Richard’s Almanac: Gray squirrels, take cover

I remember noticing the plethora of gray squirrels around my house on this Island during my first visit.

I found this noteworthy because squirrel hunting was a big deal where I was living in upstate New York. A few fat squirrels made an excellent Brunswick stew that was not gamey at all.

This came to mind recently as I watched these critters burying nuts and acorns in their secret hiding places and getting fatter and fatter as they prepare for the winter.

In my mind, I went back to the spring of 1990. There seemed to be squirrels running everywhere around and on the house that year. I could hear their claws clattering on the wood shingle roof as they ran overhead.

I inspected the house from the outside and saw that a triangle of wood blocking a soffit that had a hole chewed through it. I figured that they had found an entrance to a warm and cozy attic.

I inspected the nooks and crannies for suitable squirrel residences — just like in the children’s books where “Miss Suzy” lives with her little babies all snug in their little squirrel world.

And there I found it — a home, made out of insulation and chewed plastic that had been covering electric wires. And inside the cozy squirrel hutch were four babies.

At this point one has to take stock of the fact that squirrels are like rats with bushy tails. No matter how much we want to humanize them, they are very dangerous and destructive pests when in your house.

As a stopgap measure, I taped up the chewed wires and scooped up the nest and the babies. I knew a kid who wanted to nurse them into adulthood.

Prior to this I had repaired the chewed entry hole in the soffit and covered it with flashing — can’t gnaw through that. But now adult squirrels were scrambling all over the roof trying to get in.

I decided that I needed a pellet gun. I traveled from the Island all through the South Fork until I found a store in Riverhead that sold Crosman pellet rifles. I received a lecture from the proprietor how squirrels had such hard heads, that any debilitating shot had to be at the eye.

As I drove home, I was hoping that they would have all left my yard and house for a more hospitable environment. No such luck.

There were six of them running all over the roof trying to find an entrance.

I could not get on the roof to set a trap.

So for two days I tried to bag one of these pests. Finally I got one and my 14-year-old son reminded me of a tale told by an old upstate woodsman.

“The best way to get squirrels off your house is to hang a dead one on the wooden trim that leads up to roof,” he had said.

Well, I tried it and it worked.

They all stopped trying to get in. And I could relax.