Did we hire the right people for the job?
Photo by Simone Mascellari 🇮🇹 on Unsplash
I had a squirrel problem, and I had yielded to the experts. It turns out the experts were anything but. My wife reached out to a company on a Thursday, and they had an opening on the following Monday. Everyone she had reached out to at that time had no immediate openings. This particular company charged a reasonable $350 and were upfront with the following details:
They would find the culprits.
They would live trap and remove them.
They could find the entry point but would yield to us to close it.
I made mention of purchasing live traps in my previous writing. I wasn’t sure if the traps were working, given the bait seemed to come up missing and I had no captured squirrels. It had me wondering if we had extra stealthy squirrels, faulty traps, or something else altogether.
I will give the experts some credit because they came to the same conclusion I did. We had more than a squirrel problem. We also had a mice problem, and there was no telling how long it had been going on. The experts had their live traps for the squirrels and set up a few throughout the attic and near the house’s base at the exterior. We have several trees that provide direct access to our roof.
The next day, one of the traps yielded a squirrel. I was ecstatic as it proved we did have a squirrel issue. Over three days, they had caught two additional squirrels. Mission accomplished, or so I thought. It turns out the squirrels he caught were outside our house and near the tree’s base. My first thought was, of course, you capture squirrels outside our house. I live in squirrel central, and I would be surprised if you didn’t catch a squirrel in their natural habitat.
I was also a little put off when my wife revealed to me the plan for the live squirrels once they are trapped. Upon my wife’s prodding as to where they release the squirrels, he eluded to the fact they would eliminate them. The live trapping seemed to be a facade for the absolute endgame. (I learned this after the fact)
Over the three-day time frame, they had not located the entry point but had “ideas” where we could look to find the entry point. They left additional bait boxes for our “suspected” mouse problem. The bait boxes were stocked with feed which would instill dehydration into the mice. This would then cause the mice to leave our attic searching for water, and then they would die.
Since our last visit, my wife and I have closed off every entry point we could find outside our house using steel wool. The “expert” recommended this material as a detraction at the entry point. In the best-case scenario, we have eliminated any outside visitors, and the mice exited our house before we closed off the entry points. The worst-case scenario has our mice visitors still in our attic and possibly dying from dehydration. Knowing our luck, I suspect we still have a pest problem and will need additional experts to remediate the issue.
Photo by Frenjamin Benklin on Unsplash