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No, I'm not wanting to have squirrels slaughtered--it's for a story I'm working on. Poking around online it looks like trapping and relocating is the preferred method of dealing with them. Do exterminators ever use fatal traps, poisons, or that sort of thing with them? I'd be interrested in hearing about different ways of exterminating rats as well.
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Actually, most people don't use poison because of danger to other small mammals--neighborhood cats, small children, and so on. Usually you use a trap. It's a little cage with a door that slams shut. It's the most humane and probably the most often used method. Otherwise, most exterminators specialize in preventative.
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Like a pellet gun, you mean? I had a friend who hunted them with a pellet gun when he was a kid. Would it be a common way of thinning a really bad infestation of them for a professional exterminator?
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I feed mine, and think they're very cute. So I don't know the techniques for getting rid of them. All I know is that they are very smart critters. They can figure out all the supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeders given time, as evidenced on "Daylight Robbery", that Discovery Channel special made some years back. We discussed it here, Noemon, do you remember?
Good luck with the story. I hate to hear of people killing wild animals, though.
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My friends Boris and Natasha have tried for decades to get rid of one pesky squirrel. They've tried everything from poison to 8 foot tall electronic rats. Still, no luck.
PS. To insure his own family peace, Papa Moose may close down this thread.
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First a question: What makes a squirrel "pesky" or otherwise a "problem"? I mean it's one thing to want to get rid of them if they are in your attic, basement, or chimney, but it's another thing entirely if you just want them out of your yard or neighborhood.
Assuming it's the former, our house is very old and there are holes in the fascia under the roofline where squirrels and birds sometimes get in an nest. The former owner of the house used to poison the squirrels by leaving tainted food on paper plates in the attic crawlspace. We found the plates and a mummified squirrel carcass when we went to clean out the crawlspace a couple of years ago.
We had to cut down a huge diseased maple in the back yard that was their primary means of gaining access to the roof, but they apparently found other ways in. After a few weeks of being awakened by the nightly squirrel hoedown, Chris peppered the attic crawlspace with mothballs. That has seemed to be a pretty effective (and humane) method for keeping them out. We do have to remember to replenish the mothballs every few months or they come back.
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Disposing of trapped squirrels can be done by fuming them with engine exhaust. It's how they harvest minks, at least at this one mink farm we used to live near. Poison can kill pets and birds, and you don't want the squirrels to die in the eaves.
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: They can figure out all the supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeders given time, as evidenced on "Daylight Robbery", that Discovery Channel special made some years back. We discussed it here, Noemon, do you remember?
Oh yeah, I remember that thread!
quote:Good luck with the story. I hate to hear of people killing wild animals, though.
Well, this has actually split into two stories now, but in at least one of them the attempts at killing them aren't successful, for what it's worth.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Rats: warfarin is typical for use as a poison. A cool fact you might work into the story is that rats (especially wild rats) are VERY neophobic (yeah, they hate Keanu Reeves too). And they have this amazing ability to do one-trial learning of taste aversions. So...baiting food with poison often fails to get rid of rats. They nibble a tiny bit of the food, get sick, but don't die, and forever avoid that food.
So...why is there warfarin? I don't know. Why do they sell those things that are supposed to scare moles? Nothing works to kill moles, except rats.
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I remember when I was little a mother squirrel managed to chew/claw her way into our attic and had her babies there. When we realised it, my dad went up there with a broom trying to chase them out. I remember standing outside the house laughing with my friends, as the babies kept poking their heads out of the hole, and my dad screaming at them. Eventually he got them out, or so he thought. Years later when we moved, he went into the attic to make sure he didn't miss anything when packing. Sure enough, there was a dead squirrel up there. He just through a towel over it and left.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Like a pellet gun, you mean? I had a friend who hunted them with a pellet gun when he was a kid. Would it be a common way of thinning a really bad infestation of them for a professional exterminator?
Yeah, like a pellet gun. But you can kill them with BBs too, if it's a relatively good air gun.
I seriously doubt that a professional exterminator would use that method, as it would probably take a lot more of his time than traps or poison.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I was required to accomplish a penance for a now long forgotten offense by cleaning the brass sousaphones in the old band room at Davis High. (for persons who know Kaysville, UT this was the band room in the original building, 50 years old at the time of the story.) Five of the horns had squirrel skeletons in them. One had two. Perhaps marches are lethal to the little pests.
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I've also heard that it is illegal to kill an indigenous animal unless it's hunting season for that animal and you are appropriately licensed. If it's out of season you should capture it live and relocate it. The fact that it is a "pest" is irrelevent.
I imagine this varies considerably by state and possibly local laws as well.
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Well yeah, but the point is, unless you do the research, you don't know where the distinction lies. Deer are pests, but you can't kill them just because they eat your junipers. But you can hunt them when they're in season.
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