Have you ever been awakened in the middle of the night by gnawing sounds coming from your attic?...yes, I really was up at 4 AM last week with the fun knowledge that we have pesky little animals...again...
First it was squirrels...that was a few years ago...right after we had the roof replaced...the problem?...the roofing company failed to install one piece of flashing (be careful who you hire)...
The next thing we knew we had an entire squirrel family...living in the window soffit above my husband's "man cave"...a room I rarely enter...he didn't tell me...until he felt he had no choice...he had been afraid I would want to exterminate them...which, by the way, turns out to be illegal...so my husband waited to alert me to the problem until after the squirrels had chewed through the alarm system wiring...
We outwitted those critters...thanks to the help of a creature control guy...who rather creatively forced them out of the attic by installing a temporary animal slide...yes, just like a water slide only a lot smaller...
Made of 4" PVC pipe, the slide rested on a bed of tin...both sprayed liberally with silicone...it became a matter of out-waiting them...
It was summer in Sacramento and hotter than hell in our attic...in just under 36 hours, those squirrels and their babies came flying out of that pipe...doing little animal acrobatics in the air...slipping and sliding...they flew off the roof, no longer able to gain their footing...or get back into the attic...a real blessing as we learned that Western gray squirrels will travel 50 miles to return to a favorite nesting place...
I guess it should have been no surprise to discover that we have little animals again...we had more work done to the house last year...this time we replaced the air and heating systems...new lines were installed going into the attic...leaving small holes at the top and bottom of the flashing installed on the side of the house...and as we have now learned, it only takes one hole the size of a dime for a rat to get in...
So, it looks like the creature guy will be on our doorstep again soon...this time at least we won't need to repair the alarm system...and next time we have work done on the roof or attic, we'll proactively take care of the problem...or we'll get a cat who's a mouser...