Critters in the attic
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We have some uninvited guests.
We heard some noise in the wall at night, so Mr SK put some glue boards in the crawl space and attic. We haven't caught anything in the crawl space, but we caught 5 mice in the attic this morning.
We had a company come up and they inspected the attic and crawl space. As expected, there are some holes in spots around the attic and tunneling in the insulation. The guy said he suspect there are or were squirrels as well. The crawl space doesn't seem to be as much of a concern (no obvious signs, and we don't see droppings in any of our living spaces).
So now I'm waiting for the quote... he's supposed to give us two quotes: one for "exclusion" (they seal up all the holes, and then eradicate through trapping) and the other for a full attic restoration (they remove all the existing insulation, exposing everything and making it much easier to quickly eradicate, sanitize etc. and then replace the insulation).
Ugh. Obviously option two would be better, but also $$...
We'll see.
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Yikes.
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Ah yes, joys of homeownership! In one house, we even had a chipmunk running around inside for a while - We think it got in through the sump pump...
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It's that time of year. Little beggars are looking for a warm place to hide. I saw one dart out of my composter yesterday when I was dumping some leaves in. The compost is cooking, so it's warm and I think the mice take refuge in there. Plus there are food scraps in there. The composter is at the far corner of the lot. I figure better there than in my house.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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@wtg said in Critters in the attic:
It's that time of year.
Yep.
Sigh, option two, the insulation replacement option is over $13,000. We won't be doing that. Ugh.
But I think we will go with the exclusion package, I don't think we can do all that needs to be done on our own.
And it's worth it to make sure no more can get in!!
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We had a problem with raccoons in our attic once. They were getting in through a broken cover on an attic ventilation fan, probably reaching the roof from a nearby tree or bush. We hired a pest control service to come and trap them and replaced the fan.
Frankly, I don't worry about mice too much. They naturally seek a warmer place when the weather turns cold, but a few traps baited with peanut butter and placed near where we see any signs of them is sufficient to control the intrusion.
We had chipmunks enter via the dryer vent once. The door at the end had hung open because of some lint and the end was not far above the ground. I heard a scratching noise inside the vent pipe and supposed that something had gotten into the pipe. I waited a few days until the scratching stopped and then took the pipe apart. I found two dead chipmunks.. After putting the pipe back, I tried running the dryer, only to have the fan jam. On taking the dryer apart, I found three more chipmunks within the dryer. They couldn't get past the fan, but one lodged in the fan was pretty well chewed up.
Sometime, I'll tell you about my war with the rats on the farm I grew up on.
Big Al
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Yup. Same here with our approach to mice. It's not worth spending a ton of money to seal up one area and have them find another way to get in. They only need a tiny gap to squeeze through.
We had raccoons that ripped the plastic screening around an attic fan that had been recently replaced. The old one had metal screening, so they had never tried to get in that way. We heard noises on the roof/in the attic in the middle of the night; we weren't sure where exactly the noise was coming from. The next morning I found pieces of the plastic on the driveway. I went up in the attic and attached a piece of metal hardware cloth from the inside so that they couldn't get in. Seems to have worked. It's been 18 years and we've never had an unwanted resident.
We also had a Northern flicker get stuck in the exhaust flue from the hot water heater. We had a screen on the fireplace flue, but not the one that the furnace and HW heater vent to. We got him out before he suffocated.
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Thought this would be about a certain politician.
Is it too late in the year to do the job and get new insulation where you live.
Maybe the weather predictions here have me thinking that way.“I’m at an age when remembering something right away is as good as an orgasm.”—Gloria Steinem to Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Wiser Than Me
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Be glad you have live animals. We had a dead raccoon in 2017. Lord, what a stench.
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@Big_Al @wtg @Mik Yikes! All around!!
@CHAS said in Critters in the attic:
Is it too late in the year to do the job and get new insulation where you live.
It's not too late for new insulation -- it's too expensive!
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I had squirrels in the attic regularly in Massachusetts. They’d chew through the walls.
I don’t like glue traps because it makes them suffer, so I’d use the neck-breaking super mouse traps (the ones with rows of teeth).
I was fine with squirrels outside. But, inside my house, that was where I drew the line. (Plus, it’s dangerous to risk them chewing the electrical wires.).
Phil, on the other hand, is massively triggered by squirrels. And there are a lot of squirrels here. He sees several every walk. He practically tears my arm off to get to them.
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@Quirt-Evans said in Critters in the attic:
I had squirrels in the attic regularly in Massachusetts. They’d chew through the walls.
Sounds like a nightmare!
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We are out in the country, so there are mice. We use the snap traps baited with peanut butter. But there are always more mice. A friend recently had to have her car detailed to get rid of the odor from mice burrowing into the car's innards. It took three tries by the detailer to get it done. This has me reconsidering parking my new car in the garage, where we have a lot of mice.
Out in the barn we had huge Norway rats when we moved in. the barn has oak plank floors and I think they were living under the floor. Add water for the horses and hay, which it's impossible to keep them out of, and you get a rat explosion. I considered all the warnings about the unintended consequences of poison. then I considered the consequences to my horse of a rat infestation--contaminated hay, chewed wires causing a fire, chewed hooves, rotting rat bodies drowned in the stock tank (it happened!) causing botulism. I bought the rat poison. It worked.
Unfortunately some wildlife--bunnies--also died. But better them than my horse.
We do not use poison outside of the barn. I do not want my dogs getting secondary poisoning. We have bucket traps in the garage and garden shed as well as the snap traps.
You might try a bucket trap. If you get the setup right, you can kill dozens in a single night.
fear is the thief of dreams
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@pique yeah, Mr SK and I were talking about this, and he was pulling out all the aspirational things you find online about keeping mice away (various scents and those supersonic sound producing things). All of them, I just said, nope, they won't work. Traps and poison, and efforts to plug up entry points are the only options. We'll see how it goes.
@pique said in Critters in the attic:
This has me reconsidering parking my new car in the garage, where we have a lot of mice.
Ugh, that's a hard question. There are pros and cons for either option.
We don't have the concerns you do, so I'm not going to use poison (at least not at this point, maybe if the situation got significantly worse, I'll reconsider but there are too many secondary problems caused by poison).
Thanks for the reminder of the bucket trap. I remember seeing a video of one years ago, I'll see if I can look into it again.
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We had mice in our attic (and walls) in Maine. I didn’t worry about the insulation. I found the hole between the foundation and the siding outside that they were likely getting into, and put snap traps up in the attic and caught 5 or 6 over a period of a week. No more noise. None of those “deterrents” work. You have to physically kill them.
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@Jodi said in Critters in the attic:
I didn’t worry about the insulation.
You mean, you didn't worry about just leaving it there? The upsell is "the insulation is contaminated by the mice. Replace it with the new, super expensive insulation that functions as both insulation and pest control."
Umm, no, not after I saw the price tag. We don't go up in the attic, we don't store anything there. That "contaminated" insulation can just stay there.None of those “deterrents” work. You have to physically kill them.
Yep, unfortunately.
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Yes, we just left it there. Then we moved out a year and a half later…
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@Jodi said in Critters in the attic:
Yes, we just left it there. Then we moved out a year and a half later…
But that was just a coincidence, right?
