Okay, what is it about the squirrels...

[timer lady]

in my yard???? :rolleyes:

I went to take out the recycle for pickup tomorrow morning & found another 2 dead squirrels. My god, these rodents are picking my yard to bite the big one.

Last spring, as some of you may remember, we had baby squirrels throwing themselves out of their nest . . . psychotic squirrel mom! :hypnosis:

One of the little beasts just missed kt & I who were out on the sidewalk drawing with sidewalk chalk. kt freaked.

There must be a cloud of something or another hanging over this house - or the big old oak tree isn't the safe haven that it used to be. :hammer:

 

[Janna]

Linda,

I'd be happy to send SO and the boys over with the .22 to take care of them for you.

kt might not like that idea either, though :smile:

Finding them dead is odd. Mom shooting them out of the tree is odd too. Never heard of that.

Sure you're not in the Twilight Zone? :rofl:

Janna

 

[dreamer]

I never had them die in my yard but for many years I had them make home in my attic, and eventually in spite of exterminators and trappers, one fell thru the ceiling in my sons bedroom and more than once they would teach their new babies how to walk across the beams in my garage or they would stand on the pipes in my basement watching me while I did laundry. YIKES! destructive little critters when they work their way into the house. ACK, VERY costly little problems.
A man in the next town over from me just got a heft jail sentence and huge fine cuz he harmed some squirrel he had no luck getting rid of. <sigh> For some reason our paper made it front page news for weeks.

 

[hearthope]

Linda, don't want to be the bearer of bad news but, I would be concerned about a virus and or poison the squirrels are coming in contact with.
If the bodies are intact and seem to have just died, even rabies comes to mind.
There are so many new viruses. The west nile virus would do the same thing.
West nile is contracted by the mosquito and I am sure you know how rabies is spread.
I am not sure about the squirrels getting the west nile, we found dead birds around our place and took them to the state lab for testing.

 

[donna723]

Do you have cats? My whole yard was full of squirrels before the little stray cat had her kittens under my house. We're down to two cats now, sometimes three, and I haven't seen even one squirrel in the yard since the cats moved in. They used to get into the attic of the house and I could hear them scurrying around up there, but not anymore.

I have seen a few little furry "body parts" scattered around that could have been what's left of some of the slower squirrels!

 

[Nancy]

Uh oh I guess you don't want to hear all about how I've been feeding mine all winter. I started out with maybe 3 that came by and I now have about 10 that I recognize. I got a squirrel feeder and attached it to my deck and put out several feeding dished all over the yard and at the edge of the woods. I've been watching birds and squirrels and rabbits all winter long.

One squirrel obviously had gotten into a fight because it's paw was all bloody and then it's head was minus some fur. It's getting better now but one today came with a huge sore on it's ear. We have cuyotes and fox in the woods so I imagine every night is fair game.

I even watched two squirrels mate in my backyard :smile:.

Nancy

 

[Hound dog]

If you're finding that many dead animals you just might want to do what someone else suggested and get them tested. It would make me more than a bit nervous.

We have lots of strays and 2 outside cats. I don't think I've ever seen any of them bother the long established squirrel family living in the neighbors huge old oak tree out back. Although I have seen kittens try to chase them for fun. And squirrels and my dogs seem to have an ongoing game of tag going on. :hammer: Oddly both sides seem to enjoy the game.

Our first year here we had an awful lot of dead birds. All over the place. Didn't really see any last year. I made extra sure to empty any standing water on the property. I'm not sure if that helped or not.

 

[busywend]

I'd be worried about them being dead, too. I would probably call the CDC. It may seem over the top, but more than 2 dead squirells - when I have never seen a dead one is a lot.

 

[timer lady]

I'll call animal control tomorrow - never even considered the possibility of disease. My mind must be dulling.

 

[donna723]

Is there any possibility that someone in the neighborhood has been intentionally poisoning them? Some people do things like that!

Or has someone maybe had an exterminator come to spray their house recently? They were here last weekend to spray my house and I had to be very careful with my dogs because they said the spray could easily kill animals. Not so much the fumes, but they should not come in contact with the sprayed areas until they were thoroughly dry. I had to put them in their crates and leave them in a well ventilated unsprayed room for about three hours until I was sure it had all dried. They did the outside too, with big hose-like sprayers, and any little critters coming along after they did it would have walked through the wet spray and got it on their feet. Just a thought...

 

[DammitJanet]

I live in the country and we have never seen that many dead squirrels and we have dogs and outside cats who would and have brought "trophies" home on occasion. I would be thinking some sort of disease too.

Now I do have to preface that to say that there are times that someone will be hunting and kill the momma and the babies will end up dying. We have attempted to raise some of these we found before but they are really hard to raise. So if the squirrels are very small it could be the momma got killed and the babies just died.

 

[needabreak]

squirrels scare me when i lived in my other house i had one that chased me up on my porch and i was screming it scared the !!!! out of me .i would deffintly call animal control something could be going on.just dont go near them.

 

[ScentofCedar]

Calling and reporting this is just the right thing to do, Timer.

We had a raccoon in our yard once? And he was a big one, and he was just sitting there, watching us. So, because we live in this little tiny town, and I did not know who to call, I called our policeman. (That would be the same one who brought me home from the library the day I locked the keys in the car. husband still had not recovered from that one when the same policeman shows up again ~ with a rifle, this time. Although husband began to smile, thinking maybe the policeman had finally had it and decided to just go ahead and incarcerate me, he was only there for the raccoon.) Anyway, the policeman SHOT THE RACCOON ON THE SPOT. He told us to bleach everything down around the area where the racoon had been, and to keep our own animals away from there. Apparently, there WAS a thing going around, and ours was not the only raccoon the policeman had to shoot. He did not even take the body. He said there had been any number of them examined, and they had all had whatever it was.

So, if there is something going around, your local public health department should know what it is and what you should do about it.

Or, you could call your police station and ask whether they know what might be causing such strange behavior in the local squirrel population.

Oh, by the way? (I know you like a good story, Linda.) After the policeman shot the raccoon?

husband asked him whether, as long as he had his gun out anyway?

He could just go ahead and shoot husband's wife for him, too.

:rofl:

That part is a joke.

Whenever I tell the raccoon story though? I always throw that part in.

Barbara

 

[Hound dog]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> husband still had not recovered from that one when the same policeman shows up again ~ with a rifle, this time. Although husband began to smile, thinking maybe the policeman had finally had it and decided to just go ahead and incarcerate me </div></div>


Too darn funny Barbara!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: