Yes, squirrels are just large rats with fuzzy tails, or are they? Unlike their cousins the rat, squirrels are not a nocturnal creature, spending the daylight hours collecting seeds and nuts, and avoiding predators.
They seem relatively harmless until it’s your attic that they are looking to get into. Like everyone else, the first thing people do when squirrels are running around your attic is to google the issue and seek the cheapest way to get the squirrels out.
Short of doing an exclusion on the roof it so much easier to by a live trap and hope to move the squirrelly fur-balls away. A popular idea is to use peanut butter in a live trap to lure in a squirrel. Although this does work, squirrels are very excitable and can easily injure themselves in the cage.
Squirrels are used to flying through trees using branches like a gymnast in an aerial rope act. Often they will continue to run into the ends of the cage not understanding that they are trapped. Then when you release the poor squirrel in a nearby forested area, you may not realize that you’ve just released a new squirrel into a pre-occupied squirrel territory.
So before taking matters into your own hands, try something as simple as using a visual deterrent first.
Place a plastic owl, dog, cats, eagle or hawk in areas where squirrels are causing an issue and don’t forget to move them around before the squirrel figures it out that the plastic predator isn’t real.
Go Green Pest Control owner Randy Bilesky is a long-time South Delta resident. Trained and certified, Bilesky has first-hand knowledge of the pest problems that local homeowners and business owners encounter.
