10-15yrs ago we had a bunch of problems with squirrels. They kept chewing their way into inaccessible (to humans) parts of the attic. We had their holes repaired 3x, not easy because it's way way above the ground, before I finally got pissed off.
I love little fuzzy critters as much as the next guy, but I'd reached my limit. They were no longer cute little things, they were "tree rats".
First we explored the "humane trapping" schtick but the outfits that do that wanted huge $$. So it came down to me and a pellet rifle. As a young teen, my little buddies and I were hell on wheels with BB guns and pellet rifles. We put so many rounds down range, shooting anything that moved, that tweety birds gave our little OR logging town a wide berth.
In the first month the squirrel tally was 12:0.
This is a pretty dense pack suburban area so I had to be wary of neighbor peering out of windows. Didn't want folks to call 911 reporting "some madman running around with a machine gun."
My mother came one week and bought some squirrel chow and put it out in the yard. I said "Mom, what the heck, we're having squirrel problems and you open a cafeteria?" Later, prowling with the pellet gun, I realized what Mom had really done is tempt the squirrels to their doom. Mom would have been mortified if she'd have known how many squirrels fell for her bait.
Once every couple of years I'll hear something moving around in the same inaccessible part of the attic so I'll pull out the pellet rifle again.
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