Squirrels in the loft

Squirrel dray

This is dray (a squirrel’s nest) has been made out of loft insulation. In no time at all, it had ripped up parts of the insulation blanket that had been laid between the joists and stacked it into a ball shape. The entrance, in this case, was on the roof side of the dray: the squirrel got in via hole it’d made under the last row of tiles and the dray was almost directly behind their point of entry. This isn’t always the case but it usually makes sense to start looking for the ingress point near the dray and working outwards from there.

First job: fix the hole. Quite often, a metal mesh ‘plate’ is secured over the hole but any number of alternative methods can be used as long as they can stand up to squirrel attack: once a squirrel has got in, others often follow so it’s imperative that the job is done with suitable materials.

Squirrels are active during the day so there’s a good chance the visitor/s will be out foraging while the hole is made good – but it’s good practice to place traps in the loft to catch anything that decided not to go out that day. Using ‘live catch’ traps is common but there are significant dangers when it comes to taking a cage with a wild animal out via the loft hatch and through a building. The rodent can be very unpredictable so our job is to minimise its stress by working quietly, efficiently and with respect to the animal. This also minimises the risk it presents to us and to the homeowner’s property.