Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9412160003
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Colonies of them. Condos of them. Mamas, babies, granddads, aunts and uncles.
They're so established, they have a front door, a side door and a back door, and I don't know what to do.
An exterminator says they're so deep into the house, so far away from their entry points, that he'd have trouble gassing them without doing the same to me.
Besides, I'd have to deal with the stench - and the guilt.
People say to just toss some mothballs in the holes, but these squirrels are so far back up in the walls, I'd have to blast the mothballs in with a cannon.
Carpenters have been out, too, and they don't have the answer, either. They can plug the holes, but they've seen squirrels chew right through metal.
Calls to various state agencies turned up no solutions. I talked with a Game and Inland Fisheries guy about ferrying the squirrels one by one to the Blue Ridge in a humane trap, but he said it's illegal to transport wildlife like that.
I keep waiting for the right time and the right way to evict them. I hate the thought of litters dying because the mothers are shut out of the nests. This fall seemed like a good time, long after spring births and before the squirrels gathered too many nuts for winter. Then a female squirrel frisked past an upstairs window, her teats wet from nursing. There still were babies in the walls.
I might just continue to shelter these rodents. One friend's had them in her house for 14 years.
But I hear the squirrels gnawing on my timbers at all hours and when I'm on vacation, I'm sure somebody will call and tell me my house has burned down. Something about a mysterious electrical short in the walls.
My mother clipped an ad for a $90 device that emits an ultrasonic sound to drive mice, rats and squirrels from houses. But a company spokesman says the sound won't penetrate walls. And if I put it outside, near the squirrel holes, he says the sound will just be absorbed by the great outdoors.
I admit to no consistency when it comes to these squirrels.
After years of cursing them, I discovered a half-grown squirrel the other day, cowering outside in a corner near the front door. A cat was about to pounce on it.
I put on gloves and, with my next-door neighbor's encouragement, grabbed the little thing by the back of the neck and hoisted it onto my porch. The cat's owner took the kitty inside, and the baby squirrel was safe. It quickly learned how to climb the walls inside the porch.
Left alone, it shrieked a distress signal every minute or so. In a tree, then on the roof, an adult squirrel rasped a reply I was sure would lead the baby to the squirrel kingdom's front door, under the gutter just a few feet from the porch.
In the night, the shrieking and the rasping ceased, and I fell asleep thinking all was well in Squirrel Land.
The first thing I saw as I left for work the next day was the dead baby squirrel on the ground. I cried, kicked at my car tires and cursed.
Makes no sense, me and these squirrels.
\ If anyone out there has any ideas about how I can drive my furry friends up a tree, give me a call at 981-3358.
by CNB