Squirrel Repellent

Squirrels can be cute and cuddly when they’re not raiding your bird feeders, chewing on wires inside the walls of your home or being one of the many general pests the human population has to deal with. In some cases, squirrels can be real problems. To deal with these problems, many pest control services and websites claim that squirrel repellents exist to achieve a more squirrel-free life.

If you find that squirrels are destroying your precious plants, you can try one of a number of things. First of all, plant any bulbs you have in a coating of cayenne pepper; claims are that squirrels hate the stuff and stay away from it. Next, you can spray some kind of squirrel repellent directly on your plants or on anything you want to keep squirrels away from.

Squirrel repellers usually contain some kind of hot pepper mix; indeed, you can find simple repellent recipes on many websites for do-it-yourself squirrel repellent. You can mix one small bottle of hot pepper sauce, one gallon of water and one teaspoon of mild liquid detergent. Some sites claim that home made squirrel repellent is more efficient than any store-bought alternative; in fact, some squirrels have been known to attack plants more aggressively after the application of store-bought repellent.

Besides hot pepper sauce, urine from a predatory animal is also used in “all natural” squirrel repellent mixtures; you most likely won’t be able to make this at home, though. Bulb Booster with Bobcat urine is an example of this. The idea is that in nature, animals use urine to mark their territories and let others know where they are. If squirrels smell bobcat urine, for example, they’ll think they’re in bobcat territory and go scampering in the other direction.

If you don’t have hot pepper sauce, you can put a handful of hot peppers in a good-sized container and add about a quart of boiling water. Let this soak overnight. Strain the peppers from the water and add just a few drops of the mild detergent; the strained water can be put in a spray bottle and used as repellent.

To keep squirrels away from buildings, use rags soaked in ammonia or socks filled with mothballs. Be very careful if you have children, pets or wild birds around the house; either of these objects can be very toxic if ingested. If you don’t want to use either of these options, you can try an electronic squirrel repeller, such as a sonic squirrel repeller. Be wary of these products, though, as there exists no scientific evidence that electronic devices are useful in pest control.