The Holidays are over and things have calmed down in our home, but Homeowner, BEWARE!
When the temperature remains cold, it’s the time of year when unwanted guests can still be hiding in your home. They are making nests, storing food, hibernating in the eves of your attic, under insulation, and in between joists of your dormers. If you hear scurrying or thumping noises, scratching in your walls or your floor boards, and high pitch sounds during periods of the day or night, you may have an invader or invaders making your home, their home.
FLYING SQUIRRELS, GREY SQUIRRELS OR BATS?
Squirrels can damage siding, fascia boards, soffits, chimney flashing, gable vents, and even various types of exhaust fans as they search for entry points in your home. Squirrels love to stay in an attic or soffit. They will find a small opening and will chew a wider hole to gain access in your structure. They are known to fall down a chimney flue or down a interior or exterior wall from your attic. Once in the attic or crawl space, or even your walls, they will build nests where they create a mess with urine and droppings. These droppings smell bad and pose a bio-hazardous risk. Their smell will also attract new squirrels. Squirrels will make quite a bit of noise scurrying around inside your home and caching nuts. You will hear them mostly in the morning and evening. They will chew on support beams, roof braces, and through electrical wires, or power lines creating a potential fire hazard. They will destroy your insulation by tramping down on it and cause damage to drywall by digging holes in it. Squirrels will also destroy your furniture or other household contents if they get into your living areas.
Gray squirrel breeding occurs in December thru February and May through June. If there is no food around them, they will travel for miles and then set up home nearby. If they find a way into your attic, this will BE their home. Squirrels can pull apart terra cotta and slate roofs. They can chew straight through quality shingles and sturdy wood to gain access into your home. They can chew through aluminum fascia and louvered aluminum gable vents.
Flying Squirrels can occur in much greater numbers then the Grey Squirrel. They breed once a year after the first summer after their birth in May or June. These pests are nocturnal. They are smaller and can go into very tiny holes and gaps in your home. They can jump 100 feet or more depending on the starting height. Flying squirrels are extremely social and love to live in a colony in your attic. This means, if you have one flying squirrel, you most likely have alot more!
Squirrel droppings are the size of a chili bean or dried bean. They may be brown, black or even green in color. They are four or five times bigger than the droppings of bats and mice. Mouse droppings look like black grains of rice and are firm and solid to the touch. They are much smaller than squirrel droppings.
Any droppings you may find in your home should be handled and cleaned up by a Pest Management Professional (PMP) to ensure the safety of your home and family.
Bats, during the winter months, may migrate and find your home a place to hibernate in. They will look for an internal warm location where they will rest with a slowed down body rate for up to six months. They will not remain in open areas as their bodies will get too cold. They will find an opening in your structure, entering through loose fascia boards, spaces in dormers or through poorly screened vents and roof ridges. Bats defecate before they enter your home or below where they roost for the day. The smell associated with bats is due to the build up of bat guano and urine below their roosting areas. If you find piles or clusters of bat guano in your attic during the winter months, or on the ground outside your home, during warmer months, it is a sure sign that you have a bat problem.
Bat droppings look like black grains of rice and are larger than mice droppings. Bat guano will also have a shinny speckled appearance and will crumble like dust when touched. This powder is very dangerous to inhale and carry a fungus called Histoplasmosis. Piles of droppings in your structure is a true sign of bats as mouse droppings tend to be scattered about and become hard when dry. The presence of a bat in your home during the winter, also could be an indication you have a colony of bats living in your home.
Never seal your home without performing an exclusion! The first night after a homeowner closes all access holes will result in bats finding their way into your living quarters! Not only will you have an odor problem, you will have a colony of stressed-out bats flying around in your home. They will also die in your attic if they do not find their way into your living quarters, creating an even bigger problem for you. Bat bugs are bugs that are found on bats. These bugs are parasites that feed primarily off of the blood of bats. Bat Bugs are similiar to Bed Bugs and can be confused with them. If populations are large, they can be known to host on a human and feed off your blood too! The more bats that a colony has, the more bat bugs can be found in your house.
A Pest Management Professional (PMP) should be contacted if you think you have a bat problem for the safety of your home and family.
HENNEBRY PEST SOLUTIONS LLC specializes in Squirrel and Bat Exclusion. Careful inspection of all entry and exit points is conducted on your structure. Exclusion work is a process and may take more than one visit before all rodents or bats have been excluded. Once the exclusion process is complete, the structure is sealed so that these pests do not re-enter.
STRANGE NOISES, EVIDENCE OF DROPPINGS AND UNWANTED GUESTS IN YOUR HOME?
Call HENNEBRY PEST SOLUTIONS LLC for a FREE ESTIMATE today!
www.hennebrypest.com 908-578-0726 philiphennebry@gmail.com