Posted on 01/27/2019 7:07:45 AM PST by EinNYC
About 8:30 a.m. this morning, I heard more noise, but I was still muzzy from sleep and could not tell if it was my little rascal cat Zizu tearing around the house for fun or "The Animal in the Attic". I looked out the window and then UP, and by golly, I saw some of the flashing was bent back. I got my camera and took a picture of it, from a bedroom window. I then looked out all my windows and saw a similar bent part of the flashing out the kitchen window. Do these look like entry points for this attic animal?
When I lived in Houston, Texas, we got roof rats in our attic. There was a tree with a branch that was just touching the eave. They had chewed a hole under the soffet and were getting in and out through it. Chopped off the branch and patched the hole and we didn’t have them anymore.
oh i didn’t realize they would climb up the side of multiple stories of building without some other sort of assitance like wires or tree limbs or lower roof aiding them getting to 2nd or 3rd story roof.
So, are my photos good evidence? Do they look like entrance points to my attic? Should I include these in my next email to the management? I’ve been asking them to get some professional animal control in here, but they’re trying to cheap it out.
I say squirrels.
You need to have a professional nuisance vermin killer go up there and do her job. You can’t be maudlin about animals that carry disease and can do major damage in your house. Especially animals with such a short and prolific breeding cycle.
Case 1: I just closed on my home and as the wife and I pulled into the driveway of our new home, I saw a squirrel running along the peak of the roof, came to the end, lifted a shingle and ZIP, disappeared.
Went in the home, climbed into the attic and found the spot, and saw a squirrel run away and hid somewhere that I couldn’t see.
Called a pest control guy and he set a “humane” trap and the next day, checking the trap, found mama squirrel with her FIVE smaller juvenile squirrels in the trap.
Case 2: New home, different state, saw a rat do about the same thing but entered under a eave and entered into our attic. Called a very nice pest control guy and he said we likely had more rats in the attic because of so much new construction driving them to seek alternate “homes.”
Solution, the pest control guy trapped several over the next few weeks and he also reinforced the eaves so they were flush and immobile, and he sealed the home by putting up metal barriers all around the eaves and other protrusions on the roof.
Problem solved.
Bravo for the hat tip to that funny commercial.
Hah.
Bats in her belfry as well.
Sounds great. Now if only I can get the management to call in the professionals and stop with the Havahart traps that didn’t trap anything.
Meanwhile, raccoon poop is disease laden.
Really bad stuff.
In reality I believe the best way is to hire someone who removes wildlife for a living, and once that is done fix the entry points critters use. Those holes are letting in critters, but worse they are letting in water, and cold air. Both which will be costly if left unattended.
Squirrels can squeak through the smallest of spaces. Same with most rodents such as mice. If the skull can fit, they will get the rest of the body to make it through the opening. Judging by what you’ve said. It’s a rodent.
We have raccoons. Night time videos by trail cams make them look like ants at our feeding station. I’ve live trapped some of them weighing in at 55 lbs. Very huge, very vicious.
Raccoons are also very destructive. They will destroy most anything. Whereas a squirrel will only make holes to get at food or shelter.
Since this is a vanity, I’ll put my own two cents worth in about trapping. We trap varmints to get rid of them. We do not use foot hold, snare or body traps. The last thing we want to do is get someones dog, a deer or whatever in a destructive trap. We use live traps so we can sort them out. We use live traps for coons. We used to catch skunks and house cats. To stop that I created a small door just big enough for a cat and skunk to escape, yet keep the coon in there. This way you know for fact what’s caught without harming an unintended animal.
Opossum tail:
Looks like a rat tail to me, in all the opossum pics the tail is lighter.
Hard to tell, those pictures are kind of small......
Sent the cat up there. If he comes back licking his chops, it was a squirrel. If he doesn’t came back, it’s a raccoon.
It would be better to trap. We used poison until we got a putrifying dead rat in the wall. Ya don’t want that. It died on the other side of the wall from my bed. Fortunately, we have a crawl space under our house so we didn’t have to open up the wall up.
You're about as funny as a case of ebola.
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