Squirrels in the Attic in Stretford, Urmston and Flixton.
The grey squirrel population in Manchester, Lancashire & Cheshire has boomed over the last twenty years to the degee that they are now a major household pest dealt with by Squirrels in Attic Pest Control
The grey squirrels which we see in our gardens and parks (Sciurus carolinensis) are not native to the British isles, having been imported here less than two-hundred years Canada and America.
Like the other members of the family Sciuridae, the Grey Squirrel is a scatter-hoarder; it staches food away in lots of small caches for later recovery. Some caches are temporary, particularly those made near the source of a sudden surplus of food.
Other hoards are more permanent and are not eaten until weeks later. It has been observed that each squirrel makes several thousand caches each season. They have very good spatial memory for the positions of these hoards, and use distant and nearby landmarks to retrieve them. Smell is used once the squirrel is within a short distance of the cache.
The nest of the squirrel is called a dray (or drey) and it is normal for the female to have two litters per year, each of two to four young..
They are minor pests in the garden, rooting bulbs and eating food intended for birds but can be major pests when they enter our properties.
It is increasingly common for Trafford Pest Control to call out to houses where a dray has been constructed in a loft or attic space.
Squirrels are rodents and as such have continually growing teeth; the actual word rodent derives from the Latin word rodere which means to gnaw or eat away and this they do extremely well.
It is rare to visit a roof space where a dray has been built and find that they have not damaged cables or water pipes, indeed it is estimated that forty percent of fires without an obviously attributable cause may be started by rodents chewing on the wiring.
Unfortunately they can also chew through water-pipes, especially with the recent trend towards plastic push-fit piping.
As if that was not enough, many household insurance policies exclude damage by rodents so if a squirrel floods your property by gnawing through a pipe in the loft you may find yourself without cover.
Eradicating Squirrels in Loft requires professional help, often because the law regarding squirrels needs to be obeyed. You cannot simply get a packet of rat poison from your hardware store and deal with them that way as you would be committing a criminal offence.
Furthermore you cannot catch them and relocate 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 breaking the law under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 which makes it illegal to release a grey squirrel in in the British Isles.
That applies also to rescuing and/or rehabilitating and releasing injured squirrels.
In most cases trapping is the option of choice and this must be done in a specified manner with routine, regular inspections of the traps.
Trapped squirrels are then humanely dispatched.
If you have a squirrel problem in Lancashire, Cheshire or Manchester contact us on 01257 230637
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