Well nothing says the gardening season is over than snow on the ground and on my mower. I had just purchased a new mower and brought it home Tuesday during our little snow squall and this is what it looked like after thirty-five minutes while I was making room in my garage for it. Luckily, I already mulched up my leaves and covered my perennial beds with them. Since the grass is done growing, I sharpened my mower blades, changed the oil and stabilized the gas for winter. Don’t forget to stabilize gas in all your engines, it only takes a few seconds and it can save you a lot of headaches in the spring. Your pruning should be done by now and everything should be wrapped up for the winter. 

  The only real project I had this week was a problem I had with chipmunks. I don’t see them all summer long but every fall, I have to trap and relocate a half dozen or so. The problem is that they are completely undermining a rock wall I have in my backyard that is also a retaining wall, otherwise I wouldn’t care that they are eating my birdseed. They eat a lot less than the squirrels. But they have been getting in my garage where I have found seeds in places that they shouldn’t be. It is that time of the year that rodents of all sizes want to come into your house for the winter and I bet you are not too happy about it. 

Most people do not like roommates that don’t pay rent, eat all their food and never pick up their mess. Now mice and rats are easy, the basic snap trap or poison will work fast on them. However chipmunks, red and grey squirrels are a lot harder. Unlike mice and rats, poisons will not work on these rodents as they have the ability to regurgitate the poison. So it is either snappy traps or live traps to get rid of them. Now most people don’t like to use a snap trap on a chipmunk because we think of them as cute little critters like Alvin, Simon and Theodore. So that leaves the live traps (Hav-a-hart) to catch those little critters. Just remember, never kill an animal in a live catch trap. The smell of death gets into the metal and cannot be washed off. Live traps work best for squirrels as well. 

So let’s skip ahead and say that you have now trapped and removed all the critters from your attic, garage or crawl space. How do you keep them from coming back? First, you have to find where they are coming in. Is it some loose siding or did they chew a hole into the wall? Loose siding is easy - nail it back fast to the building and you should be all good. If it is a hole that they have chewed, it needs to be filled. Expanding foam insulation that comes in a can is the best way to get inside the hole and make sure all the gaps are filled. But you must add the secret ingredient for it to work properly so that they will not just chew through the foam insulation. 

That secret ingredient is steel wool. Not the Brillo you use to clean dishes as that detergents in it can affect the foam insulation, but just plain old steel wool like the type used for wood working and refinishing. This steel wool has no detergents and will not react badly to the foam insulation. Pack some steel wool into the hole before applying the foam insulation, the foam will go through and around the steel wool totally encapsulating it. By doing this you can ensure that the rodents will not chew through the foam to enter your home again. Stay warm and keep your castle secure.