Springtime means birds in the attic
March 10th, 2007 by Atomictumor
Every year, we get birds nesting in our attic vents. Normally, we don’t notice until the bastards have already laid their eggs, and being the sentimental loser that I am, I can’t stomach pitching the little things from the rafters into their doom on the cold hard concrete of the driveway, which means we get to have a few months of birdy chirping waking us up at 7 AM.
They can’t get into the attic proper because of the mesh wiring behind the vents, but that doesn’t stop em from getting into the vents. I have had a hard time finding options for keeping the bastards from nesting there, other than putting ugly wiring all over the top of our house. Not a good thing.
Sooo, I seem to have a couple of choices. I can buy an attic cat, and just let it loose up there (or maybe some attic snakes), but I don’t see that turning out well. I can go up every day and get rid of the nests they’ve made, but that would go against my basic laziness, and navigating in the attic is difficult on account of all the crap I have up there. I have a lot of crap.
So, I’m, once again, appealing to the hive mind of the intarweb tubes. Would mothballs work? Maybe an automatic flamethrower? Mousetraps?
Robots?
What is going to tell these birds that my attic is spoken for?
March 10th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
A little miniature scarecrow?
March 10th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Yeah, we went with the ugly wire. Sleep trumps every time.
March 10th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
We had squirrels in our attic (behind the walls; we have a finished attic) a few years ago. The pest control guy set traps and, unfortunately, caught a starling as well as some squirrels.
Squirrels are dangerous, as they can gnaw on the wires and start a fire. Birds are harmless (albeit messy).
March 10th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I wonder if just the scent of a cat would be enough to keep them away? Like a net bag filled with cat fur? I can provide all you need if you want to give that a try …
March 10th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
You could put those spike things that courthouses have stuck to places they don’t want birds roosting.
You could climb a nearby tree w/ a bb gun and shoot em.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
What about a fake plastic owl?
March 10th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Or just pipe in some music up there and play like Beach Boy’s Revival or something along those sick lines.
tg
March 10th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
You can always move, like we did.
March 11th, 2007 at 6:48 am
I would suggest earplugs.
:-)
March 11th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Birds have a poor sense of smell. Unless there are vultures or ocean birds nesting in your attic, the cat fur won’t do anything.
March 11th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I was told by a pest guy that mothballs are the way to go. Try to secure the area they are entering and add a few mothballs. I would go easy so the smell of the balls does not run you out.
March 11th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
neighbors told us today that the back yard smells like dog piss in the summer at our new place and wondered what we were going to do about it. I really did not have an answer for them.
tg