It was only a couple days after moving in to our new apartment when at sunset I heard a lot of noise coming from the kitchen. I got onto my crutches to go see what was going on and by the time I got there the noise had stopped. Each evening, at about the same time I heard the same type of noises and each time I hobbled out to the kitchen the noise stopped. I began thinking it was noise from the neighbors yet wondered why it sounded like it was in my kitchen.

Finally I happened to be in the kitchen when the ruckus began. Ahhhh, it’s squirrels in the crawl space over the kitchen sink, sigh… maybe they’ll leave on their own – delusional wishing.

Cute, but I don't want them in the house!

Each evening after that it seemed like the squirrels were inviting friends over. More and more of them each night running around and the sounds were getting louder. Great, that’s all I need, is for one of them to chew on the electrical wiring up there and instant blackout! Not to mention the smell that would no doubt follow as the furry body decomposed.

That’s happened twice to me many years ago and just thinking of having to leave the windows open 24 hours a day for the next two weeks in attempt to rid my home of rotting flesh. And having to deal with an electrician coming in to replace the chewed up wiring.

Low and behold, two nights later during one of their more active eposodes one of them must have found a small hole or space between the studs and ended up between the kichen and living room walls. I heard him fall down in between the kitchen and living room wall… great!

Bandit our dog was very quick to run to the kitchen and sniff at the baseboard where he heard the little critter moving around and trying to climb back up the inside of the wall. I stood and watched as Bandit sniffed and snorted, and touched the wall with his paw and let out one of his loud woofs. I smiled and said, “squirrel.” Since he knows the word squirrel he jumped up into the air wagged his tail and proceeded his sniffing, snorting and pawing… I could see his doggie brain thinking, “oh boy, was this great fun, a squirrel right here in the house, COOL!”

Bandit

Then, the little squirrel began squeaking. Of course Bandit was right there to hear the series of three squeaks (they always came in threes). This continued for over three hours. After 45 minutes Bandit  became concerned and kept coming over to me as if to say, “something is wrong here, do something about it!” He knows the word “help” and he also knows when ‘help’ is being applied. So now I felt bad for both the trapped squirrel and for Bandit who couldn’t understand ‘why’ I wasn’t something about this. Don’t you just feel awful when your dog ‘knows’ that ‘you’ should be responding and you’re not, the puzzled expression they get and they keep trying to communicate to you to do something… sigh.

I went to my computer and emailed our new landlord and told him what had happened. He said he’d be over around lunchtime the next day to bust a hole in the wall if the squirrel was still trapped. It indeed was still trapped, we heard him off and on all night and through the morning.

Our landlord arrived with a live trap and tools and began pulling the wall apart and sawing. He and Curt worked at trying to get that squirrel to come out of the wall and into the trap… hahahahaha, we all must have been delusional thinking that would happen!

After an hour the squirrel hadn’t budged. Curt and the landlord devised many ingenious tools in attempt to pry this critter out of the corner (the corner of the furthest away stud). No matter what they did this little guy was NOT going to budge – it was as if his feet were cemented in place. He’d squeak, hiss and growl as these two men tried to gently coax him into entering an alein world.

After they duck taped my large soup ladle to a 3 foot long 1×1 and still couldn’t get this critter to budge, they starting discussing how they could wrap up their hand and arm and reach in and pull him out. I was wondering which one of them was going to get bit first.

I chimed in thinking out loud, “what can we do to make that corner he is set on glueing himself to less safe and appealing???” I suddenly blurted out… “ack, my Young Living peppermint oil! That’s suppose to repell rodents!” They were eager to give my suggestion a try. Since I’m a Young Living distributor you can get the oils at my website, TheVeryEssence.com

So we took the old fishing rod (because it was thin and flexible) and fashioned a cotton ball on the tip of it (scotch taped the cotton ball on the tip) – I put about 20 drops of peppermint oil on the cotton ball.

Curt guided the tip of the fishing rod back into the corner without bumping the squirrel with the peppermint drenched cotton ball and there we waited. The three of us spoke softly wondering if it would work and if so how long would it take.

With our flash light shining into the corner we could clearly see that the little guy didn’t care for the peppermint at all. The corner was no longer a safe-haven. He slowly came to the opening in the wall and stuck his head into the live trap to examine if it was safer than being in what was now an inhospitable corner.

We watched as he thought about making a move into the trap. Then, he jumped in the trap!

Darn, the door didn’t trip and he quick as a shot went back into the wall when we manually tried to spring it. Drats! Let’s do it again…

We could clearly see he was NOT going to stay in the wall for long with that peppermint. He made his way back into the trap, this time the door sprang shut. Finally!

From the time Curt put the peppermint fishing rod into the corner it took about 5-10 minutes for the squirrel to leave. And because the trap didn’t spring shut properly the first time it added about another 5 minutes before this little squirrel was actually caught. Compared to the other methods tried which well exceeded an hour, I’d say the peppermint worked like a charm.

They say ‘one drop’ of Young Living peppermint oil equals about 28 cups of peppermint tea, so with my putting about 20 drops on this cotton ball, holey smokes was it ever strong smelling! Good smelling but strong. We left the peppermint soaked cotton ball in the wall thinking that it would prevent any other squirrels from getting in there.

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