Professional Squirrel Control in Greenwich

Signs You May Have Squirrels in the Loft

• Heavy movement in daylight. This is the giveaway. Rodent activity in a loft at three in the afternoon is far more likely to be a squirrel than a rat, because squirrels are active in the day and rats are not.
• Noise with real weight to it. Thumping, rolling, dragging, and sometimes the sound of something being carried across the ceiling.
• Damage to loft insulation. Torn up, compressed and gathered into a nesting mass, usually near the eaves.
• Gnawed cabling or pipework. Squirrels gnaw constantly, and cable insulation in a loft is a genuine fire risk rather than a talking point.
• Damage at the roofline. Lifted tiles, chewed soffit or fascia board, a gap at the verge, or an opening where the roof meets a neighbouring property.
• Activity along fences, cables and overhanging branches. That is the road in.

The Law Comes First on This One

The grey squirrel is a non-native invasive species in Great Britain. It is an offence to release a grey squirrel back into the wild or to allow one to escape, which means that catch-and-release - the thing almost everybody asks about first, and asks about for entirely decent reasons - is not something we or any other company can lawfully offer. Anyone who offers to catch your squirrel and let it go in a park is either misinformed or telling you what you want to hear.

Trapping also carries its own duties: traps must be of an approved type used in the way they are approved for, and they have to be checked frequently so that nothing is left in one. That is a large part of why squirrel work is a programme of visits rather than a single call-out, and why it is priced as a trapping service rather than as a treatment.

How Squirrel Control Works

The survey establishes how many animals are likely to be present, where they are getting in, whether there is a nest with young, and what damage has already been done to cabling and insulation. Access at the roofline is the crucial part: squirrels reach a roof along fences, cables and overhanging branches, and they enter at a weak point rather than making one from nothing.

A trapping programme then runs over a series of visits, with traps sited where the animals are actually moving and checked on the required schedule. Once activity has stopped, the entry point is closed - and the order of those two things is not negotiable.

Never block the hole first

It is the most common and the most damaging DIY mistake in squirrel work. Sealing the roofline while animals are still inside traps them in the loft, where they will do considerably more damage trying to get out than they were doing before - and if there are dependent young in a nest, it leaves them shut in. Proofing goes last, after the loft is confirmed clear.

Overhanging Branches, Cables and Neighbouring Roofs

Squirrels do not usually climb a wall to reach a loft. They arrive along something: a branch that reaches the roof, a fence line running to a wall, a cable, or a neighbouring roof in a terrace. In terraced and semi-detached housing across Greenwich, Charlton and Eltham a shared roof void means the animals may not be entering above your property at all, which is worth establishing before anybody starts closing holes in the wrong roofline.

Damage Worth Taking Seriously

Two things make squirrels more than a noise problem. The first is cable gnawing, which is a real fire risk in a loft and the reason we will always suggest an electrician looks at damaged cabling rather than us simply reporting it. The second is water: a squirrel that has been through a roofline or displaced tiles leaves an opening that lets weather into the roof void long after the animal has gone.