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Catching Squirrels
Squirrels are active rodents and are extremely fast reactors when they doubt to see themselves in threat or risk. They can climb and jump over trees, wires, walls, attics and other parts of your property.
If you find that a squirrel to be wandering in your house, catching it is not an easy task. The reason is that they are active and have long incisors. In an attempt to defend themselves, they can bite your hands, and the bite can be as deep as reaching the bone. Therefore, if you plan to handle it and catch it individually, it is suggested to wear thick gloves to protect yourself.
1. How to handle a squirrel?
Before you start to catch a squirrel, you must know how to handle a squirrel while attempting to catch it or after catching it.
Below is the list of guidelines for handling a squirrel:
- Squirrels are very active. Hence, make sure that you do not give it any scope to escape.
- Try to give very less space of freedom for the squirrel as you keep approaching it.
- Prefer to make ground work for creating an enclosed space so that the squirrel can find fewer chances of escape.
- Wear thick gloves before you attempt to touch it as it might bite your hands.
- Hold the head and neck firmly and ensure that the grip is steady enough to hold it without any net.
- Avoid holding tail as it might slip off your control and escape.
2. How to catch a squirrel with hands?
The following is the discussion of catching a squirrel:
- You can use a net or hand to catch the squirrel. Hold a net and guide the squirrel towards a box, cage, cover or bag.
- Once the squirrel enters near the required destination, create a situation such that it cannot escape anywhere except going into the cage or bag.
- Preferably use net with padded rim. You can find humane catching cage in the market. Make use of such cages if you find that the space is too enclosed.
- Try to push it into the bag using your hands or net.
- Once the squirrel is trapped in the net, try to hold its head and neck firmly before you remove the net off the rodent.
- Ensure that you do not hold its tail instead of head and neck as its skin is furry and can easily get slipped off your hands and escape.
- Transfer the rodent into the cage or bag or any other item into which you want to trap it.
- Take it far away from your surroundings, which is as distant as 5 miles and release it.
Learn more about how to get rid of Squirrels
Squirrel Trap
If you reside in an area that is full of trees, then chances of existence of squirrels is high. Most of the times, squirrels choose attic or any other area indoors to have babies. When you try to trap them to get rid of them, ensure that you are not going against the law.
One of the legal methods to trap the squirrel is to build a one way door such that the squirrels once entered through the door will be unable to return back. You can build such devices by making use of materials in your home. This method is not only legal, but also humane.
1. Make only primary entry point to be available
Investigate your home to find entry points through which the squirrels enter your house. You can find most of them in the attic or areas where you can hear sounds made by squirrels. If you find more than one entry hole, seal all of them except the primary one.
This makes the squirrel to have only one point of entry and exit and your work to trap them will be much easier. Then, install the trap near the primary entry point so that the squirrels enter the trap through the door and will be unable to come back in.
2. Search for baby squirrels
If the crowd contains pregnant or mother squirrels, then you can find nests that contain babies. Each nest contains 3 to 5 baby squirrels. Before you attempt to handle and trap the mother squirrel, ensure that you first trap the baby squirrels. Else, the babies would die and this is inhumane. Apart from being inhumane, you also need to bear the smell of the dead squirrels.
3. Prepare one way door at the primary entry point
While attempting to install the device near the primary entry point, make use of a hardware cloth such that the squirrel goes in outward direction from the cloth towards outside. Because of using the cloth near the hole, the size of the hole decreases to such an extent that the squirrel has to squeeze itself to come outside. Once it is out, it would be impossible for it to get in again.
4. Install a cage trap near primary entry point
Once the squirrel is out from the primary entry point, ensure that you catch it and there is no scope for the squirrel to escape. For this, you need to install a cage trap near the primary entry point. The cage should have a one door entry.
As soon as the squirrel is out of the primary entry point, it should be trapped into the cage. Make arrangements accordingly, and remember that this is a humane way to eradicate them.
5. Close the cage door
Once the squirrel is inside the cage, you need to carefully remove the cage by uninstalling it. While doing so, ensure that you do not give any scope for the trapped rodent to escape. Once you carefully remove the cage, close its door immediately so that the squirrel is trapped perfectly.
6. Release the trapped squirrel
After you have successfully trapped the squirrel, now it is time for you to release it. For this, take the cage to a far off place that is as far as 5 miles from your residence. Then, release it out by opening the door of the cage.
Havahart Trap
Havahart traps are multipurpose traps and can be used to trap not only squirrels, but also other rodents like mice and larger critters. However, when attempting to trap, the success rate depends on the sizes of both trap and the rodent.
Havahart traps are available in two categories: two door and single door. The two door cage trap is less expensive when compared to that of Havahard One Door Cage Trap. However, one door cage trap is used for trapping animals bigger than squirrels like foxes, small dogs, rabbits etc.
If the squirrels are of bigger size then, one door cage trap would be an ideal one. Both the models are wire cages that contain baits that hold the table from inside. If there is any movement in the bait tables, the trap doors drop down immediately. Once the doors drop, the squirrels will be unable to open it and has to bear the cage until it is released.
Live Trap
Live trap means to trap the squirrel in a humane way. You are not attempting to kill the squirrel, but trying to stop its existence in your residing area by trapping it alive and releasing it to go free, but very far from your place.
Live trap is a device that can have one or two doors using which you can trap the rodents alive. As it is dangerous to deal with squirrels manually without any protection, it is suggested to trap them using such devices. For this, you need to have patience and proper squirrel bait.
Once you are ready with the bait, you can lure the squirrel to guide it towards the trap. Once the squirrel enters the trap and tries to access the bait, the door is automatically closed so that the squirrel cannot go out from the trap.
Live traps come in various sizes and if the size of the squirrel is bigger than that of the live trap then, the squirrel can easily escape as the door will not be closed properly. Therefore, always prefer a trap of larger size so that it can trap the squirrels of all sizes.
Chipmunk Trap
Chipmunks settle in yards, garages and yards and become a great trouble to be dealt with when in large crowds. Especially, households has to see hell with their existence. These rodents burrow the floor and tiles in your house and create a great damage to your property. If proper steps are not taken at the right time then, they prove to be a great hazardous to your assets.
If you want to control chipmunk existence in a humane way then, trapping is the best solution. However, many people are not aware of how to handle and trap a chipmunk indoors. You can get a number of easy-to-use professional traps in the market, which serve as an ideal way to trap chipmunks.
When you plan to buy one, you need to be aware that there are two types of traps available in the market. One is a humane live trap while the other is lethal trap. Lethal traps are available in many varieties like electrocution traps, snap traps and homemade traps.
The traditional and the most common homemade trap is the bucket method, which makes use of a bucket to trap the chipmunk. The method is effective and cheap. If you cannot afford to spend money on buying expensive chipmunk traps, then you can go for bucket trap.
Squirrel Bait
Squirrel bait means to tempt the squirrel with food in order to trap them. You can get trap pan in the pesticide market using which, you can spread peanut butter and place few whole peanuts to stick on them like a shell. You can also stick few peanuts behind the trap pan and few at the front of the pan to lure the squirrel in. This is considered as one of the best and most successful squirrel baits.
In certain scenarios, squirrels stick inside attic or other parts of indoor properties and do not prefer to come out in any circumstances. They exhibit stubborn character and wildlife trappers consider that this is one of the challenging tasks to handle. By sticking to the same place for a longer time, the squirrel starts to feel thirsty.
During this period, the trappers make use of fruits as squirrel bait. One of the best and ideal fruit bait is orange, which can lure the squirrel as it can sense moisture inside the fruite. Therefore, it gets tempted to satisfy its thirst.
Apart from the above discussed baits, list of some of the other baits are bird seed, sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, all kinds of nuts, fruits like apples, cherries and sweets like marshmallows. However, peanut butter bait is the best of all.
Squirrel Droppings
Squirrel droppings are much similar to that of rat droppings. If you have no idea about rat droppings and try to compare the droppings of both squirrels and rats then, probably you might be easily confused. Squirrel droppings differ from rat droppings in the way that they are quite longer and narrower though they do not differ in color.
The shape again differs in the way that squirrel droppings are oval and elongated when compared to that of rat. Squirrels comparatively make more feces while attempting to clear their bowels when compared to that of rats. These rodents are vulnerable to both internal and external parasites.
They carry a lot of harmful bacteria. Therefore, you need to take precautionary steps when attempting to clean the feces. Hence, when trying to deal with squirrel poop, ensure that you wear thick gloves and face mask so that you can escape from inhaling the detrimental bacteria.
When a squirrel experiences of being trapped or unsecured, it panics. As a symbol, it excretes and urinates in the nearby surrounding areas. By looking at the droppings, you can learn and discover many useful things such as freshness and age of the previous droppings by comparing them with those that the squirrel has just dropped.
If the poop is hard compared to the fresh droppings then it means that the feces was dropped long time back. If the color is comparatively dark then it means that it has been dropped long back and has just faded with time.
Though there are rarely recorded reports on illness carried with squirrel feces, it is fact that the poop do carry serious diseases like fever, rabies and powassen encephalitis.
Usually, insects wander around the feces and settle in different places of the property, thus spreading various types of harmful bacteria, microorganisms and diseases. This is the reason why it is not suggestible for the households to deal with the bat poop.
They can prefer to approach trained professionals who very well know how to tackle with the situation. Squirrels not only wander in your property, but also they carry ticks and fleas which might even infect your pets.
Squirrel Infestation
Infestation is the presence of numerous amounts of rodents in big crowds. Squirrel infestation is generally found in attics and roofs. Though you find it entertaining to see squirrels wandering around the trees of your residing area, you might feel it annoying if they are too many in number.
They cause a lot of destruction to your property and are a great havoc to your assets. They chew, bite and destruct all the wires, plastic casings and make their nests within the indoors. The damage is heavy if you do not take proper steps in the initial stages.
You might need to spend a lot in repairing the damages. Therefore, if there is a squirrel infestation in your residing area, take careful and effective steps to eradicate them. If possible, do not hesitate to approach professionals who can do the work for you.
How to get rid of squirrel urine smell
Squirrel urine smell is very nasty and if you want to get rid of the foul odor, you need to first clean the area with a standard industrial vacuum cleaner. Ensure that you wear a thick mask to avoid inhaling the smell. Try removing the layers of squirrel droppings and the soil insulated with urine.
Once it is clean, it is now time for you to take steps to get rid of the smell. For this, mix bleaching powder in water and sprinkle in the area so that all the germs are killed. Wait until the area is dry. For this, you can use tissue papers to dry the area. Store all the used tissue papers in a plastic cover or bag and throw it once you are done.
Now that all the germs are killed, use a deodorizing product like Earth Care Odor Remover Bags, Odor Hunter or Bac-A-Zap. Alternatively, you can also place a bowl of vinegar and a bowl of baking soda in opposite directions to each other. The baking soda exterminates acidic odor molecules while vinegar exterminates basic odor molecules. Wait till the air is fully aired out.
Conclusion
Squirrels are active rodents that can cause a great damage to your property if neglected. They can chew the internal wiring in your house and reside in attics, walls and other places to make babies. Handling squirrel extermination individually is not an easy task.
Markets make you available with various devices that can be used to repel squirrels. You can find squirrel repellents, squirrel baits, sprays, gels, traps etc. However, if the crowd is big then it is a wise idea to approach professionals who can do the work for you. Also, you need to be aware of the fact that it is very important to exterminate them in a humane way and ensure that you are not against the law.
