Wildlife, living next to nature

[BigV]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[footfootfoot]

You need to floss your floor joists as well as brush them.

[glatt]

So there had been an occasional rustle coming from the eaves. I thought it was birds in the gutter outside. My wife thought it was a mouse in the eaves. So she got me to set several mouse traps. I also set a big rat snap trap. I was skeptical. That was a week ago.

This morning at 6am we woke to a loud snapping sound and a small animal dragging a trap around in the eaves in our bedroom. We've got lots of suitcases and stuff stored in there, and it was banging its way all around our stuff in the eaves with a snap trap attached to it. Then I heard two more loud snaps as it spasmed into other traps I set.

Not what you want to hear. I was hoping for a loud snap and then silence.

We listened to it drag itself around in the eaves and then it dropped down into one of the joist cavities and started dragging itself across the living room ceiling and across the ceiling in my daughter's bedroom.

I figured it would die in a day or two, and I just wanted to track where it was so I could cut a hole in the ceiling and retrieve the rotting body.

So I began my work day, sitting at the computer in my makeshift office, and just made a point of paying attention to where it was.

Then I heard it from the eaves in my office (my son's bedroom). I had been thinking about how to catch it, and decided a towel thrown over it would be the safest thing. Leather gloves, of course. I moved a shitload of my son's furniture out of the way so I could open the hatch of his eaves, and when I got the hatch cracked open slightly, I saw the flying squirrel just sitting there in my flashlight's beam with a plastic mouse trap clamped to its face. I wasn't suited up yet and didn't have a towel to throw over it, so I closed the hatch and got my stuff together.

I came back and opened the hatch, and the flying squirrel was gone.

So I turned back to my actual job and got a lot of work done. Eventually, in the late afternoon, I heard the squirrel again in the same eaves, so I quietly put on all my gear. I opened the hatch and saw it way at the back of the eaves where a tiny little passage about 4 inches wide leads to the wall behind the bathtub. I climbed into the dusty eaves, and crawled toward the squirrel. It was hung up between a stud and the bathroom vent duct, and was trying to back away from me, but the mouse trap was snagging on the stud.

I grabbed for it and pulled it toward me. In my movement doing that, I knocked the mousetrap clamped to its face right off. It was momentarily stunned, with my headlamp shining right into its night vision eyes, and I grabbed frantically for it with just my gloves on as it tried to start running away. I was able to grab it, and shove it into the towel. I kind of wadded the towel up around it and then backed slowly out of the eaves. Went downstairs, looking like a madman, and asked my daughter to drive me to the local woods, 6 blocks away, where I could release it from my tight grip.

So she did. And when I unfurled the towel to let it go, the dead flying squirrel dropped onto the ground. Apparently holding a squirrel in a death grip for a few minutes will actually kill it.

At least it will rot in the woods and not in my ceiling.

I just bought a real trap on Amazon, so if another one gets in, I can actually trap it in a way that it won't go dragging the trap around.

[Dude111]

This is a nice thread

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Dude111

This is a nice thread

you are truly weird

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by glatt

So there had been an occasional rustle coming from the eaves. I thought it was birds in the gutter outside. My wife thought it was a mouse in the eaves.

...stuff happens...

At least it will rot in the woods and not in my ceiling.

I just bought a real trap on Amazon, so if another one gets in, I can actually trap it in a way that it won't go dragging the trap around.

That kind of intimate gruesomeness is an acquired taste. You are so lucky though. My BIL emeritus had a squirrel die in a wall cavity in a bathroom (old victorian house, behind a steam radiator in front of wallpapered plaster and lath wall) He and SIL emeritus decided that it wasn't worth the cost to remove it. That bathroom stank for a decade or more.


I have a woodpecker visiting my house. Disturbingly, the specific area that I just installed new trim.

[glatt]

The horror! Seriously. I would never put up with that.

[glatt]

ETA... the wood pecker just likes hearing himself.

[monster]

Originally Posted by glatt

Apparently holding a squirrel in a death grip for a few minutes will actually kill it.

At least it will rot in the woods and not in my ceiling.

Originally Posted by Dude111

This is a nice thread

Originally Posted by BigV

you are truly weird

LOL (several times)

Some days you are chronically verbose and some days you just NAIL IT with minimal comment. Love it. Variety is the spice of life and all...

[glatt]

Yesterday, I was walking around the house with binoculars, looking for any little gaps where a squirrel could possibly get in.

I finally found it. Under the valley flashing over our front porch. You don't notice the gap unless you are really looking. I got the ladder out and shined a flashlight up under the valley flashing. In the gleam of the flashlight, you can see that animals have been using it as a highway. There's a dirt pattern that couldn't have been made any other way.



So I bent a piece of sheet aluminum and riveted it under the valley flashing to close the gap.

[burns334]

rats with tails

[monster]

bleuch. I struggle to keep the mice out of the basement. And those darn woodpeckers! Pretty and I like the sound.... but not on my house, please?

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by burns334

rats with tails

Aren't those rats?

[BigV]

they are. rats with wings maybe?

[fargon]

Originally Posted by BigV

they are. rats with wings maybe?

Those are Bats I think.