You think squirrels are cute? Think again. Oh sure they might be fun to watch or photograph, but only if there aren't too many of them. Not everything with fur is cute you know.
I live in a house in a wooded neighborhood. There are about eight squirrels per lot. There are sometimes this many in one tree, and we have five pretty big trees. Although Kent is known for its black squirrels, we see about half black and the other half grey or gold. To a homeowner, squirrels are the enemy.
Squirrels like to get all up in your attic. Especially for winter. They chew through siding and wood and insulation to get in. They bring leaves and make nests. They bring their friends and their dates with them, maybe their wife and kids too. The attic squirrels make odd skritchy noises when you are in your bed trying to sleep. Now and then you have to pay some old guy a crapload of money to set traps in your attic. He charges you for the job, and then charges extra for "humane disposal" of every squirrel he catches. After you get the squirrels out, you have to spend a weekend afternoon getting all the leaves out. Oh, and more squirrels will keep coming in unless you repair the damage and nail up lots of heavy gauge wire mesh to keep them out. You can pay somebody to do this or, if you are Handyman Negri, you can burn another day buying heavy screen and wire cutters, lumber, saw, nails, screws, etc. to try and squirrel-proof your house.
Then, even though they can't get in, they still love to bring piles of leaves and weave them skillfully into your vent along the vent ledge to create a soft squirrel bed. All these leaves totally clog up your vent until your attic and eventually your house get really hot in the summer. How to discourage them? I put mothballs around where they like to hang out. It stinks them out. But it also stinks out my hands, but not as much.
When I'm not busy setting mothballs around the attic vents, I'm still battling squirrels. They want to steal the suet and bird seed I put out for the birds - so I put up squirrel baffles. They run along the fence - I put mean-looking fake birds on the fence to scare them. They dig up the dirt in my potted plants - I put wire screen over the soil. They chew off young tree branches for their nests and drop them all over the front lawn - I throw tennis balls at them. They sit in the tree and make the dogs bark - I throw Frisbees at them. They dig up all my crocus bulbs for a snack - I get really mad and throw Lucie's rubber jingle ball at them.
I wish I had a BB-gun like Anne's Grandpa Bullat: BINGO! One of them would at least have a hole in his ear. But squirrel management is all part of home ownership here in northeast Ohio. Stupid squirrels.
