No. It's not just you. When my wife and I were first married we lived in a converted 100 year old log cabin (converted from an old meat house). At certain angles you could see sunlight through the corners. Quaint. Cozy. Infested.
Squirrels. Damn them. Chewed out the insulation in the ceiling, which was about 3 feet above our heads when in bed in the loft. And Yowsa! do they make an awful racket in the morning.
Anyway, we got one of those supposedly subsonic squirrel repellants. The effect on us wasn't quite so dramatic, but we certainly couldn't use it in or near our bedroom at night when and where we needed it. And even from a distance, within 48 hours of purchasing it the headaches were unbearable.
Don't know if you get over to Apostropher much, but if you do a brief look at my rantings will let you know I'm a bit of an environmentalist. Not when it comes to squirrels. There's a bit of an unnerving glee I get from killing them. Twitch. Twitch.
I've seen a picture of you Froz, so I'm going to wait for at least one other person to chime in before I'm satisfied that I'm "human" and not "critter."
As for the squirrels, I had a temp job once where, during lunch, my crazy co-worker and I would walk around the neighborhood and shoot rubberbands at the squirrels. I don't particularly like animals, but I really don't like squirrels.
I'm kinda fond of squirrels, but mostly because my son is enchanted with them and I've never shared a house with them. I did, however, live with mice once, and oh man did I come to hate those little fuckers. Pure, reasonless, gut-level, violent hate.
After a disturbingly short time, I started getting glue traps so that they would spend all day stuck, panicked and suffering, before I came home from work and snapped their little necks with a horseshoe. I'm not saying I'm proud of it, I'm just warning you now: if you visit me, don't shit in my kitchen cabinets.
Ok, that's quality blog humor. I'm still laughing.
With a horseshoe? Whack?
"Whack?" Gross. What a mess. No, pin them down and flip their little rear ends up real fast by the tail.
Oh yeah... He's serious about the cabinet thing. Took me yeeeaaars to get invited to his Christmas parties again.
I am also an animal lover, but it is the rabbits that get to me. Happy, hoppy, fluffy little bundles of joy that were ruining my garden, trees, and shrubs, and this in a suburban environment.
I got a live trap, and found out that killing them is legal, but catch and release is not. Something about transporting vermin. Okay, I actually don't kill them, but that is only because I can't think of a clean, quick way to do it. I detest them, and use sarcasm on them on the way to the country.
"Whack?" Gross. What a mess.
Nah, they don't rupture or anything. They just dent real severely. Sometimes, though, their eyes will pop way out.
I'm starting to feel like a bad person now. I'd make one crappy Buddhist.
Here is how my grandfather disposed of rabbits and raccoons that made a nuisance of themselves. He too caught them in live traps, and then he dropped the trap, with the animal inside, into a barrel full of water. The trap sank and the varmint drowned quickly and pretty humanely as these things go. No mess either, just a wet carcass, which he usually then dressed for stew.
I asked my grandad why he didn't just shoot the things and he said that that used to be his method but that once, he hadn't gotten a clean shot on a raccoon and it thrashed around horribly in the cage till he could put it out of its misery with several more bullets. Plus even on the times when he did need only one bullet, it made a mess and he had to scrub out the cage afterwards.
He always released possums if he caught them, they don't bother most plants and eat pest insects and rodents. Once he caught a skunk, which he also released without incident using a tool he rigged up out of a long pole and some bailing wire. Besides his not wanting to mess with a skunk, skunks are largely beneficial anyway. He even caught the family cat once (and released it).
My great uncle came up with a different method. Whenever he caught something (other than possums, skunks, or cats), he would wait till the next time he needed to drive somewhere. Then he would put a plastic garbage bag around the cage, and attach it to the tailpipe of his pickup truck with a rubber band. Within less than a minute after starting up the engine, the caged critter had drifted off into an eternal sleep. But if you're planning to eat the animal afterwards (it'd be a shame to waste it!), this method might not be the best idea, especially if your truck runs on leaded gasoline, as did my great uncle's, back in the day.
