Give a F*k presented by Spark Consciousness
We're dropping knowledge bombs and answering your burning questions about Nature, animals, spirituality, mental health, women's empowerment, and other profound topics.
This podcast probably won't change your life, but hopefully, it will give you some food for thought - some guidance on this twisted path we call human existence.
A presentation of Spark Consciousness, hosted by Sarah Woodard
Give a F*k presented by Spark Consciousness
Eco-Friendly Homes: Harmonious Critter Exclusion
An important part of living in harmony with Nature is know how to deal with it when wild critters try to take up rent-free occupancy in your home.
In this episode, we share practical advice on compassionate critter-proofing techniques. You’ll learn how to seal entry points effectively and the humane use of no-kill traps, ensuring your home stays free of unwanted visitors while honoring Mother Earth.
As we explore the hidden benefits of bats—like their incredible mosquito-controlling and pollination abilities—this episode makes them seem less like intruders and more like natural allies.
We discuss innovative techniques like using UV flashlights to follow their trails (and the trails of mice as well) and installing one-way doors to guide them out safely. Timing and legality are key, especially when dealing with bats, and our episode covers these crucial aspects to keep you compliant with wildlife regulations.
Don’t miss out on our insights into achieving a more harmonious lifestyle. Tune in and transform your living space into a model for harmonious living.
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Eek A wild critter in the house. Now what? On Season 2, episode 14 of Give a Fuck, presented by Spark Consciousness, we're talking about how to critter-proof your home and what to do when wild animals try to make themselves non-paying tenants. Join us to learn how to deal with these situations in ways that are compassionate and beneficial for you, the critters and Mother Earth. Welcome to Season 2, episode 14 of Give a Fuck, presented by Spark Consciousness. We're dropping knowledge bombs and answering your burning questions about nature, animals, spirituality, mental health, women's empowerment and other profound topics.
Speaker 1:This podcast probably won't change your life, but hopefully it will give you some food for thought, some guidance on this twisted path we call human existence. My role as an award-winning story keeper and catalyst for healing humanity and Mother Earth is to help you reawaken to your own connection with nature and, through this reconnection, reacquaint you with your intuition. What you do with it, how you incorporate that into your life, is up to you. I hope you'll make changes that benefit both you personally and Mother Earth as a whole. I hope you'll share what you learn here with others, and that they'll make different, more compassionate and enlightened choices too. Either way, take what works for you. Leave the rest, always work to be the best version of yourself and try to leave the world a little better than it was when you arrived. So I actually want to give a shout out to my listing agents, ashley and Louise from Keller Williams. They actually inspired this episode because they messaged me when we were in the middle of a text message conversation, anyways, and wound up talking about the fact that they had these mice in their house and they had actually kind of freaked out and killed what turned out to be the mama, which made me very sad, because then the babies who weren't old enough to be on their own didn't survive, and I tried to give them some tips based on my knowledge, how to deal with this, but I also left off a lot of information because this was a text message conversation. Deal with this, but I also left off a lot of information because this was a text message conversation. So I wanted to try to encapsulate all of this for you, not just for mice, but for other animals as well how to critter-proof your house, how to deal with it when they get inside so that it's humane and compassionate, and all of that stuff. And so I'm just going to jump right to the seitan of the show, so we can start talking about this, because this is a thing that I have a lot of experience with.
Speaker 1:All right, so I think actually I am going to start with bats, and maybe most of you have not had the terror of having a bat in your house. I dealt with this for years and years in a row. Every summer there would be a bat flying around in my house and I could hear them in the walls, and every time one was flying in the house it was abject terror for me, tears huddled on the floor. It was awful, largely because I kept thinking rabies vector species I hate needles and it just devolved into sheer panic attack. There was no rational thought left.
Speaker 1:So I want to give you some facts, first about bats and rabies, and then about what to do if this happens to you, and I really hope it does not. The first thing is, yes, bats are a rabies vector species. That is true. However, the incidence of rabies being transferred from a bat to a person anywhere in the US is extremely small. It rarely, rarely happens. It varies a little bit by state, of course, and you're going to want to check with a wildlife expert in your area to get the exact statistics for you. But most of the time when rabies shows up in a person, it's because that person was bitten by their own pet who got rabies from a rabies vector species. So with that in mind, maybe that makes it a little less scary.
Speaker 1:Makes bats a little less scary, because the fact is they are amazing creatures. They eat billions of mosquitoes and they're great pollinators. We don't still want them living in the walls of our home. Right, this is our home, and they're great pollinators. We don't still want them living in the walls of our home. Right, this is our home, and they're living there rent-free, not cool. So the key with keeping any wild critters out, including bats, is finding holes and closing them up.
Speaker 1:Things like mice and bats. They can get really, really small. They need like the opening, like the size of an almond to fit in. So finding those can be hard. A tip with bats and other other rodents, like mice as well, they leave a trail. Bats leave a trail of of guano, of poop, to help them find their way back into their spot, into their hole. And if you're like a bat abatement professional who knows how to do this humanely, professionally, you know what to look for, and you can find it without any special equipment. But if you don't know what you're looking for, a UV flashlight can be super, super helpful. And remember, bats are up higher. So you're not going to want to go around the base of your house for bats. You're going to want to go around the roof line, places where, if you have like different materials like part of your house is wood and part of your house is brick or something like that, places where those join up, anywhere that there could potentially be gaps, you're going to want to go around that with a UV flashlight and, just like you've seen on CSI and other of those types of shows, those fluids, the guano, will light up under this UV light and then you can follow that to see where they're getting in.
Speaker 1:Now here's the thing Do not just close the hole If you know you have bats in your walls. You do not want to just close up the hole because you will leave them trapped in there and they will eventually work their way into your house trying to find their way to freedom and food. In addition, there are only certain times at which you can safely and humanely abate bats because of their breeding cycle, and so you want to make sure. Again, contact a wildlife expert in your area to make sure that you understand the month. It is permitted wherever you live. But once you've found that opening, you can install. They sell these on Amazon or other places too. Basically it's a one-way door, so when they fly out they can't get back in, and you leave that door up for a week or so. Then you can take that down and close up the hole and the bats will be gone. Another thing that can help you and again, this can only be done during the right time of year, because otherwise the babies cannot fly away and they are left stuck in your walls to die. But I have discovered bats despise the smell of Vicks Vaporub, and I mean, really, who can blame them? It's a pretty pungent smell. So if you load up some cotton balls or whatever, or a rag with some Vicks Vaporub and throw it in your eaves if you have access to that, assuming that's where they're living they will fly out on their own and you can then close up the hole. But again, remember, this has to be done after the babies are old enough to fly away and get out. That is the humane, also legal way. It is literally not legal to seal up your house with bats inside of it, at least not in New England. So again, you're going to want to contact your Department of Wildlife or a rehabber or anybody like that in your area to get the specific dates and timelines and all of that. So that's bats.
Speaker 1:Perhaps not surprisingly, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, other rodents very similar. The difference is they don't fly and they don't use echolocation to get around and they're lower to the ground because they don't fly. Right, but it's very similar. So let's look at mice, because mice are super, super common. Obviously right, most of the time if you're hearing something in your walls, it's probably a mouse. So again, very tiny holes is all that's needed. Now here's the thing Mice essentially this is kind of gross and I'm sorry, but mice essentially should wear diapers because they basically are just constantly peeing and pooping as they walk around. So you can again use that UV flashlight and find the trail and figure out where they're getting in, where the crack is that they are using to get in, and then you can close it up so that they stop coming in.
Speaker 1:Now, once they're already in your house, we don't want to kill them because that's not humane and you don't want to leave any babies parentless because that's not humane. You can, however, use have-a-heart traps or no-kill traps. There's all different ones on the market and you may have to kind of experiment to figure out which ones work best for you and your mice, because I've had success in different locations with different traps. I think that probably the mice communicate about whatever traps are being used and how to get around them, and so you have to find one that they're not familiar with. I don't know, but at any rate, once you have found a way to trap them and get them out of your house, you can release them safely, but make sure you close up those holes or they will come back. Release them safely, but make sure you close up those holes or they will come back. Now, again, you want to be cautious. If there are babies that still need the care of a grown-up, you want to make sure that you keep the family together. They can be brought outside. You won't be able to catch the baby mice in a trap because they're not moving yet. You're going to have to find the nest and put it outside, and again, that UV light can help because you can follow that trail If you're not able to close up the hole or figure it out.
Speaker 1:Mice also have some smells that they do not enjoy. Vicks Vaporub is among them. Very strong mint smells, cinnamon, clove, any of those they don't like, and so they make sprays that you can buy and literally spray on the outside of your foundation around your house to prevent them from coming in in the first place. You're going to have to renew that pretty regularly, anytime it rains If it hasn't rained, probably still once every week or two weeks. Read the bottle. They're all a little bit different, but they do work pretty well. What does not work? Sonic devices? They do not work at devices. They do not work, at least not over the long term in my experience. And that same sort of technique can work for any of those smaller rodents.
Speaker 1:What happens if it's something bigger, like a raccoon or a bird in your chimney or any number of things that can happen when we try to live with wildlife and we're encroaching on their territory? We have been for years, so of course there's going to be interactions that we aren't thrilled about, and you know what? Neither are they. They don't want to be around us, they don't want to be in our homes, but they're also trying to find somewhere warm. Right, it's getting cold out there. They don't like it any more than we do, so they're trying to find somewhere warm and safe to raise their families. And sometimes they also happen to find their way in by accident and can't get out. So what to do in that case is, first of all, take a deep breath and don't panic, because they're just as scared, if not more, than you are.
Speaker 1:And then you want to find a wildlife professional, a pest control professional, who understands how to do these things humanely. You do not want someone that's going to use poison, because guess what? Folks? Mice, rats, squirrels. They are prey for other things up the food chain, and if you use poison on them, they will be eaten by eagles, owls, foxes, and those things that eat them will also be poisoned. We don't want to be doing that. So you want to find somebody who knows how to do these things humanely and professionally and without using poison. Some places do, some places don't, and again, it's going to vary by where you live.
Speaker 1:My recommendation to find the best person in your area would be to contact a wildlife rehab near you and ask them hey, who do you recommend for XYZ situation. They will tell you because they have people who bring them rescued critters from homes and so they already know who's good and who's not. When you find that person, have them come. When you find that person, have them come, take a look, a listen, give you their thoughts and a quote and if you have a couple of names or three names, get quotes from as many as you can. Of course, be prepared that it might be more than you think, but it might also be a lot less than you think.
Speaker 1:So back to the bats thing for a second. When I was dealing with the bats in my house, I got quotes from like all the big name people, right, and they wanted like $10,000 to bat proof my house and they wanted to do all these things and blah, blah, blah, and I was like it didn't even feel like it made sense to me all these things that they wanted to do and I didn't have $10,000 just sitting around to pay these people. So I contacted a small business owned by a veteran, who he was actually. You know he didn't usually service my area, but he could tell I was terrified and he was a really nice guy and so he came and checked it out and for less than $1,000, he took care of the problem. So I recommend those small businesses. Always buy local as much as you can. But if they've come recommended, buy the rehabs in your area. Chances are they're also being fair and honest with you, and so if they're telling you this is how much it costs, you can probably be pretty confident that they're not trying to bust your wallet for no reason.
Speaker 1:But get quotes. Get as many quotes as you can. Listen to what they're saying about where the critter is coming in, what they think it is blah, blah, blah. Depending on your level of comfort and expertise, there may be aspects of what needs to be done that you can do yourself and you can negotiate with them. Right? The best thing to do is to make sure those holes are sealed and to do so before it gets cold out and the critters are trying to get in. But we're in November now they're probably already starting to come in, and so you're probably starting to go oh boy, I hear something in the walls, and what is it? And so this is how you deal with that.
Speaker 1:If you have experience dealing with a critter in your house, that's fun and exciting and interesting and has some good drama to it. I would love to hear about it. I have this fun new feature where you can actually send me a text message. There's a link for that in the show notes so you can send me a text message about it. Or, if you feel like you'd rather type on a keyboard or whatever, you can also contact me through my website my contact page on my website. But I would love to hear about your dramatic stories.
Speaker 1:If you were ever like laying on the floor under a sheet crying because there was a bat flying around your house yeah, tell me, I'm not alone here, people.
Speaker 1:At any rate, I clearly learned a lot and I'm happy to share that with you and help you to live in greater harmony with nature and the wild beings that we share Mother Earth with. I hope this was helpful to you. Did you feel a glimmer, a spark, a light in the dark during this episode? You will love my customized free mini course, which is specifically designed to respect and respond to your individual journey, taking you from where you are right now to your next level of harmonious living. Get started by answering three quick questions found at the link in the show notes. You can also support the show as a Patreon member or episode sponsor. You'll learn all about all of these opportunities and find some additional resources in the show notes. Hang on to the word mouse to help jog your memory and remind you to hop back on over to season two, episode 14 of Give a Fuck, presented by Spark Consciousness, to find all of that awesome info. And I will see you next time you.
