Squirrels seemed harmless until they became a nightmare for us. Michelle Collins has been living in terror for the last three years. She dreads entering her kitchen because her home is infested with hungry creatures.
They devour everything in her house, from doors to cabinets and her dogs’ food. She can hear them scampering and gnawing, especially at night.
Squirrels occupy her house. They’re in her ceiling, in her walls, and elsewhere.
Collins, 39, lives in Kilwinning, Scotland. It’s one of the Scottish regions that has been enduring the fierce onslaught of gray squirrels for years.
“They hop off the trees next to the woodland where I live, onto my carport, and then onto my house,” Collins told the BBC.
“They have dug a hole under my porch and are entering through the inside of my walls.”
The squirrels have wreaked havoc on Collins’ home. They keep gnawing through her doors to access different parts of the home and consume anything they can find.
Collins used to store her dogs’ food in her sunroom, but the squirrels ate it. She stuffed the holes they made with towels and the squirrels ate the towels — and the new food.
“I never thought squirrels could ruin my home like this, it’s astounding what they can do. I’ve tried everything but nothing is working. I feel harassed by them,” Collins said.
“I’m scared to go into my kitchen every morning.”
‘The Sound of Scratching Drives Me Crazy’
Collins is not the only person in Scotland struggling with the rampaging rodents. They seem to be everywhere and in charge.
Jacqueline Hewitt lives in Edinburgh. The 49-year-old said she is always tormented by dreadful scratching coming from her attic and walls.
She has called a pest controller, but their best efforts have been useless.
“He put down nine trays of poison and they were all gone when he checked two weeks later,” said Hewitt.
There are two options here. Either the squirrels are resistant to poison — or there are so many of them that killing a dozen just doesn’t make a difference.
“My daughter has been having bad dreams that they are in her bed and she thinks they are going to break through the walls. The scratching sound is horrible,” Hewitt Complained.
Alayne Costello, also from Edinburgh, reluctantly shares her home with squirrels. She says they’ve been an issue ever since she moved in a year ago.
The squirrels gnawed through the frame of the skylights in Costello’s attic. When a storm hit last Christmas, there was nothing to prevent the gushing water from leaking in.
“All the insulation was drenched. The wall in my hall was damaged, as well as my bathroom. It has been a horror,” she said.
‘They Attempted to Scratch and Nip Me’
Pest controllers sympathize with the stress homeowners face due to squirrel infestations. Scott McIntyre, who offers pest control services in Edinburgh, said he’s witnessed the terrible damage the rodents can do.
“What they can do to a house can be disastrous. The worst was a woman in Fife who had every electrical cable gnawed, so she had to have her whole house rewired. The damage they caused cost $37,000,” said McIntyre.
Sadly, the law restricts pest controllers’ actions. They are not permitted to do anything to squirrels found outside of homes.
They can only begin trapping and killing the squirrels once they’ve entered attics or other indoor spaces. But by then, they’re probably already settled in deep enough that getting them out is very hard.
Not only that, the squirrels are furious and can get aggressive. McIntyre describes an occasion when the little beasts assaulted him.
His usual method is to frighten the squirrels out of the house and then seal the holes they use to climb in. But this time, the three male squirrels he’d trapped decided they weren’t going to give up without a fight.
“Usually squirrels flee when I go into attics. But they pounced on me and tried to scratch and nip me,” he said.
Whoever imagined squirrels out of all animals could become such a threat?