Rosemary gives tips on ways to keep unwanted house guests out for the winter.
Something Wild: Preventing Conflicts
Air date: September 10, 2004
Welcome to this week’s edition of Something Wild. I’m Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
It seems to me that there are two basic types of wildlife: the kind you want to attract to your yard and garden and those you’d rather not.
This is a great time of year to plant trees, shrubs and perennials to make your yard more attractive to the songbirds, butterflies and beneficial insects you’d like to see next spring and summer.
Likewise, it is also the perfect time to ensure that you don’t have unwanted house-guests this winter. Or in your garden next spring.
The key to keeping unwanted rodents, bats, or woodchucks from becoming a problem is really a matter of simple prevention. It is much easier to keep animals from getting in someplace than trying to get them out after the fact.
So now’s the time to trim back any branches that may be providing a highway into your attic. Then locate and seal up any places that a squirrel or mouse can squeeze itself through. Hardware cloth works really well without blocking air flow. Try to do this before the snow flies. It’ll be easier on you and much kinder to the animals if you aren’t trapping and relocating them in the dead of winter.
Bats won’t return until next spring, so you should seal up any possible entrance holes now. If you wait until you see them again, it might be too late do deal with the problem humanely.
If deer or woodchucks have been a problem in your garden this year, consider installing an electric fence. While there are other solutions out there, fencing tends to be the most reliable way to make potential garden marauders feel unwelcome.
Of course, if nothing is really being damaged, adopting a live-and-let-live attitude can often be the simplest, cheapest, and — least stress-inducing solution.
Something Wild is a joint production of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, NHPR, and New Hampshire Audubon.
