In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 393 of 1154
After 'coons, squirrels are the worst.
I saw some home-repair(remodel) show - I don't remember which one - the only thing I remember about the whole show is what the squirrels were doing. The house had a brick fireplace chimney with a really really large, really really thick sheet of lead as flashing - and the squirrels were eating it! Well, not eating it per se, but gnawing on it to keep their teeth trimmed. And a whole lot of the lead flashing was gone. Didn't they get lead poisoning or something?
I've read that once they start on a spot they tend to go back to it even after it's been repaired (material replaced). I don't know if that's true. But I've read that one must do extra to keep them from re-doing what they did in the first place. I believe the answer is hardware cloth, but I'd be curious what you find.
Anyway, I'm glad you made your temporary repair and got back on the ground safely! But what a chore just to to that! Do you think when you're doing repairs you might set up something to secure yourself on the roof then hoist your materials up separately?
I was visiting back home a few years ago, and it struck me how much people do there to make the place not what it wants to be, just like people here do a lot to make the place not what it wants to be. Here people struggle against the fact that this is dry land (and getting drier by the year). There people struggle against the succession that wants to happen to any open area - grasses to forbs to shrubs to pioneer trees to forest.
It doesn't look like it Jack but I think you live in a forest with all the critters that want to live in one.
The temporary end to MY critter story is that the guy trapped and relocated 2 possums, but that's all he was going to do for $266. One was YUGE - it nearly filled the trap top to bottom, side to side, I shit you not. That was the one that looked really scared, and like it was trying to shrink down to nothing, poor thing. The other was the sweetest-looking nearly all white one about half that size.
So I may call him back for another round of trapping.
I still do have the gophers in my yard, but I'll get to them later. And there are definitely squirrels everywhere!
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Well... I have 3 maple trees on my very large lawn. That's it. I'm considering having them removed, but I will really miss the shade.
There didn't appear to be any damage outside of the hole itself, at least from what I could tell.
The night they were in here, there was no mistaking it. I could hear them in the attic all the way from the 1st floor they were so loud. After I scared them off, I haven't heard them since. I think that they wrote off all the "work" of destroying my roof and figured they didn't want to tango with whatever "beast" was inside their new place.
After I patch it, I'll monitor the situation. If they come back, I'm getting the trees torn down.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
You don't have to remove the trees, SIX, just trim back the branches so that the roof isn't just a convenient jump away!
Oh I also tended to my "windowsill garden" which is just about what I can manage nowadays with all the other stuff going on. I had a couple of long dead plants and five struggling ones, so I tossed the dead ones and separated/ repotted the others. I get to see which ones survive. I left them far too long and their roots were tangled, so pulling them apart was kinda rough.
The interview was interesting and positive. But we have two more to go
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I agree about trimming back the branches instead of removing the trees. Wherever I see squirrels going to or from structures they're going via handy tree branches. The only exception I ever saw, and then only once, was a squirrel that went up a wooden fence and up a short ~4' section of stucco garage wall (which must have been sufficiently rough for traction), then onto the roof.
I just want to say that my area APPEARS to be reverting to oak-woodland. I've had multiple coast live oak plant themselves in my yard - one is a good 35' tree, one is just a bit smaller, two are 15' trees, and there are multiple smaller ones all around. Plus I have 2 trees I've provisionally IDd as beech that planted themselves. The reason why I say APPEARS to be reverting to oak-woodland is because of course there's fire-suppression here. I don't know what would be happening if there was a normal fire-regime.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Starting Tuesday we have the possibility of a change of weather... the chance of rain for the foreseeable future.
BRENDA, how fares BC with the coronavirus? You might have ANOTHER reason not to go to malls!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
Sad to say that BC has had its first death from COVID-19. An elderly man in a care home in Vancouver.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
This Saturday could be the last time BC changes its clocks. We here are getting tired of waiting on Washington, Oregon and California to get their collective sh&t together and deal with congress.
Good for you guys.
I'm envious of those in Indianapolis who don't change the clock. So stupid that half our state does and the other half doesn't.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
I'm hoping that it will be. Will have to see what happens in October.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I don't think the guy was on a cruise ship or returned from a trip to Wuhan or Italy recently! Did they have a presumptive source for his infection that you know? Or did they assign it to 'community transmission'?
Originally posted by Brenda:
Sad to say that BC has had its first death from COVID-19. An elderly man in a care home in Vancouver.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Here's the answer - after reading a number of online reports, it appears that two care workers and two residents of the long-term care home, including the man who died - tested positive. They think one of the care workers brought it in to the facility.
https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/national-news/death-in-bc-care-home
-believed-to-be-first-covid-19-fatality-in-canada-2147908
Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia's provincial health officer, and Health Minister Adrian Dix announced news of the death at the Lynn Valley Care Centre on Sunday night. The man's symptoms were detected some time between Thursday and early Friday.
"He was a man in his 80s and he had a number of underlying health conditions, unfortunately, so (he was) in that risk group for people who are more likely to have severe disease with this," Henry told a news conference in Victoria.
Another resident in her 70s who tested positive at the same facility also had pre-existing conditions but is in stable condition, Henry said, adding the "outbreak" is especially concerning because it involves transmission in the community, not through travel.
A second health-care worker from the same facility has also been tested positive for COVID-19 and is in isolation at home. The initial worker is believed to have worked at two other care homes.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The funny thing is, after years of letting those branches grow long I finally got around to cutting A LOT of them back last summer. I had one branch that would scrape the roof if it got windy enough. And there were zero squirrel problems in that situation.
The problem is, everything that is left is really too tall for me to get to. I don't know how far down they're jumping to get up there, but it's got to be a leap of at least 2 1/2 feet horizontally, and twice that vertically.
I can't figure it. There's nothing in here that it would want as far as food. How would it even know to burrow into a roof? There wasn't any shingle problems, as the roof was only a few years old when I bought the house and nothing has ever leaked.
Everybody I've talked to, including people who do trade work, have said they never heard of a squirrel burrowing down into a roof before. But unless my roof was hit by a meteor that burnt up between hitting the roof and the drywall inside the attic, that's exactly what happened here.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
A squirrel can easily do a 2.5' horizontal jump, and a 5' vertical jump down, but not up. They(it) could be jumping down to the roof, and scampering off another way besides the trees.
I'm curious - did you see (an) actual squirrel(s)? and how big is the hole, approximately?
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME