Out here in the Pacific Northwest, Eastern gray squirrels are classified as
a pest. They are not native but most people here don't know it as they are
very very common. The usual method used out here (pretty effective) to trap
them is to first feed them for a few weeks, to get them used to finding food
in a particular location, then to get a medium sized live trap and put the
food dish in the back of it. They get in but they don't get out. An easy way
to kill the animal is to submerge the entire trap in water with the squirrel
in it. I know of a person in Salem, Oregon who has dispatched over 100 squirrels
this way. He says it makes a dent but they always come back.

What we really need is more squirrel hawks. I'll add that to my list of hawks
we need, which already includes pigeon hawks and crow hawks.

GWE

Wild Bill wrote:

This has been an ongoing problem, and I've stumbled upon a technique that
appears to be working consistently for my location in western PA. Rodents in
other locations can be more of a threat, carrying the hanta (?) virus.
I've read and heard a multitude of methods at trapping and preventing these
fancy rats from invading shop and home space. These particular ones are the
flying type, gliders actually. Yeah, they're cute, but nature belongs
outdoors or not where I am.
The NG alt.home.repair used to have lots of posts about rodents, friends
have related their own mostly unsuccessful experiences, and have seen the
Backyard Bandits shows the BBC made years ago.
They're very agile and can be extremely clever.. it's said that they have
map/memory intelligence to remember how to retrace their route to stored
food.

Mice are fairly easy by comparison.. place a trap on their trail, and you'll
get 'em, sometimes sideways as they attempt to run over the mouse trap. It
seems like they're too busy playing tag or grabass and aren't the least bit
cautious about where they run.

I won't consider poisons as an acceptable solution. The only thing worse
than a filthy destructive rodent is smelling (and trying to locate) a
stinkin' carcass.

The pyrotechnic technique shared here in RCM about a year ago seems a little
(?) risky, although the video would probably make it worthwhile.

Preventing them from entering or quick death are the better solutions, I
figure. It seems that it's possible that some of them have a preference for
this structure, located on the wooded edge of a small town. Deer often visit
for the crab apples (and maybe the chestnuts), and ground hogs are present
near the back edge of the property.
Large oaks are nearby, knot that I'm all that familiar with the trees of
North America, but I've found caches of acorns in the shop.

A couple of seasons ago I got a couple of the large Victor traps and figured
it wouldn't be very difficult to diminish the population to a point where
there wouldn't be any left that had a preference for this building.
I got a roll of hardware cloth to experiment with putting large amounts of
aromatic bait inside a cage with the trap at the entrance (haven't tried
that yet).

I dunno if litters have been born in this building, but they seem to be very
familiar with the structure.
I figured these *******s have great night vision, so I got some artist's
charcoal sticks to blacken the big white board that the traps are built on.
Stealth traps, black on top, sides and ends. Big tasty morsels that can't be
removed.. sounds like a good plan.

I've witnessed them moving around while I was in the shop (located in the
basement), and they use a ledge on top of the formed walls for a trail. The
ledge is wide enough to hold the traps, and when the trap goes off, the
traps fall off the ledge, so I tie a cord in the loop at the back of the
trap (the staple that the arming lever is mounted with) and attach the cord
nearby. This serves 2 purposes.. the trap won't fall behind something, and
it removes the trap from that trail temporarily (which might limit their
ability to remember a specific spot where a sibling died).
This may sound weird, but there is one spot where I've gotten numerous kills
(same trap, same nut).

After seeing that peanut butter, cheese and bacon weren't going to be
effective (to my astonishment), I tried corn chips, Fritos.. aromatic and
tasty, but no luck. I was still having a hard time believing that peanut
butter wasn't effective.
Early in the learning process, I nailed one with a piece of non-garlic ring
balogna that had been on the trap so long that it was really stale and
moldy.
My usual mounting method was to wrap any bait with a heavy cotton thread to
insure that some tugging and biting would be required.

Among the acorns I've found, there were a couple of larger white-shelled
nuts, that a friend identified as hickory nuts.
I cracked a couple of 'em open so that they might release more aroma, and
noticed a white nut with red skin. I drilled a few holes thru the nuts and
wired them to the trap triggers by threading the wire thru the holes and
passing around the bottom of the triggers.
The acorns mount well on mouse traps, same method.. crack 'em open, drill
and wire to attach. It's said that the early bird gets the worm, but the
second mouse gets the cheese. When the traps fall off the ledge, hanging in
air, it's gonna get a little difficult for them.

The wired-on hickory nuts have been completely successful. No bother with
reloading more bait.