The audio clip above is a common sound heard when multiple squirrels are interacting. This is often heard in attics or crawlspaces from your living space, most commonly in the early morning hours or late afternoon hours.
Here in Massachusetts, we deal with three different types of squirrels. Gray squirrels, red squirrels, and flying squirrels.
Listen to what a Squirrel sounds like here 🔉
Gray Squirrels
The Eastern Gray squirrels are the most abundant squirrel and are usually the ones you see running around your yard. These squirrels typically enter homes around the roof-line, scaling the home with ease by way of tree limbs, power lines, porch posts, corners of siding, and others.
Grey Squirrels are diurnal, meaning they are active in the daytime. Often early morning and evenings are their busiest times, and when you hear them the most running around your ceiling. They are very social animals, so most times you are dealing with more than just one squirrel at a time. They also come in a black color morph, but that is the same species.
Gray squirrels breed twice per year, if food is abundant. Early spring, leading to young being born mid spring, and late summer, leading to young being born late summer/early fall. Squirrel removal during these times of year with young present needs to be done carefully and correctly, or you could end up with dead animals trapped inside and the smells that come along with it. Also, sealing an adult out that has young inside will cause her to start chewing on everything outside, causing lots of damage.
If you are hearing lots of bouncing around in the daytime, it is likely this animal. A visual inspection of the roof line by you can often confirm entry points, but most roofs need to be checked with ladders from on top of the roof to identify entry points. We offer squirrel trapping and squirrel removal through different methods, and exclusion to seal the entry points.
Red Squirrels
Red squirrels are slightly smaller and prefer more forested habitats, typically associated with coniferous trees, pine or walnut trees being the most common. When it comes to red squirrels, they spend much of their time on the ground and are known to enter basements around the foundation level.
They like to hoard food in the winter time, bringing in pounds upon pounds of walnuts, beech nuts, hickory nuts and pine cones. If you start seeing large amounts of these accumulating in a basement area, it is most likely red squirrels. They do not hibernate over the winter, just like the other species of squirrels. They are still very active in the winter. They can be very territorial and are often seen chasing gray squirrels out of the area.
Flying Squirrels
The least commonly encountered squirrel species in Massachusetts is the Flying Squirrel. In the case of flying squirrels, family colonies typically range between 8-15 individuals, but as many as 30 can gather together in the winter time to share the same space. They typically stay away from your home in the summer time, and start showing up in the fall as the nights get cool. They are actually common, but due to their secretive nature and nighttime activity, are rarely seen.
Flying squirrels are nocturnal, so most of the time that they are heard is overnight or very early morning. Flying squirrels are small, roughly the size of chipmunks with characteristic flaps of skin between their front and back legs. They typically enter homes around the roof line and can glide to your roof from over 100 ft away. They don’t actually “fly” as their name says, but their ability to glide is very impressive. Because they are nocturnal, flying squirrels spend the majority of the daytime hours sleeping. If they have fully moved into your home and it has become their full time residence, they are likely up there sleeping quietly during the daytime hours and you would have no idea they are still there. They then become active in the evening and spend the night going in and out, only to return in the early hours to sleep the day away before you get up in the morning. Because they live in large family units, they may spend time investigating your roofline and attic in small numbers before fully moving in. It is good to address a flying squirrel problem early before they become full time residents because you may catch it before they have created a “latrine”. A latrine is a dedicated space for defecating and urinating, which can build up and become very difficult and costly to sanitize. If this is right on the other side of your ceiling, you may start to see stains appear, and eventually those stains can even eat away and break through the ceiling.
Signs of squirrels entering your home are sounds of pitter patter (morning through afternoon for gray and red squirrels, evening and overnight for flying squirrels), or visual clues such as seeing droppings, food storage, and nests being built in an attic. Flying squirrel removal can be a bit more involved since you may be dealing with dozens. We offer guaranteed flying squirrel removal and exclusion.
