If you want to keep squirrels out of your attic, a little prevention can go a long way.
But there’s no such thing as a magic bullet. You can’t spread folk remedies around or buy some sort of sonic squealer to scare squirrels away. Squirrel prevention is pretty standard stuff.
Nobody wants to hear that, but ultimately it comes down to avoiding three mistakes.
Mistake #1: Making Food and Water Sources Readily Available Close To Your House
Squirrels are like any animal.
They’re attracted to readily available sources of food and water. And some yards offer up a veritable buffet for them.
This isn’t a judgemental statement. While many people don’t secure their trash cans well enough, many people enjoy their yards in ways that attract squirrels.
If you have a bird bath and a bird feeder, you’re providing those food and water sources. If you feed neighborhood strays or have an outdoor pet, you’re offering up another food source. So, too, if you have a garden, or fruit trees.
All of these things are perfectly legitimate ways to use your yard, and we’d never tell you not to enjoy your birds or your garden.
We would tell you that you should keep those sources of food and water as far from the home as possible. And we’d tell you to remove any food and water sources that aren’t strictly necessary to your enjoyment of your landscape.
If you do keep a garden or fruit trees, pay extra attention to exclusion methods that might keep birds out of the house, and pay extra attention to avoiding the next two mistakes.
Mistake #2: Creating Attractive Nesting Grounds
How often do you have your gutters cleaned?
If you aren’t attending to them at least twice a year, then chances are they’re full of leafy nesting materials squirrels love to burrow into.
It’s only a short step from your gutters to the attic. Squirrels who have begun living in your gutters will find their way under the shingles soon enough. You want to make those gutters as boring to them as possible so they don’t have a way to stick around.
If you have a lot of shade trees in your yard, you may need to get them cleaned more than once a year to discourage squirrels.
Mistake #3: Failing to Control the Squirrel Superhighway
Your trees need to be trimmed back from your house to make it harder for squirrels to leap onto your roof.
We’re not suggesting you should cut down your trees. Only that you should make sure there’s no easy spot for the squirrels to leap from the tree to your roof. Keep them running about in the trees instead, so they don’t discover the wonderful, perfect den you’ve got in there.
Schedule a Free Squirrel Inspection Today
No prevention method is perfect.
Houston has a huge squirrel problem. We have squirrel problems almost year-round. So sometimes, you might get squirrels in your attic no matter what you do.
If that happens, we’re here! Contact us to schedule a free inspection and we’ll be happy to help you get the squirrels out of your attic and back outside where they belong. We’ll also be happy to help you seal off all the entry points squirrels are using to get inside, so they stay gone.
