Squirrel Removal in Ithaca, NY

Squirrels in your Ithaca home

Ithaca feeds squirrels well. Campus lawns, gorge-edge woods and street trees on the hills drop acorns, hickory nuts and maple seeds over roofs all autumn, and gray squirrels commute through that canopy daily. Red squirrels hold the spruce and pine pockets and are bolder about wall cavities, and flying squirrels — nocturnal, social and rarely seen — account for the light scratching some homeowners hear only after midnight.

The buildings invite them in. A tall older home on an Ithaca hill may have two roof additions, an enclosed porch and a rebuilt chimney, and each junction leaves a small gap at the eave. Squirrels test those gaps with their teeth; wood softened by gorge damp gives way quickly. Once a female raises a litter in the insulation, the attic becomes a defended home, and half measures stop working.

Which squirrel is overhead?

Sound and schedule separate the three. Grays are diurnal and heavy-footed — thumps, rolling nuts, chewing you can hear through the ceiling in the morning and late afternoon. Reds are smaller, quicker and famously vocal, and they stash cones and nuts in wall voids, so a rattling cascade inside a wall often points to a red. Flying squirrels glide in after dark from nearby trees, travel in groups, and make the faint, busy scratching that tenants in upper apartments report at 2 a.m.

Where Ithaca houses let them in

Entries cluster at transitions: where a dormer meets the main roof, along the top of an enclosed porch, at corners where gutters have overflowed into the fascia for years, and around chimney flashing on houses that have been re-roofed around old masonry. In the multi-unit conversions, a squirrel may enter over one apartment and nest over another. Our crew walks the whole roofline and checks the attic from end to end rather than patching the first hole spotted from a ladder.

Litters in the insulation

Gray squirrels raise young in late winter and again in midsummer, reds on a similar rhythm. Babies cannot leave on their own for weeks, so sealing an entry while a litter is inside trades a noise problem for a frantic mother chewing a new hole — sometimes through interior wood — plus young that perish in the attic. Timing the exclusion around the litter, or removing the family together as the DEC license allows, is the part of the job that separates careful work from a quick patch.

What a season of chewing costs

Squirrel teeth never stop growing, so attic residents gnaw constantly: framing, stored boxes, duct runs and the plastic coating on wiring. Stripped wire in a dry attic is the risk we take most seriously, and it is why we advise against letting a known occupancy run through the winter. Insulation gets trampled into runways and soiled around the nest, which quietly steals heat from the rooms below on the coldest Ithaca nights.

How the exclusion is done

We map every opening, mount a one-way excluder on the active entry so squirrels can leave to feed and cannot get back in, and close the secondary gaps with flashing and steel mesh while they are out. Once checks confirm the attic is empty and no young remain, the excluder comes off and the final hole is sealed in metal like the rest. On rental properties we coordinate timing with the landlord so tenants know what the noises during the exit days mean.

Keeping the hills quiet afterward

A sealed house stays quiet if the small stuff is watched: limbs that grow back over the roof get cut before they become a bridge, vent screens that rust get replaced with metal-backed covers, and the seams opened by ice each winter get a look in spring. In gorge-edge neighborhoods the squirrels are not going anywhere — the defense is a building with nothing left to chew through, and that holds season after season.