We've Got Squirrels. In our attic. Many, many of them. At first we though there were just a few, so we started live-trapping them and setting them free at a nature reserve about 10 miles away from us (and across a river). After catching several per week for three months with no apparent dent in the squirrel population up there, we were at our wit's end.
My husband rented a big long ladder, went up 35 feet in the air and patched the hole they had gnawed through one of our gables with steel mesh. That kept the squirrels out for about a week, then they gnawed a new hole in the gable. The gable looks truly charming now with its steel patch and two big rodent holes gnawed through it.
I grew up in a place that didn't have squirrels (too rainy for them I guess), so the first time I moved somewhere that did have squirrels they seemed kind of exotic and cute. I've always really liked squirrels until recently. Now I spend a lot of time reading online chat groups with names like alt.squirrels.die.die.die.
You should see the havoc they wreaked in our attic...they got into my quilting stash and there are now shreds of cloth everywhere. They literally tore to shreds half of a cube box of books. Luckily my copy of the Icelandic Sagas survived with only minimal gnaw marks along the edges. In addition to gnawing into pretty much every box and plastic bin that is up there, they have also peed and shat everywhere.
I locked the more aggressive of our two dogs up there one night. She nearly clawed her way through the door during the night trying to get out, and now she is afraid of squirrels. We locked the cat up there. The cat didn't seem to mind, and the squirrels didn't seem to mind the cat. They get along quite well, in fact.
The squirrels have gotten so bold that they just sit near the eaves (where they know the space is too cramped for us to get them) and watch us.
We live surrounded by farmland, so I finally went to the local farm supply store and talked to their varmint-control expert. He suggested putting that expanding foam stuff along the eaves inside the attic, and to embed steel wool in it all along the eave. So I've done that. He also suggested that to be truly successful, we will have to kill off this entire generation of squirrels in our vicinity such that they lose the "family" memory that Absinthe's attic is a great place to hang out.
Mass squirrel genocide. I'm not sure I'm into that. I would have to be even more pissed off with them than I am now to even consider the idea. Like, for instance, if they gnawed their way into my yarn stash.
The gloves would be off then.
