Before I can remodel

This is my first post, so please be patient with me. My house is 80+ years old. The original ceilings are 10 ft high as was the fashion of the time. Judging by the shag gold carpeting, sometime during the Nixon administration, a previous owner installed a central air system suspended from the 10 ft ceiling and then hung an 8 ft ceiling. This obviously creates a 2 ft dead space. Squirrels have taken up residence in that space. Setting traps is not an option as I have no real access to the dead space. Does anyone have suggestions on how to get rid of them?

thanks,
charles

A big mean cat, I have one he can take down anything up to about 8 pounds. Another option would be to shoot them when the leave.

An option that does not result in the death of the squirrel would be to find out where they are entering the house wait for them to leave then plug the hole. I usually fill the hole with steel wool before covering it over. Squirrels will just chew right through spray foam or 1 by boards

Lou

Good luck.

Putting a trap near the hole can work as well. Because if there's several of them, it can be hard to know when they are all out. And you do NOT want to lock one in. I've done that. VERY pissed off squirrel.

My wife and I ended up trapping 7 squirrels in our attic after we bought our house. They stayed quiet when we looked at the house and only made themselves known after we closed on the place.

Be careful. The squirrel population on our block had exploded, so there was lots of competition for food. They got very aggressive. One neighbor tried to corner one in his garage and got bit in the neck. A different neighbor of mine found them in his kitchen more than once stealing his own food. He ended up shooting over 30 of them just from our block.

I have only observed squirrels when they were doing cute "squirrel things" and where there were supposed to be...outside, so this is just a couple of thoughts that may or may not have relevance to your situation. First, shooting would be unacceptable in any urban area. You'd have a ton of law enforcement, unhappy neighbors, and probably animal rights activists camped in your yard really fast. More over, even if you successfully trap, kill, or otherwise dispose of the current population, these things breed like rabbits, and you'd have a new crop invading your crawlspace before long. Seems to me that you first must make sure they are all out of the space, then seal it off so they can not regain entry. The latter is going to be the real problem. It might be worth while to contact an exterminator to advise you on how best to remove them and, more importantly, what he would advise on a barrier to keep them out. I would assume that the way your house is constructed would have to be considered and this would be done best by a person on site. I'm sure a piece-meal approach would be mostly a waste of time. Good luck.