Those cute little squirrels running around your backyard and playing in your trees might be fun to watch, but they can be pesky critters when they want to be! The most irritating thing about squirrels is their penchant for chewing pretty much anything that gets in their way. Whether it’s wood around your home or yard, wires in your attic, or plastic on your home or car, basically nothing is safe from these backyard critters.
Read on to learn some reasons why they want to chew everything, a couple ideas to convince them to stop, and what to do if you find yourself in a backyard faceoff that you might not win.
Why do squirrels chew everything?
Unlike humans, a squirrels’ teeth never stop growing. While this is helpful them since their diet mostly consists of nuts, seeds and fruit which are hard on teeth and wear them down, this also means they need to be constantly working to keep them a manageable length. This leads them to chew on pretty much anything they can. From wood to metal or plastic, all of these help to grind down their teeth. Unfortunately, this is bad news for your property!
Squirrels also chew things to gather material to build a nest. Wood especially makes a good base for them, so watch your wood siding, deck, attic beams and any other wood around your yard carefully.
Squirrels are quite smart, and if there is something in their way that can be chewed through, they will do so. This is especially important to know with wood beams and wires in your attic, because if not caught soon enough you can be in for some unfortunate and dangerous damage.
Are you in Halton Region and have a squirrel problem? Get rid of them now! In Burlington, Oakville, Milton and Hamilton call Regional Wildlife Services now for a budget quote!
How to prevent squirrels from chewing
When trying to prevent a squirrel from chewing materials around your home, you want to try to use strong and durable materials as much as possible. Things like steel mesh and pvc piping are helpful materials that squirrels will have difficulty chewing through.
If you’ve already reached the point where they are chewing through things around your home, you can use some sort of spicy hot sauce to steer them away. This is something that washes off, so you’ll need to reapply as necessary, but it is a quick and easy way to tell them they aren’t welcome anymore.
Sometimes, you just need to call a wildlife removal professional
If your friendly squirrel company has turned the corner into a full on invasion, you might be at the point where you just need to call in a professional. Squirrels don’t give up easily, and once they’ve found some profitable real estate, they’ll settle in for a long stand off. And squirrels are not a rodent you want to mess with (remember those constantly growing and sharpened teeth?!)! A professional can come assess your home and work out a safe plan to remove the squirrels from your home and give you some suggestions of how to squirrel proof the area.
At the end of the day, as cute and friendly as they may look, you have to remember that they are really just inconsiderate rodents with bad habits and scary teeth!
