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I have a constant problem with squirrels running all over my car and leaving their dirty footprints on the paint work. It wouldn't be such a problem if there wasn't a hosepipe ban and that I am trying to sell the car and so want it to look as good as possible for prospective buyers. I have been looking for some kind of squirrel repellant but have found nothing. After you have stopped laughing, does anyone have any suggestions?
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A little squirrel footbath around your car? At least they'd have clean feet.
Sorry...
A garage or a car cover seems the best bet.
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>>does anyone have any suggestions?
Only that a hosepipe ban doesn't mean you can't still use a bucket (or several buckets) of water instead.
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Give this a try: www.critter-repellent.com/squirrel/squirrel-repell...p
Otherwise take your car to a car wash then park the car away from where the squirrels reside or put it under a car cover / in a garage.
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If they are grey shoot them.
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^^ agree.
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I know a guy with an XKR that had a few grands worth of damage done to the electrics by squirrels munching though the loom while it was parked in his barn.
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You can buy traps from any agricultural suppliers, chocolate or peanut butter are the best bait. Once caught, they can be shot or drowned.
www.trapman.co.uk/squirrel-traps.htm
The only way to stop tree-rats from doing what they do is to get rid of them.
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Some info:
www.martleyelectronics.co.uk/squirrels.htm
www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th1d.htm
I'm fortunate to live in an area where the red squirrel is still found in reasonable numbers, but the grey squirrel is threatening its existence more and more.
The MBC recently made news by providing red squirrels with several rope ladders between trees to avoid the risk of them being killed crossing a very busy single carriageway road.
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Thanks. Thats what I am looking for but they don't ship outside the US.
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Tie a lurcher to the back bumper.
I had the pleasure of taking a lurcher for a walk once. A squirrel decided it would tease the lurcher, then leap up a tree and taunt the dog from there.
The lurcher leapt up the tree and in short order it was raining bits of squirrel,
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Scatter a few acorns on neighbours' cars?
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Grey squirrels are very good to eat, so trap them, and knock yourself up a nice squirrel dish!
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I had no idea that the Janitor off Scrubs was registered and posting here!
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That's nothing - I used to have rats leaving me 'presents' on top of my engine!
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"You can buy traps from any agricultural suppliers, chocolate or peanut butter are the best bait. Once caught, they can be shot or drowned."
Drowing - bit inhumane don't you think?
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Nope - The grey one that got into my office over Christmas one year and left chewed wiring , widdle and worse all over our files was shot by a pest control firm.
I would certainly have drowned the little things if I could have caught him and then hung drawn and quartered him and made a nice squirrel kebab.....
As for the one at home which hangs upside down on the birds peanut feeder , I use a high powered water pistol to shift him but I would have no compunction in shooting or drowning him if I could catch him.
Tree rats - thats all they are.Not inhumane at all.
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I use my rifle to scare them away. If I had my way I would aim for their head but SWMBO has banned that. I aim slightly off target just to give them a fright.
I am a good shot, military training...
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Do you mean Ms Xileno doesn't want you to shoot to kill, just to maim?
Grey squirrels look all right from a distance but close to they are quite unfriendly little animals. They are a nuisance and need to be kept down. I wouldn't fancy eating one though unless I was starving. Same goes for a hedgehog which is said to taste good. In fact hedgehogs are charming animals and friendly to gardeners, so I wouldn't want to kill one.
I used to shoot pheasants quite often but I don't any more. Either the idleness or the squeamishness that seem to come with age.
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"Do you mean Ms Xileno doesn't want you to shoot to kill, just to maim?"
No, I don't hit them - just give them a fright, usually hitting the branch they are on or just whizzing the pellet through the air passed them.
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SWMBO has banned that.
military training...
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
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You haven't met her, makes Gordon Ramsay seem a pussy cat.
In fact, some days I wish I hadn't met her :-0
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You may remember this recent story:
tinyurl.com/eghko
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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A similar thing happened to my old neighbours, once came down the chimney while they were on holiday and wrecked the house.
It's also worth remembering that if you do catch one, it's illegal to let it go.
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You haven't met her, makes Gordon Ramsay seem a pussy cat. In fact, some days I wish I hadn't met her :-0
Tell her then or we will...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I use my rifle to scare them away. If I had my way I would aim for their head but SWMBO has banned that. I aim slightly off target just to give them a fright. I am a good shot, military training...
Hope you have a safe backdrop then??
Anyway, why listen to her? If my missus tried to ban me from anything then she would receive short shrift. No, not a chauvanist pig, just a realist.
VBR to all in charge........................................MD.
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Quite right. Wouldn't hesitate to shoot a squirrel if it was annoying someone. They do a lot of damage and are effectively vermin.
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drove over one once when it did that shall i shan't i dash across the road in front of me..... i tried not to, but wasn't going to have an accident for a tree rat........ looked in the mirror and i'd run over it's back half, leaving it trying to drag itself up the road with it's front half...... so did a 'u' turn and went back and finished it off...
when i told the girls at work.........(which i admit was a bit unnecessary)... they were horrified and immediately re-assessed me as a murderer
I was always brought up to never leave an animal in misery........ could you imagine the reaction if i'd taken what was left to a vet?
still think i was right, but it's surprising how many disagree
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Similar thing happened with me a few years ago when a rabbit ran out and didn't quite get killed. Luckily I was on my way to a shoot so I got my gun out of the back of the car and finished it off. I still maintain that it was the most humane thing to do but like you say others took a dim view of my actions.
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Nope - The grey one that got into my office over Christmas one year and left chewed wiring ,
Brought down the whole nutwork I bet.
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My wife who is an animal lover would have been horrified by these stories until recently but her demand for a nice clean car means that squirrels are now on a level with terrorists and antique dealers.
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I like squirrels. Can't you buy a squirrel repellant spray or something?
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squirell near me last wek 20yards from home (first time ive been so near to one....3 feet) i stopped my car and stared at it and it stared back as if to say yer wat yu gonn duuuuuu then ????
proper vermin with a great big tail..........i hate the things always have ...........love red ones though as they arent pests....
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Those of squeamish disposition look away now.
When I was nine or ten and hard-hearted, I sometimes drove at night at speed (I don't mean I was actually driving) through the area of Sri Lanka now prey to war and so on, but then much less populated and unspoiled as it were. At certain times of the year at night the roads were literally covered with frogs hopping across for some purpose of their own, and the few cars must have squashed thousands of them.
In the daytime, a tall, grey-haired, black-faced species of monkey would play a sort of last across game - really, I was there and remember it - in front of approaching vehicles, and one was occasionally too late and caught by the front bumper of one of the heavy cars we were driving. When we got a Hillman I don't remember any more monkey victims, perhaps because the speed was lower and the car more fragile. Bits of monkey fur and flesh were sometimes to be seen on the front of the big cars after a journey, balanced by the children's vomit down the rear door and wing.
Ran over a badger in Sussex a few years ago. Big animal, damaged the car, nothing I could do about it. The farmer from whose land it had run, a friend and a relation of my wife, said later: 'Oh, that was you, was it?' He keeps cattle so he wasn't broken-hearted.
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>>(I don't mean I was actually driving) >>
>>> I sometimes drove at night at speed>>>
>>>of one of the heavy cars we were driving>>>
Doesn't quite gell for some reason.
Not that it matters in view of where you were...:-)
A number of years ago, being driven by my best mate in his Astra estate on the way to a fishing trip, we hit a partridge in the countryside just as we had got up to 30 mph after turning left at a junction.
He stopped, discovered the plastic front grille was smashed, so we went back the short distance to where the bird had been hit, anticpating a tasty supper that evening with our wives.
To our amazement it had scurried to a nearby farm yard apparently uninjured and was happily pecking at scraps of food.
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>>(I don't mean I was actually driving) >> >>> I sometimes drove at night at speed>>> >>>of one of the heavy cars we were driving>>> Doesn't quite gell for some reason.
>
Gell Stuartli? One tries not to be a bore by overburdening people with details from the late forties.
Before I was old and brutal and hungry for wild chicken, in my late-teen hitchhiking days, a Standard I think driven by two miners I think struck a pheasant with its windscreen on the A1 in Northumberland. As the hitchhiker I went back for the bird, which couldn't fly but was still alive. Seeking to put it out of its misery I tried to pull its neck as I had seen Welsh farmers' wives doing years earlier, but it took more pulling than I expected. I was about to stand on the poor bird's head and pull its feet when the miners strolled up laughing, took it from me and tossed it still fluttering intto the boot.
Such animal lovers we British. Those foreigners ought to be ashamed.
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I did say it didn't matter in view of where you where...:-)
My late father-in-law used to be a steam train driver who later moved on to the electric equivalents. He hit a pheasant many a time on the inward or outward journey and would always stop the train to pick it up on the return trip.
Very tasty, in fact just as tasty as the wildfowl (and cod and other fish caught on lines) my father used to bag during the war on the local marshes.
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Apropos of an earlier post in this thread, it is an offence to release a grey squirrel once captured.
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"He hit a pheasant many a time... "
You'd have thought the stupid bird would have learnt from the first time... :-)
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My Father was a steam train driver. He mowed down all sorts of game. He would however have been ritually disembowelled over his smoke box had he stopped a train to pick up game.
However I suppose that what made the LNER such a respected railway and the LMS such a laughing stock.
(in truth we were the only family in our road who knew what venison tasted like. ;-0)
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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