Squirrel in house

if only people showed as much concern for humans as they do for animals

0ne of my husbands relatives was feeding squirrels by hishouse. The squirrel somehow got trapped in the house panicked and caused a huge amount of damage in the house. As he had been feeding the darn things he was encouraging vermin and the insurance would not pay out.
You have been warned .

I am fully with Elegran on that. The grey squirrels are an alien species and have seriously damaged the numbers of our beautiful greys.
In many other parts of the world other non native animals are doing lots of damage .
Please do not encourage them at all.

The problem is squirrels do not understand live and let live. They can do serious damage to houses, we were very lucky that our house was not set on fire, they soiled and damaged half of our roof insulation and the repairs and remedial work cost £1,000.

May be some people can shrug that much money off and say live and let live, but they are in the minority.

I’m with bluebelle and all those who are shocked by the cruelty. Live and let live.

I'm surprised that pest control didn't use a trap.

What's cruel? I had then in my loft, pest control killed 3 in his traps. He found out where they were getting through and blocked the space off

They are dangerous especially where electric wires are concerned as they chew through them.

You did right to call pest control as there may be others and they can do damage. As far as I am concerned it was money well spent when I called them out.

starbox small 's'.

Starbox
Maybe the OP could recount the tale over Christmas dinner and add the rider that it didn't,t go to waste as it's the stuffing in the turkey.

The only 'pests' on this planet are human beings...

my husband purchased some humane traps and set them up. Every time we caught one we took it for a drive and released it far away from the village.
I persuaded DH to do this with a mouse which we then deposited in the countryside not far away but were told that it would probably have died anyway as other mice would attack it as it was invading their territory.

It astonishes me that some could think trapping it, leaving it trapped in a room with the vain hope that it might find an open window or any other resolution would be kinder than the quick death it was given.
trisher I don't think squirrels are stupid - in fact I think they're very clever. I do think if the OP had opened a large window the squirrel would have found its own way out fairly quickly.
The question is - how did it get in?
A neighbour had squirrels in her loft years ago and they were a nuisance but between DH and a couple of other neighbours they were evacuated and the holes where they may have got in blocked up.

I just find the original post incredulous I cannot imagine professional shooting an animal in front of the person and on the bedroom curtain rail didn’t it bleed onto the curtains or carpet ..... I must be very out of touch
I found that a bit odd too Bluebelle!

I wondered if it had gone !splat! all over the curtains ]

So sorry I read this,upset all weekend why didn't you just open the window!!

breeze
Good point! Selling up was all rather traumatic (my dad was dying at the time) so it’s all a bit of a blurr now. But you’re right. They must have bought the place without a full survey. Maybe they had one of those mini ones you could get at the time. A bit late, but I now feel considerably less guilty. Thanks!

You should google the diseases that grey squirrels carry then you might not be quite so keen on them!

That's a risk I'd be willing to take....

It might have phoned the police the minute it got outside though..

Minxie, it's hard to disagree with that last statement - but would you want a whole load of squirrels, rats or mice living in your house? (And yes, I know in this case it was only ONE squirrel...but my point stands). Personally, being brought up in the country, I'd have just caught it and chucked it outside (legal or otherwise).

It amazes me how we call certain animals vermin, because of the damage they do. Humans are right at the top of the list, just look at the state of our beautiful planet

Surely that's part of life's rich tapestry, the fact that we're all different?
Ruddy boring if we were all the same.

Can’t believe how freaked out you are about a squirrel! You’re like cartoon wonen. If that happened in our house we’d be giving it a bowl of milk and taking photos.

Don't know why she rang you screaming. If she'd done the right thing and had a survey it would've flagged up she had 'sitting tenants'. Good it ended up an SEP (someone else's problem)

When I had a beautifully designed upstairs maisonette close to a neighbour who saw fit to feed all the local wildlife, my son said to me one day “There’s something in there, mum!”, having heard rustling in the unconverted bit of the loft next to his open-plan sleeping area. I dismissed it and said it was probably a bird that had got in. Not long afterwards I was forced to sell the place. Not long after that I received a phone call from the new owner, screaming that I should have told her a whole family of squirrels were nesting in the loft. I have a feeling she’d opened the door and the creatures were now running riot in the flat. I felt terrible, but I can’t deny I was relieved that didn’t happen while I was still living there!

Poster was not invaded by squirrels Wilygran she had one unexpectedly pop in to her spare room theres a HUGE difference