Tag Archives: squirrels
Ten top pests that can hurt your home
In a recent paper, researchers from North Carolina State University tried to estimate how many species of insect-like critters (arthropods) could be found in homes. They intensively searched 50 North Carolina houses and looked for as many different kinds of living and dead arthropods as they could find. Altogether they identified 579 different species from 304 different families. In fact, out of the 554 rooms scoured for the research, only 5 rooms had no detectable arthropods at all (I bet they didn’t look hard enough). It shouldn’t come as much surprise… Read More →
Rodents in attics
There are few household maintenance issues as alarming or frustrating as hearing rodent footsteps in the ceiling or attic. This happened to me earlier this year in my home, and recently my wife’s office has been hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet above the ceiling tiles at their place of work. At my home the culprit turned out to be a squirrel that had loosened mortar on the roof/siding interface on my roof. A 1/2 inch gap is all that a squirrel needs to get into an attic. In my wife’s office… Read More →
A squirrelly problem
Squirrels may be cute, and I enjoy watching squirrels in the woods as much as anyone. I’m less entranced, however, by the squirrel cartel currently occupying my backyard. A few weeks ago, after returning home from an out of town trip, I noticed something wasn’t quite right with the cedar elm tree in my backyard. An entire branch of the tree appeared to be dead. Inspection close to the trunk revealed that the bark had been peeled off, chewed off actually, girdling the entire branch. I had noticed… Read More →