Squirrels in the Attic in Sale, Timperley and Altrincham.
The squirrel population in Manchester, Lancashire & Cheshire has boomed over the last 20 years to the extent that they are now a major household pest dealt with by Squirrels in Attic Pest Control
The grey squirrels which we see in our gardens (Sciurus carolinensis) are not native to Britain, having been brought here here less than two-hundred years America and Canada
Like other members of the family Sciuridae, the Grey Squirrel is a scatter-hoarder; it staches food away in numerous small caches for subsequent recovery. Some hoards are temporary, especially those made near the site of a sudden surplus of food.
Others are more permanent and are not eaten until many weeks later. It has been seen that each squirrel makes several thousand hoards each year. They have very good spatial memory for the locations of these caches, and use distant and nearby landmarks to locate them. Smell is used once the squirrel is within a few centimetres of the cache.
The nest of the squirrel is called a dray (or drey) and it is normal for the female to have two litters per year, each of two to four young..
They are often minor pests in the garden, rooting bulbs and eating food intended for birds but can become major pests when they enter our houses.
It is increasingly common for Trafford Pest Control to call out to homes where a dray has been placed in a loft or attic space.
Squirrels are true rodents and as such have continually growing teeth; the actual word rodent derives from the Latin word rodere which means to gnaw and this they do extremely well.
It is rare to visit a roof void where a dray has been built and find that they have not damaged electric cables, indeed it is estimated that forty percent of fires without an obviously attributable cause may have been started by rodents damaging wiring.
Unfortunately they can also chew through water-pipes, especially with the recent movement towards plastic piping.
As if that is not enough, most household insurance policies exclude damage by rodents so if a squirrel floods your property by going through a water pipe in the loft you may find yourself without any cover.
Eradicating Squirrels in Loft requires professional help, not least in as much as the law regarding squirrels is ever changing. You cannot simply get a packet of rodent poison from your local hardware and deal with them that way as you would be committing an offence.
Furthermore you cannot trap them and relocate them some distance from your home, not only would removing a squirrel from the area of its food stores probably condemn it to death by starvation, it is also commintting an offence under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 which makes it illegal to release a grey squirrel in Britain.
That applies also to rescuing and/or rehabilitating and releasing injured squirrels.
In most cases trapping is the most realistic option and this must be done in a specified manner with routine, timed inspections of the traps.
Trapped squirrels are then despatched humanely.
If you have a squirrel problem in Lancashire, Cheshire or Manchester contact us on 01257 230637
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 29th, 2010 at 4:21 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.