation and left their droppings all over.
Took traps & aluminum flashing screwed under soffit where porch and garage roof met to stop them getting in.
Have seen plenty of holes gnawed in houses by squirrels while walking thru the neighborhood.

[Steven@147]

Yes they can be destructive but also can leave behind things that can contribute to destroying your vehicle.

A friend always has me do his 1973 Mercedes Benz 450-SL maintenance. He called me and said there was smoke coming from his engine and it had started to run rough. With this particular engine there is a space between the intake manifold and the engine block/heads with just a valley pan covering. That space was completely full of Pecans that had started to catch fire. I had to use my shop vac with a special hose attachment to reach under the intake to suck out all the nuts. Somehow they had also got into the air plenum and some of the nuts wound up in the blower motor rattling around. The squirrels had also chewed up his spark plug wires, which are really expensive for this car. Then I had to deal with the smell of the droppings they left. Had to wash the engine bay to get rid of the smell.

I've also had to deal with removing snakes from engine compartments all coiled around the engine components. That is here in Texas.

My brother-In-Law lives in Indiana, and his truck engine did catch on fire from oak tree acorns left behind by squirrels. He got the truck stopped along the road and fire extinguished. He pulled out a large pile of acorns from around the engine compartment.

[JColeman]

There are a fair number of health issues associated with rat feces. Squirrels, pack rats and critters like them are not endangered species, except around my house and trailer. We stopped using live traps and I work diligently to make my area one in which natural selection says move elsewhere. Note that we live on acreage with no immediate neighbors so we have a fair amount of critters of all types around here.

A good pellet rifle or pistol judiciously applied will provide a pest in the garbage and/or meat on the table , your choice. Do NOT use poison. Other animals eat the poisoned critters and get poisoned themselves.

CAVEAT: This is legal in my jurisdiction. YMMV.

[Buckskin]

I went down route of killing squirrels around house but seemed like when I killed one 6 more showed up. This went on for about a year and I gave up and started using moth balls.

[Canyonlight]

My next door neighbor hates "tree rats" too. He catches them in traps and takes them out in the country several miles away to release them. I think they follow him back home as the next week, it seems like he has more tree rats than before. I seem to be having less and less tree rats in my trees though !

Dan

[Country Campers]

My next door neighbor hates "tree rats" too. He catches them in traps and takes them out in the country several miles away to release them. I think they follow him back home as the next week, it seems like he has more tree rats than before. I seem to be having less and less tree rats in my trees though !

Dan

So your neighbor has not figured out that you are throwing nuts into his yard?

Brian