Woke me up last night with their gnawing. How best to quickly get rid of without having to sit there in the oven temperature attic waiting for them to show up?

Whit as you know, I am up here in the mountains in a log cabin. In the construction style that I used when I built the house, I made dovetail notches, and there is a three inch overhang of the log at the notch.
I have been plagued with squirrels eating these overhangs! I bought this stuff called "hot cinnamon" and painted it on the notches. It is quite a mess and makes your eyes water. It worked for a while and then it didn't work any more.

This is some serious business, damn squirrels eating my house. I did whack a half dozen of 'em with the 20 gauge. But they still came back and gnawed on the white pine logs.

They are eating my house!


Two months ago I installed two of these electric rat repellers off of Amazon:


Advanced Ultrasonic Rodent Repelling System | Superior Rodent Repeller, 2020 Upgraded Electronic Ultrasonic Squirrel Repellent Plug in, Rat Repeller, Repel Rodents, Mice, Rats, Squirrels.
by Sectpod
4.2 out of 5 stars 256 ratings | 45 answered questions
Price: $26.99 & FREE Returns


I have big porches with huge roofs. I hung one of these on each porch. And the squirrels are gone! I haven't even seen a squirrel in the yard since I installed these rat and squirrel repellers. You put two of these in your attic, and I bet the squirrels will be gone.

hope you don't have pex waterlines in the attic.

We've had the squirrel issue for about 2-3 years with the cedar siding, don't have many 'resident' squirrels anymore just transients.......

Before I put the rat repellers up, I got this photo of one of the squirrels that was eating my house.

First things first-how are they getting into the attic? At my place, they came in through the space between the chimney and hot water heater exhaust pipe. The chimney protector had been damaged, and the hardware cloth in the attic had broken. Once those problems were fixed, a few rat traps were left up there to take care of any stragglers. That was a few years ago, and no squirrels in the traps yet.

What you need is a couple good squill traps.

Gentleman:

Looks like a phased approach, then.

- Fix/build the wall that keeps them out.

- Track down and eliminate the ones inside.

- Reduce demand to enter by lessening the desirability of the place the closer they get.

Seems completely logical.

Got a plan now, thanks!

These look good! I'll try them

These look good I'll try them. Thanks for the tip.

Better get on them quick , they can cause some serious damage to wiring and such . Ask me how I know.

Red squirrels seem to be more of a problem that gray squirrels when it comes to getting inside of houses

If you try and use a live trap, you need to wrap the outside of it with black duct tape. Make it like a tunnel, otherwise they won’t go in. It works pretty well with peanut butter for bait.

Yeah. Bastids chewed through the heavy wire mesh covering the attic exhaust from intruders. Fixing that will be part of the solution.

I have tried mouse traps to no avail..........

they do make a rodent poison bait that works on squirrels, causes them to dehydrate rapidly..........

I had a 'glider' in my attic, around my chimney, couple of weeks ago, wife called me outta bed about 2AM, and there the little bastid was sitting on the window sill, on the INSIDE............ wife and I looked at each other, how the hell is this gonna work!?!?!?!? About that time the little fella ran back into the firebox, its a gas fireplace, and back into the attic it went....

Got the bait, set some traps, put out a couple of glue pads, set them all on top of the firebox............ one trap tripped, and there it was stuck to a glue pad........... turned out it was a female, haven't seen or HEARD anymore since!!!!

Caught a big rat the other day.

Watching that squirrel video shows me how they can get snapped and recover. The first attempt at killing that birdseed eating rat in my tool shed it merely tripped the victor trap and got away. I re-set the trap with cheese and peanut butter and the next night that bastard got out of the trap again. But I spotted it dead on the floor a few feet away. It had puked up blood so the trap must've punctured a lung. I hate rats. And house eating squirrels.

Traps are great. I have caught a bunch of squirrels and rats in traps.
However, as I learned the hard way, they will just come back again.
That is why I switched over to electronic rat repellers.

I had the squirrel invasion a few years ago. Caught one in a box trap, only one. They never went for rat traps. Tried to sneak up in the attic when they were active to shoot them, but that wasn't productive. Finally used hunting skills. Waited for the next afternoon rain shower. Squirrels took shelter I the attic. As soon as the rain ended, they all exited to eat, frolic and play outside. I set up my Lee Harvey Oswald/Deeley Plaza shooting position from my 2nd story window and played Carlos Hathcock with my Ruger 10/22. Whacked 6 or 7 in a matter of minutes and the problem has not returned. It was also fun!