Earlier this year, I discovered that I had a bat problem, and it wasn’t one that was easy to solve, either. It took about four to five months to get rid of the problem completely, and we didn’t do it alone. First we had to get the bats OUT of my attic, then we had to clean up the mess they left behind, and lastly we sealed off all the holes that bats could fit through; needless to say there was a lot to do. Fast forward to last month when I thought that my wildlife problems were over; a big storm hit and actually tore down my gutters and some soffit along with it.
If I had been home when this happened, the holes would have been closed off within days, but I wasn’t. It happened two days after I had left on my family vacation to Disneyland and my neighbor’s daughter was house sitting. So these gaping holes sat open for a week and a half just waiting for something to move into the attic. When I came home and saw what had happened I went into panic mode; I had just spent all that money to get my attic cleared and sealed of all bats and possible bat entrances and in a matter of hours all that work was ruined. I inspected the attic for any of the signs that I had seen before but luckily none of the telltale bat signs were there, just some twigs and pine needles that had blown in from outside (or so I thought).
So, thinking that I had narrowly escaped another bat infestation, I quickly called a roofer to seal up the gaps and make my house bat proof once again. Here’s the problem, those sticks and pine needles I saw, it turns out they didn’t just blow in and if I had looked a little deeper I would have found that there was also torn insulation. Apparently in the space of time between the soffit being torn down and my attic being resealed, a family of squirrels had moved in. It wouldn’t have been a problem if we hadn’t accidentally sealed them inside. Now here I am in nearly the same situation just trying to get ALL of the animals out of my attic for good. All I know is that after this squirrel problem, I’m putting my wildlife technician on speed dial.