Tag Archives: squirrel in house

Squirrels

Squirrel Removal

Leave a comment

squirrels in the roof

My mom says I have a “heightened sense of curiosity,” so it didn’t surprise her when I stuck around to watch the squirrel removal from our chimney.  Plus, the guy who came to get the squirrel out of the chimney was kind of cute.  I didn’t tell Mom that was one of the reasons I pulled out the camera and recorded the whole thing.

Dad had come up with this great idea last weekend to light a fire in our fireplace and roast marshmallows and eat s’mores while playing board games.  I thought it was a pretty cool idea, even if it meant hanging out with my mom and dad all evening.  I had planned on going over to my friend’s house that night to work on our science project on bugs and then chat online with a boy from my class.  Dad found out about that last part, and since he feels a twelve year old girl shouldn’t be “online unsupervised,” I couldn’t go to my friend’s house that night.  To make me feel better, he suggested we play games and roast marshmallows.  I stayed sullen long enough for him to know that I was really unhappy about not getting to go to my friend’s house, but I actually was looking forward to that night with mom and dad.

Unfortunately, as Dad set up the fireplace, he realized we had a squirrel living in the chimney.  No fire, no marshmallows, just a squirrel.  He quickly closed up the fireplace so the squirrel wouldn’t come running out in the middle of the night, and we popped popcorn instead.

The next day, the guy came to remove the squirrel from the chimney.  He was gorgeous!  He acted like he didn’t even notice me, but he told my Mom it was okay for me to video the squirrel being removed, so I got to stay in the room and watch the whole thing.  Mom told me I had to get out of the room if the squirrel got free, though, so I wouldn’t get bitten.  I agreed and pulled out my phone and turned on the camera.

The guy didn’t even hesitate.  He pulled on thick gloves, pulled the hood on his sweatshirt up over his ball cap, and climbed right inside the fireplace with nothing but a flashlight.  He looked around for a little bit, then reached up, and pulled the squirrel out.  At first, I couldn’t figure out what the squirrel was doing, but then I realized it was biting this guy’s finger, holding onto his hand with both paws.  The guy didn’t even seem to mind.  I guess the gloves were thick enough and he was probably used to removing squirrels out of chimneys.  Still, it looked freaky to me, seeing the squirrel gnawing at the end of his finger.

He got the squirrel in a trap, and then looked around the chimney some more.  He said he was looking for squirrel babies, but he didn’t see any.  Then, he was gone.  Removing the squirrel from the chimney didn’t take any longer than about ten minutes, but it was enough to get some good video.  I’m gonna send it to my friend tonight so she can see just how good looking squirrel removal can be!

Squirrels

Squirrel Removal From Chimney

Leave a comment

get rid of squirrels

Don’t ever take advice from your friends on squirrel removal from your chimney, unless the advice is to call a wildlife trapper.  Getting a squirrel removed out of a chimney is not as easy as my best friend said it would be, and I swear the guy just wanted to see if I’d actually listen to him.  All I learned is NEVER to listen to him.

Squirrel
Squirrel waiting to get inside your chimney.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I had an awesome little condo that’s close to my work, and since it was nicer than any of my friends’ places, they would all come and hang out here.  In fact, I didn’t even know I had a squirrel in the chimney until my best friend woke up on my couch facing the fireplace and saw the squirrel just staring at him.  The squirrel took off back up the chimney.  That’s the morning he gave me the terrible advice.

He told me to make sure the glass doors in front of the fireplace were shut tight so the squirrel couldn’t get out.  Then, for two or three days, put out some salty snacks where he could reach them.  Salted peanuts, chips, pretzels, that sort of thing.  After a couple of days, the squirrel will get really thirsty, so that’s when you give it a water dish with 50% water and 50% vodka.  Get it nice and drunk, and then you can grab it and toss it outside.

I was kind of an idiot back then, so I took him seriously.  He was kind of an idiot, too, so he might have actually been serious when he gave me the advice on removing a squirrel from the chimney.  For three days, I’d open the glass fireplace doors just enough to shove in another salty snack, and then shut it up tight.  The snacks would disappear by the end of the day.  I only saw the squirrel once.  It was sitting next to the food dish gobbling up some peanuts.  As soon as it saw me, it ran back up the chimney.

On day four, I poured water and vodka into a small bowl and put it in the fireplace.  My friend came over to watch to see if it would work. For hours, we hung out in the front room, gaming and waiting to see if the squirrel would come down for a drink.  It never did.  It finally occurred to me that the squirrel hadn’t gotten in my chimney through the glass doors.  It had to have crawled down inside from the roof, and I hadn’t even thought of closing the flue.  That means, for days, it’s been going back outside after eating salty snacks and drinking wherever squirrels drink.  I hadn’t made it thirsty enough to get drunk on the vodka mixture I’d provided.  I’d only made sure the squirrel knew it could return to my house day after day for food.  As I said, I was an idiot back then.

Despite my friend’s pleading, I wasn’t about to repeat the experiment with the flue closed.  I didn’t want to get a squirrel bite as I reached up the chimney to close the flue, so I finally made a good decision and called a professional for squirrel removal from my chimney.  They came, removed the squirrel from the chimney, and my life went back to normal.  Well, as normal as life can be when you’re an idiot with an idiot friend.

Squirrels

Squirrel Problems

Leave a comment
Squirrel on a branch
Squirrel on a branch, waiting to come inside.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I just moved into my apartment about two months ago, and now I have squirrel problems.

All of a sudden, I have a new roommate who’s just driving me crazy.  He comes and goes whenever he pleases.  He acts like he owns the place.  He takes some of my stuff, and breaks other stuff – he ripped a hole right in the window screen and doesn’t even care.  He’s always loud, especially in the morning, knocking things over, constantly going in and out of my place, feet pounding and waking me up.

My poor cat doesn’t know what to make of it all.  She just sits there watching it, trying to stay out of his way.  He acts like she’s not there and will even step on her from time to time.  Once, he picked up her cat food and walked off with it.  I was gone that morning, so I didn’t notice until I got back from work that night.

Then, one day, he disappeared behind my entertainment center and stripped some of the wires back there.  I don’t know what he intended to do, but he just left the job half-finished, the insulation ripped right off of the wires.  I haven’t been able to get my DVD player to work ever since, but it’s not like he cares.

I’m at my wits end, because the worst part of it is he doesn’t pay rent.  He doesn’t have to.  He’s a squirrel.

My squirrel problems have got to end soon.  This new “roommate” of mine literally leaves his crap all over the place – in my sock drawer, on kitchen counters, on the living room floor.  I found a squirrel hair in my cereal bowl the other day and just gagged and threw away the cereal box.

I thought problem squirrels limited themselves to chewing people’s trees and gardens, or crawling inside their attics.  My parents have a nice place outside the city, on a ½ acre lot with lots of trees, and they’ve had problems with squirrels every now and then.  They have several birdfeeders, so I wasn’t surprised when my mom told me about a squirrel that was performing all kinds of acrobatics to get at the bird seed.  I warned her that they’d end up with a squirrel nest in the attic some day.

But, squirrel problems were the last thing on my mind when I got my apartment in the city.  I’d asked the landlord if he’d had any problems with mice or rats or pigeons, but I failed to ask about squirrels.  Apparently, I’m the only one of his tenants that has this problem with a squirrel walking in and out of the window, making himself at home in my apartment.  I guess I need to just repair the window screen and call a professional wildlife removal service company.  Otherwise, I’ll have to take his share of the rent out of the nut collection he stuck inside my couch.