Squirrel Removal Indianapolis - End the 6 AM Wake-Up

Four species, two seasons, one fire risk

Central Indiana has four squirrels that get into houses. Eastern gray squirrels are the big ones you see in every yard, and they cause about 80% of the calls we run. Fox squirrels are the rusty-bellied cousins, a little larger, and they tend to nest in detached garages and outbuildings more than attics. Red squirrels are smaller and louder than their size suggests; they show up more often on the north side near treelines along Cool Creek and Morse Reservoir. Flying squirrels are the one nobody expects - they’re nocturnal, palm-sized, and the giveaway is light scrabbling at 1 or 2 in the morning instead of dawn.

Squirrels nest twice a year in Indiana. The first litter goes in around late February and is weaned by May. The second goes in around August and is on its own by late September. If you’re hearing them right now, mom is almost certainly raising young somewhere in your attic. That changes how we do the work. We don’t seal a hole if there’s a chance kits are still inside, because she will chew through fascia, soffit, or shingles to get back to them. Two hours of chewing on a 2-year-old roof is an expensive mistake.

The real reason to take squirrels seriously is the wiring. A squirrel’s incisors never stop growing, so they have to chew constantly to keep them filed down. Romex - the standard plastic-sheathed cable running through your attic - is the right diameter and the right hardness. We’ve pulled cable out of attics with the copper conductors exposed and the insulation stripped clean off for two and three feet at a time. The National Fire Protection Association attributes a meaningful slice of unexplained attic fires to rodent damage, and squirrels are the worst offenders because they actually live up there year-round. If you’ve had squirrels for a while and haven’t had an electrician look at the wiring, that’s worth doing.

One thing we get asked about constantly: poison. It doesn’t work on squirrels. They’re cachers, meaning they bury and hide food rather than eating it on the spot. A poisoned bait gets stashed in your wall cavity, in the insulation, in the soffit overhang, and three months later something else finds it. Also, a squirrel that does eat enough to die usually dies in the wall, and then you’ve traded a noise problem for a smell problem for six to eight weeks. We don’t use poison. Ever. On anything.

What it typically costs

Squirrel jobs vary by how many entries we have to close and what your roofline looks like. A simple gable-vent entry on a single-story ranch runs at the low end. A 2-story Carmel home with chewed soffits along 40 feet of fascia runs at the high end. Here’s the honest range.

Every quote is written before work starts. No surprise upcharges. If we open something up and find a bigger problem, we stop and talk to you first.