Dear God – Why Did You Put Squirrels And Mice On The Planet?

Squirrels and mice. We've all got them on our property, right? I sure would be a happy camper if they were not.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with squirrels or mice, provided they stay off my property, my house and my camper. The problem is, they don't listen.

Mice love to move in during the colder months, and they get brave by coming up from the basement to first floor. Their favorite room of course, its the kitchen. I've found them squeezing their tiny bodies into the cupboards, and then gnawing on boxes and bags containing food.

I can pretty much deal with that annoyance deploying mouse traps, but with my camper, it's a whole different thing. I try to cover every possible opening when I winterize the camper at the end of camping season, but they still find a way in. There's no food to get into, but they are in there doing something no good. I can tell by all the droppings the leave throughout the camper. And I, along with many other campers have had to deal with mice chewing on electrical wires or making a home in the heat ducts. That makes for some serious issues.

As much as I hate mice, I hate squirrels much more. I've seen them gnaw through a hard plastic shed at camp, rendering it useless, and this winter at home, a squirrel decided to take up residence in my attic. During one of the wind storms we had this winter, one of my gutters (filled with ice) blew off the house and took the wood siding with it, exposing a nice opening into the attic.

It didn't take a squirrel long to find it's way in. I called one of my friends to close it up, and he did the work in two phases. Phase one was to get the wood siding replaced. The second phase was re-attaching the gutter. Well, in between the two phases, the squirrel couldn't get in, so it decided to gnaw a hole through the edge of plastic siding and found a way back into the attic. That meant more repair work.

Now that the siding has been reinforced and the gutter back up, there's no place for the squirrel to get in. At least I hope that's the case.