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Old 04-05-2005, 01:30 PM
BAC
 
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"Jaques d'Alltrades" wrote in message
k...
The message .com
from "John Edgar" contains these words:

Put some poison in your roof space. That gets rid of them. You do not
ned the female giving birth up there, because the whole family will
keep coming back and they are extremely persistent. You need to kill
them all quickly. If you do not get rid of them, they will eat through
electric wiring. It all gets very expensive.


Squirrels in the roofspace are a well-known fire hazard for this reason.
In the event of a fire, and your insurance company finds out you haven't
made efforts to bar entry, you might find yourself in financial
difficulties to say the least.

My solution would be a marksman with a decent air rifle.

I can provide an excellent squirrel pie recipe...

The official advice for dealing with squirrels in the roof space is at
www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/ rds/publications/technical/TAN_09.pdf , if it
has wrapped.

Basically, it's to live trap them and then kill by bashing them over the
head in a sack or shooting them in the trap (since it's illegal to release a
squirrel once trapped, if you care about such things) and then to secure the
space by blocking off the access routes.

Another interesting source is
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/wildbuildings/ html/documents/pdf/wabman.pdf which
is Wildlife and Buildings - Technical guidance for Architects. That covers
nearly all types of wildlife likely to be encountered here.


I've often seen it mooted that squirrels in the roof space are a fire risk,
since they might gnaw through electrical insulation or plastic pipes, and I
guess the possibility cannot be ruled out, but I don't recall seeing that
many accounts of fires occurring where it was proved that actually was the
cause.