Ex-Squirrel Lover, that is.
Oh how I have always loved watching squirrels dart around the yard with their fluffy tails swishing back and forth. I even love it when they bark and fuss when they are mad about something.
But right before Christmas, Nicholas noticed a little hole in the side of our house. It is in the siding on the corner of the back part of the house between the kitchen on the first floor and Rachel's bedroom on the second floor. It was a little hole and with the craziness of the holidays we forgot about it.
Until....
The other day I was in Rachel's room reading to her and I heard a loud scratching sound and then several loud bumps on the other side of her wall.
Eeek! Whatever made that hole is inside the walls of our home and just inches away from the interior of my baby girl's room.
The next morning I went out to look at the hole and saw this.
Wow, that's a hole!
I got up closer to it and took this shot. You can see that this critter has gnawed through an inch of siding and about 2 inches of wood. Determined little booger.
It's been totally quiet inside the house so I think what I heard was the squirrel chewing through the last bit of wood and then breaking free into the innards of our walls.
Stuart and I did some research on pest companies and made some calls. The company we chose came out and said that this is definitely a squirrel hole. Rat and mouse holes are much smaller.
So now I detest squirrels! Their cuteness is just a facade to lure you into feeding them in your backyard while they secreatly devise a plan to invade your home.
We have heard noises in the attic and inside our walls from time to time over the years but it is usually a single occurrence in which we hear it and then it goes away for a year or so.
So the pest control company is going to come back out and seal up this hole with metal bars embedded inside some sealant stuff. They will put a live trap with food bait in the attic and come back in 3 days to see if they caught anything. This will take care of the concern about sealing up the hole with a squirrel still inside. When they come back in 3 days, they will also put 2 bait boxes outside to manage any mice or rats as well as snap traps in both attics. But most importantly they will walk all around the roof of the house and seal up any other possible entry ways for little critters. We have to pay for quarterly maintenance service with them for one year but during that time they will come back out to replace traps and repair any other holes that the demon creatures might make once they realize they can't get back in their new crib.
While I'm not excited about any of this, it will be nice knowing that all of the little cracks and crevices have been sealed up and at least for a year we don't have to worry about critters coming inside our home. We'll see how it goes this year before we decide if we are going to continue their services after the first year.
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