Lora Says » Squirrels in the Attic in Blackpool, Southport and The Fylde.

Squirrels in the Attic in Blackpool, Southport and The Fylde.

January 26th, 2012

The squirrel population in the North West U.K. has boomed over the last 20 years to the extent that they have grown to be a major household pest dealt with by Squirrels in Attic Pest Control

The grey squirrels which we see in our parks and gardens (Sciurus carolinensis) are not native to the British isles, having been brought here less than two-hundred years ago.

Like other members of the Sciuridae family, the Grey Squirrel is a hoarder; it staches food away in many small caches for subsequent recovery. Some caches are temporary, especially those made near the source of a sudden glut of food.

Other hoards are more permanent and are not used until many weeks later. It has been seen that each squirrel makes several thousand caches each season. The squirrels have very good spatial memory for the positions of these hoards, and use distant and nearby landmarks to locate them. Smell is used when the squirrel is within a few centimetres of the target.

The nest of the squirrel is called a dray (or drey) and it is standard for the female to have two litters per year, with two to four babies each.

They are often minor pests in the garden, uprooting 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 attend houses where a dray has been built in a loft or attic space.

Squirrels are true rodents and as such have continually growing teeth; the very word rodent comes from the Latin word rodere which means to gnaw and this they do very well indeed.

It is rare to visit a roof void where a dray has been found and find that they have not chewed electric cables, indeed it is estimated that forty percent of fires without an obvious cause may be started by rodents damaging wiring.

Unfortunately they can also chew through water-pipes, especially with the modern movement towards plastic piping.

As if that is not enough, many household insurance policies exclude damage caused by vermin so if a squirrel floods your home by gnawing through a water pipe in the loft you may find yourself without any cover.

Removing Squirrels in Loft requires a professional, not least in as much as the law regarding squirrels is ever changing. You cannot simply get a packet of poison from your local store and deal with them that way as you would be committing an offence.

Furthermore you cannot catch them and move them some distance away, quite apart from the fact that removing a squirrel from the area of its food caches probably cause it do die of starvation, it is also a criminal offence under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 under which it is illegal to release a grey squirrel in in the British Isles.

That applies also to rescuing and/or releasing injured squirrels.

In the vast majority of cases trapping is the most realistic option and this must be done in a specified manner with routine, timed inspections of the traps.