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Podcast Transcript:
Travis McGowin:
Thank you for joining us again for another episode of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast. Today, we have a very special topic to talk about. Wildlife, and not just any wildlife, one that causes so many problems, so much frustration, and it’s just an overall nuisance to a lot of homeowners, and that wildlife is squirrels. Now, just recently, if you’ve been following along with our YouTube channel, you would have seen that I posted a video where we were actually trapping squirrels at a customer’s house here in Deatsville, Alabama, this customer woke up Christmas morning to some crazy noises going on inside of their kitchen. They’ve got an older home. The layout is a little bit different than what you might would typically see nowadays when people build a new build. So inside their kitchen, they actually had a kitchen cabinet that, when you open the doors, actually showed their breaker box. So the breaker box for the electrical wiring in that portion of the house was hidden behind this old kitchen cabinet, but the breaker box wiring actually went straight up into the attic, so there was no buffer zone. There was no enclosure that hid these wires from view, so when the squirrels made entry into the attic, they were able to come straight down through the wall void, following the wires and right into the customer’s kitchen cabinet. So imagine yourself waking up on Christmas morning to enjoy that time with your family, only to have pure and utter chaos from a rodent running around inside your kitchen, knocking things over and just making a mess. Thankfully, the customers were able to open a window in an adjacent room, using a broom or some other item inside the house, they were able to shoe that squirrel to that room and get the squirrel to leave the house out of a window. But if you’ve ever listened to any of our wildlife discussions or podcasts, you would know that that, unfortunately, is not the end of the potential problems that are going to be caused by squirrels. So before we dive into our inspection and how we would handle this problem, let’s talk a little bit about why squirrels or any other road in our wildlife would be an issue inside of your home, whether that be the living space, the attic space, the crawl space, wherever they may be. So since we’re talking about squirrels, if they make entry into your home, there’s always the potential for them to gnaw or chew on things, and that’s true with virtually any rodent on the planet. So for squirrels, rats, mice, doesn’t really matter. They’re always going to be chewing on something. And one thing that they always seem to search out and find that they always enjoy chewing on is electrical wiring. Why is that a problem? Because it’s electrical wiring. Definitely don’t want to have a house fire start somewhere in your home, in your attic from a rodent gnawing on those wires. It’s extremely important if you have a rodent issue, to get those animals out of your house as quickly as possible. So that’s kind of the worst case. But on top of that, you have the general mess that they make in your attic. They constantly go about throughout the day, foraging for different things to eat. They bring those items back and they store them in your attic. They eat on them in your attic. This can cause a huge mess. And not only that, but there’s the waste that comes from these animals pooping or peeing and just making their general home up there where they don’t need to be. So there’s several problems, but we’ve been able to help. For example, this customer in Dietz, Ville, Alabama, rid their attic space of these rodents. So after they called us, we set up an appointment. I went out there personally to inspect the property, and while I was on site inspecting the outside of the home, I could actually hear the rodent running around in the attic space close to the eaves. I could hear that rodent inside the attic. So that helped me pinpoint a couple of entry points around the house. If you watch our YouTube video, you’ll see that the gable vents on the side of the house actually are supposed to have a mesh wiring that keeps insects and rodents and different things birds out of the attic space, but still allows for ventilation, and there was just a gigantic hole in this attic Gable vent. I. Allowing these rodents to climb up the side of the house and directly into the attic. So we came back, we placed some traps, and there’s a little bit more detail in that YouTube video, if you’d like to see the type of traps that we used. We placed some traps over those entry points with bait on them, and lo and behold, we caught a squirrel. So you may be saying to yourself, Okay, I can do this. I can find the entry point. I can set a trap. I can catch a squirrel. What next? Well, once you catch a squirrel or whatever wildlife it is that’s getting into your attic, we always recommend resetting that trap or those traps. You want to ensure that you’ve caught everything that’s been going in and out of your attic that’s been making a home inside of your home. You want to make sure that you catch it before you ever seal them up. Sealing up a live rodent inside of your home, whether it’s there again, the living space, the attic space, the crawl space, can cause problems. That rodent, that wild animal, at some point, is going to try to get out of that space where they’ve now been closed into. We’ve seen where rodents have chewed from the attic space into the living space of the house through sheetrock, and just caused lots of damage and chaos. So we definitely want to try to make sure that we have trapped everything before we ever tried to exclude and keep these animals out. So once you’ve trapped and ensured that you’ve kept all the animals out, that’s when we take over with exclusion. So what we did for this customer is, once we ensured the truck the squirrels were caught, we took hardware cloth on the outside of the house, and we were able to mount it to the outside of the house, still allowing for that addict to be ventilated properly, but keeping out rodents, keeping out different larger insects and birds, or anything else that wants to try to make its way up into that attic. So one other thing that I would like to also add is about the laws, the legal aspect, the stipulations of being able to trap wildlife, and of course, specifically here in the state of Alabama. So all of trapping and wildlife laws all go through the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and they typically will issue permits for organizations, companies like ourselves, for homeowners and individuals to be able to do trapping the legal and appropriate way. So you want to make sure that if you are going to use a company that they are legally allowed to use trappings methods for controlling wildlife, controlling nuisance wildlife, and always check with your local laws and statutes before you attempt to handle any kind of wild animals, there may be some that are protected species. There may be some very specific ways that you are or are not allowed to trap these animals, and a couple of other things to touch on too. In reference to those laws in the state of Alabama, you are not legally allowed to transport a wild animal inside of a vehicle. You’re not legally allowed to take one of those wild animals across county lines. You’re also not allowed to transport them across major waterway drainage areas either. So you’re kind of left with one or two options. You can either let the rodent go, let the squirrel go, or you can either use a trap that dispatches or kills that squirrel on site, or you have to kill the squirrel on site as well. And they’re very particular about the methods that you’re supposed to use for doing that as well. So I say all that just to basically point out that you need to make sure that you’re checking with your wildlife officials to make sure that you’re doing things the right way, the legal way, ethically and humanely as well. So I hope that this shed some light on what it is that we were able to do for that customer, in reference to getting them rid of squirrels in their attic and ensuring that those squirrels never come back and attempt to take up residence inside of their attic ever again, as well of some of the ethics and laws behind making sure that you do this the proper way, if you have any other questions, we would absolutely love to talk to you. If you’re having a rodent or wildlife issue, we would love to assist you. As long as you are in our coverage area, we would be more than happy to come out and take a look to see what it is you’ve got going on.
If you would like to see our YouTube video about this topic, CLICK HERE!
