Squirrels

Wed 14 May 2008, 16:43

Squirrels in the loft is serious for electrical wiring - they are just as drawn to the wonderful tactile sensation of slivering off soft pvc insulation with big slicey incisors as rats, mice, and as we have discovered with our house bunnies which have free run of the kitchen/diner area when in the house nights and permanently overwinter (being dwarf bunnies and susceptible to cold), lagomorphs!

If you do have squirrels that is, and not rats or mice that have got up via the cavity wall from some hole - if a slit is wide enough to get a pencil through its more than enough for a mouse, they can unhinge their skulls to flatten down to an astonishing thinness, little b******s.

We've had quite a problem with rodent damage to the brand new wiring of the house which occurred during a time when it was unoccupied as our first incompetent builder ran months overschedule leaving the house uninhabitable - I've upped floorboards tracing wires, which I don't enjoy given how extensive my back injuries and sort of rheumatism of my muscles is - extremely painful. We got it all now, and with new regulations had to get an electrician to check it off, but it was a disruption and a slowdown to completing works that we seriously didn't need!

Arguably the house is still uninhabitable but we just had to move in as it was left by "demolition man" and live in the mess as best we can as we couldn't take a double mortgage any longer, and hence our financial situation was wrecked, so we've had to pick at the ruins of "demolition man's" legacy bit by bit with the help of a stalwart local builder over the last 2 years, and have quite a way to go and a low income to go on with.

A bad builder nightmare is one of the worst things that can happen to a family - consumes your savings, ruins your financial planning, damages long term "pension" plans, and demoralises everyone with the utmost stress - especially if one is a competent craftsman yourself frustrated from being able to pull oneself out of the mess you were dumped in 'cos I can hardly use my arms anymore. Utter, total, nightmare.

Having been a builder myself before becoming a mature student, I had never used a builder before for work on one of our houses, and was also too ill that winter to drive here from Oxford and supervise (driving when suffering blackouts isn't a Good Idea). This is fatal - one has to stand over builders as a rule to make sure they do what one wants them to, at a standard one expects things to be done, until you are lucky enough to find one that can be trusted to work at the standard you expect.

Then just as we begin to see light at the end of the tunnel we find lots of wires gnawed by rodents who got in probably as soon as the wires were laid during the months the house was unoccupied, so delaying us in effect another summer season from completing clearing up the mess (the only time "we" are at all functional and pain manageable is a few months over a *warm* summer, and last year was so bad I and most people with this condition didn't get any "lift" at all, so hope this weather this May carries on)... Sorry rambling away on my first dose of painkillers of the day so I'm able to be up and about when the kids are home. So easy to ramble when one types so fast...

So get that loft checked out pronto and block up the holes!