When considering which uninvited animals are the most aggravating in his part of North Carolina, Charlotte wildlife control expert Allen Eckman’s answer is, hands down, squirrels. The reason is that they do significant damage to wiring where they nest.
Eckman is the owner of A-1 Wildlife Control, Inc, and it’s his job to know everything about pesky squirrels invading Charlotte, North Carolina, homes. “Once the squirrels enter the house structure, into the attic area, they like to chew the insulation off of the wires,” says Eckman. This exposes the copper electric wires. On the surface, that might not seem so bad. So what if the wires are exposed? As long as they still carry electricity, all’s good, right? Eckman explains, “If that exposed wire makes contact with any nail head or staple or any positive grounding, then it will cause a spark.” That’s sort of like when you touch car battery cables together in order to get a car moving again after the battery gives out. “That’s what happens when squirrels chew wiring, and the wiring is exposed and contacts with other metal,” Eckman says. It doesn’t end there: The chain of effects can get much worse.
Eckman says, “The animals chew up the plastic tubing around copper wires, exposing them. The wires get in contact with some metal.” Then here’s what can happen: “The spark tricks the breaker in the house,” Eckman says. When utility workers come to fix the breaker, the spark happens again and starts an electrical fire.
Therefore, squirrels nesting in an attic isn’t so destructive in itself. What they do, by habit, to wiring, can cause fires though. It’s scary, because a homeowner could be completely oblivious to what’s going on in his attic until it’s too late and a fire has sparked.
In Eckman’s experience as an animal removal expert in Charlotte, squirrels have posed a much greater threat to home security than another hated pest—mice. “I’ve had problems when mice found moisture on a PVC pipe, and chewed it through,” Eckman recounts. The hole in the PVC piping caused a leak. But according to Eckman, that’s as bad as things will generally get with mice infestations structurally. Squirrels pose a much more dangerous threat because their activities can result in a house fire, whereas the activities of mice could result in some minor leaking that is relatively easy to fix by replacing or patching PVC pipe leaks.
However, there’s another threat that both mice and squirrels pose, and it has to do with their droppings. Although in this case, unlike with structural damage, the worse perpetrator is the mice. “Droppings aren’t really a big problem unless the mice are carrying a disease that could spread through their droppings,” Eckman explains. Mouse droppings that carry disease have the potential to cause an epidemic, whereas squirrel droppings “don’t cause any problems” by comparison, Eckman says.
But Eckman contends that droppings are the least of a homeowner’s worries regarding mice or squirrels. It’s the structural things that should be cause for concern.
“In the 20 years that I’ve been dealing with mice and squirrels in Charlotte,” Eckman says, “the greater problem is squirrels over mice because of the extent of the structural damage they can do.” Remember, squirrels chew through wire padding, potentially leading to electrical fires. Mice, however, can cause a leak that’s easy to fix. Health-wise, mice are worse, because their droppings can spread diseases. Eckman says that rabies isn’t a problem with squirrels, because it “usually finishes off the squirrel” before it would get a chance to infect a person. Some might say that’s nature’s way of providing some animal pest control to homeowners.