Trap a Squirrel With Everyday Materials
If you live in a neighborhood with plenty of trees, chances are you've had a squirrel or two in your attic before. Squirrels can be tricky to remove from your home once they're inside, especially since the most common reason they seek shelter indoors is to have baby squirrels. Building a one-way door is the most effective and humane way to remove squirrels from your house, and you can build it using supplies you probably have in your home. Once you build a door, you can add a trap - just be sure it's legal to do so where you live.
Contents
Steps
Setting Up a One-Way Door
- Examine your home for entry points. Look around the attic or the area where you've heard a squirrel scratching about and find out where it came in. If you find more than one hole, plug all but the main one, so that the squirrel has only one way to enter and exit. You'll set up the trap at this entry point.
- Block the entry points by securing pieces of hardware cloth around the holes using a staple gun.
- It's best to do this in mid-morning, when the squirrel will probably be outside finding food.
- If you can wait until the high heat of mid-summer to squirrel-proof your attic, you may not even have to set up a trap. Attics get too hot for squirrels at this time of year, so you can block all the entry points, including the main one, while the squirrels are away.
- Check the area for baby squirrels. Before you trap and release the squirrel, it's important to find out if there are babies in the picture. Mother squirrels commonly take shelter in attics when they're about to give birth, and chances are high that there's a nest somewhere in your walls or rafters. A typical squirrel nest will have 3-5 babies. If you trap the mother squirrel without handling the babies first, they'll die. Aside from being inhumane, leaving the babies to die will create a bad smell in your home.
- If you've looked everywhere for the pup "squirrel" and you can't find them, feel carefully along the walls. When you come to a spot that feels much warmer than the rest of the wall, that's probably the nest. You're going to have to cut a hole there to remove the babies, then patch up the wall later. This takes some trouble, but it's a lot better than letting them die in the walls.
- If you find babies, determine whether they are old enough to leave the nest and survive on their own. If they are still too young to walk, wait a few weeks before trapping the mother. Otherwise, the babies will starve in the nest.
- Set up a one-way door at the main entry point. Start by securing a piece of hardware cloth to the inside wall of the main entry point, leaving a hole just large enough at the bottom for a squirrel to climb through. Bend the bottom of the hardware cloth toward the outside so that it forms a tube-like shape. Bend the prongs on the cloth slightly inward. A squirrel can squeeze through this hole to get outside, but won't be able to get back in.
- If you find that the squirrel can still get in and out of the house, you may need to make the hole smaller. You should also check around to make sure that you've covered the other entry points.
- If you found baby squirrels, remember that you shouldn't set up the door before they're big enough to leave the area on their own. Otherwise, you'll have a nest of babies on your hands while the mother is trapped outside.
- If your aim is to trap the squirrel, place a cage outside the door. Trapping squirrels is illegal in many states, and in some cases it's only legal if you kill them directly afterward. If you want to set up a trap, you can place a wire cage on the outside of the one-way door so that the door empties directly into it. When the squirrel exits, it will jump into the cage, and won't be able to get back out.
- To lure the squirrel into the cage, you can bait the trap with peanut butter or oranges.
- Wire cages are common household items, but they aren't the ideal traps for squirrels. A better bet is to buy a one or two-door squirrel trap. These are designed specifically to trap squirrels humanely.
- Carefully remove the cage and close its door. The tricky part will be closing the cage door without letting the squirrel loose.
Releasing the Squirrel
- Don't handle the squirrel with bare hands. There shouldn't be a need to touch the squirrel, but if you end up doing so, make sure you wear heavy-duty gloves. Squirrels may nip and scratch, and it's important to protect yourself.
- Release the squirrel {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} away. If you release the squirrel too close to your property, it will climb right back into the attic. Drive well away from your neighborhood and release the squirrel in an area with plenty of trees.
- Release the babies and mother together. If you somehow trapped both the babies and mother, try to release them all in the same place. The babies will have a much better shot at surviving if they're released with their mother.
- Clean the area where the squirrel was trapped. After you've released the squirrel, sanitize the area where you found it using heavy-duty cleaning products. Make sure all of the entry holes are secured. Consider spraying squirrel repellant in the area on the off chance that the squirrel will try to come back.
Tips
- Caution: wild squirrels bite and scratch seriously and can have fleas and mites -- and may carry diseases, rarely rabies.
- Check the trap every hour and get it out with a net. Put it on a towel outside far away from the garage so it doesn't run back in, and within the day, it should be on its way.
- Take note of your state's animal laws about humane control of pests.
Warnings
- Do not make the water so deep that it covers the squirrel. This isn't a trap designed to drown squirrels, but to catch them for relocation.
- Check with your state's Fish and Game first before attempting the method above. Gray Squirrels are listed as a game animal in NJ and most other states. Capture, euthanasia and/or release of any game animal must follow Fish & Game Regulations.
- Do not take chances of bites and diseases from attempting to handle the captured wild animal.
- Setting of a "booby trap" to cause death by drowning is not considered a legal/humane means of control in most states.
Things You'll Need
- Hardware cloth
- Staple gun
- Wire cage
