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Tue, 15 Feb 2011

One of the most difficult things about owning a 90-year-old house is trying to convince wild animals that it's not a great place to live. This is a battle that I find myself fighting all too frequently, and usually it ends with a humiliating loss on my part. The best a person can do, it seems, it to drive the menagerie back into the walls and out of the general human living spaces, at which time you think you've solved the problem, but of course there's no way to actually be sure of it.

We currently have a three-headed army keeping us at seige.

Mice

Some people are squeamish about killing mice, but I will do whatever it takes to lessen the numbers of this little motherfuckers, if not stamp them out entirely. In their case, I've always found poison to the be the best weapon against them. If you ask the internet how to get rid of mice, almost every site you come across will try to dissuade you from using poison. Simply put, they are all wrong. Is it inhumane? Who cares. Does it work? Yes. Do the mice die and rot in your walls, smelling up the place? Generally not. The poison dries them out, either leaving husks of mouse-mummy in their hiding places (as warnings against their kind when they attempt further infestations) or driving them outdoors in search of a water source.

I'm not entirely sure the mouse problem has been fixed. There's been no signs of chewing lately, and we haven't heard them crawling around in the walls. But you never can be too sure. It's best to be vigilant.

Squirrels

There are definitely squirrels living in the attic right now. We knew there had been squirrel problems before we bought this house, and were led to believe that these problems had been dealt with. I think they were. But new squirrels have chewed their way in again, and are having a squirrel party in the attic, burrowing in the insulation and probably humping up a storm.

I'm not sure how to get rid of the squirrels, other than live-trapping them and driving them out to some remote location to set them free. You can actually do this with squirrels, provided that you don't have like a whole extended squirrel community living in your attic. I've never actually seen a squirrel up there, only evidence of their nightly shindig, so I can't believe there's more than one or two. The problem then involves finding their entrance and patching it up. It seems almost futile, since more squirrels will simply bust open a new hole next winter, but I guess it has to be done. I'm waiting for the weather to warm up to do any of this, because it seems more human and because I'm lazy.

Birds

There's a huge flock of birds that I think might be starlings that like to infest the front porch. They aren't there now, of course, because they're still rocking out in Miami or wherever they spend the winter. But they'll be back soon, and it's important to at least attempt to prepare for them.

The front porch roof has these little round holes under the eaves, presumably to let air in and keep the wood from rotting. Each of these holes is plugged with a plastic vent to lessen the entryway. This is no problem for the birds, who simply pry those vents out and move in.

My guess is that I'm going to have to buy some more vents and somehow glue them in place with an ultra-strong adhesive that the birds can't budge. This is another one of those things that seems almost futile. But I guess I have to try. The idea of dozens of birds living in your house is disgusting, even if the birds aren't living inside your living space but only in the porch roof. Besides, I think they're messing with the wiring of the porch light, because it doesn't work properly. That's pretty scary.

Does everyone have these problems? I think a lot of people do, especially around here where most people live in older homes. But it's one of those things where if you don't share these problems, you're freaked out and think that there's something wrong with the people who do.

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