Most route-finding stops at the boundary fence. Following it further back is worth twenty minutes, because it explains why the property is getting the traffic at all — and occasionally it finds something that can be dealt with.
What you are looking for
Not a path in the ground. A corridor at height — a connected run of trees, hedges, fences, walls and low roofs that lets an animal travel from where it lives to where your roof is without coming down.
Squirrels prefer to stay off the ground: it is safer, faster and avoids cats, foxes and dogs. So the route is nearly always continuous, and continuity is what you are tracing.
How to trace it
- Start at the entry. Which elevation, which end of the roof
- Find the last stage — the tree, fence, low roof, downpipe or cable that reaches it
- Work backwards. What reaches that? And what reaches that?
- Keep going past the boundary. Along the fence line, through neighbouring gardens, down a hedge, into whatever green space is beyond
- Look for where it originates — a stand of mature trees, a churchyard, a park, a strip of woodland, a neglected garden
What to watch for at dawn
Twenty minutes at first light, standing back far enough to see the whole approach rather than just the roof. What you are watching for is the direction they come from, which frequently surprises people — it is often not the tree everybody assumed.
The useful finding is the corridor, not the individual. Once you know the direction, the survey narrows to that elevation, the cutting back becomes targeted, and the conversation with a neighbour becomes a specific one rather than a general complaint.
What it explains
- Why one house in a street gets it. Usually it sits at the end of a corridor while its neighbours do not
- Why it happens every autumn. The corridor is how the dispersing cohort arrives
- Why cutting one branch made no difference. The corridor had another stage
- Where the pressure comes from, which for many Brandon properties is the woodland on that side of the town
What can actually be done with the answer
Sometimes something: a break in the corridor within your own garden, a neighbour's overgrown boundary they are glad to hear about, a shrub grown into a fence line. Often nothing at all, because most of the corridor is somebody else's or is the landscape itself.
Either way, the answer is the same at the building. The corridor is the reason the pressure exists; the opening is the reason it matters. Only one of those two is within anyone's control, and it is the cheaper of the two to change.
Questions
Is it worth walking the neighbours' gardens?
Look from your own boundary and from the street. A conversation is better than an inspection, and neighbours are usually interested.
What if the route starts in woodland?
Then the pressure is a permanent feature, and the closed roof is the whole of the answer. That applies to a good deal of Brandon.
Can the corridor be broken?
Occasionally, within your own boundary. Most of it is usually beyond anybody's control.
Squirrel Control Brandon
Squirrel control in Brandon is £280 fixed cost. Proofing work, where it is needed afterwards, is £180. Call 01502 630 122 and tell us what you have heard or seen.
For squirrel control in Brandon, call 01502 630 122, or read the Brandon squirrel control page.