Squirrels in the Attic

Once, outside my front door, there was red maple tree. In the tree lived a nest or nests of squirrels. They could live there at various levels up and down the tree and enjoyed life mostly (sometimes the squirrels ended up in the street squashed, but generally they had a good life in that hollow tree.

The tree was deemed dangerous, because of its hollowness, and had to be cut down. Cutting down such an old tree is sad, but wind, lightening, and general old age made it a tree that was doomed to collapse. The potential collapse could mean that it would smash a passing car, bring down power, telephone, and television cable lines, and worst of all, smash into my house. I did not need any of that.

Of course there are always unintentional consequences to everything we do; the squirrels needed a new home and they found one. They relocated to the attic of my house.  Now squirrels are cute little guys up in the trees and out in the wild. People in nearby homes put out little platforms with ears of corn on them to feed the squirrels.  Nonetheless, I do not admire such generosity. I think wild animals, no matter how cute and fuzzy their tails, should be wild and kept wild.

Further, squirrels are rodents; you know rats with fuzzy tails. We do not want rats, or mice, in our homes, why then is it good to have squirrels in one's attic? It is not good, but I cannot find a single pest control company that will come to the house to get the squirrels out of the attic. If I said we had rats in the attic, or mice running about the house, they would be out in a flash, but squirrels are too cute and fuzzy to think of as pests.

Nevertheless, squirrels in my attic are pests. I can hear them running about up there. They have destroyed several vents and screens placed to prevent them from getting in, and recently they have gnawed a hole in the ceiling of one of my upstairs rooms. But they are not suitable pests for pest control.

One solution I have considered is to plant a new red maple tree, but that will take fifty years or more to be as tall and as hollow as the tree I had taken down. Then I thought I would build a replica of a hollow red maple tree, but I am not crafty and handy enough to do that. What is the solution to evicting the squirrels from my attic? Someone suggested that we shoot them and make squirrel stew. The shooting part may be a good idea, but the stew part does not work for me. However, I think there is an ordinance against shooting fire arms in the city. Another solution may be to trap them and move the little colony out to the woods somewhere, but requires more patience than I have and probably would mean I would have to climb up into the attic. My attic is a no-man's land, just like my basement is a dungeon. Further, my very old house means the attic is really up quite a distance from the ground.

I suppose now I have no solutions to squirrels in the attic. Maybe they are an indication of end-times when small mute animals will take over the world.