Red Squirrels - Storing pine cones on motor & radiator :(

[Drifthopper]

Uggg...... See pictures

Tractor basically sits outside, under one of them Harbor Freight car port type of shelters.
Open on 3 sides, 4th side / long side backs up to a row of pine trees. Pines trees that have a lot of pine cones..!!
When i leave camp, I put a bag of moth balls on the radiator one on top of the dash, and another under the seat..... hoping to keep the critters away.
Well.... as ya can see, the moth balls have no effect.
The red squirrels , ( I believe they are red squirrels that are doing this ) brought all these in this week. I was up at camp last weekend and was just there this past Saturday.
I picked them all out, looked the motor and tractor over real good, got the leaf blower and blew everything out / off and started the tractor up. All was good .
After i was done for the day, backed the tractor back under the shelter , let it cool, and put the moth ball bags back on the rad, dash & seat.
I left the side panels off so hopefully the squirrels won't store any more pine cones in there seeing that it is all " open" .

Is there anything more i can do... to keep these squirrels out of there..?

What do you guys suggest.?

 

[lugbolt]

Squirrel season is in right now, at least it is here.

Or cats.

 

[NCL4701]

Actually, without a squirrel resistant storage structure and it being stored away from where you can monitor it daily, pretty tough situation.

 

[GeoHorn]

At least we don’t see any Moths. (Moth Balls don’t do squat for anything but moths.… Well, that’s not completely true…. they can also make people sick.)

 

[Tughill Tom]

Start shooting, I've got over 2 dozen this year. They eat the inner fender insulation out of my new GMC 2500HD and it was game on!

 

[Chanceywd]

I feel your rodent pain. Don't think the cat or crossbow will work for me.

I have entered field mice season here in my wife's 2009 forester. So I set traps and check every day. I have screened the heater fresh air intake and the 2 flap areas under the rear bumper wrap with brass screen. They persist and I think are getting in around the transmission tunnel. I see signs of nibbling on the shift boot.

Bill

 

[Nicksacco]

Squirrels are a PIA. Just so happens that I've been reading since they tear up my yard and such.
It is said that coffee grounds will work as well as some other things like the following:

 

[Elliott in GA]

I periodically trap gray squirrels at my home in Savannah (the tractor is kept at our property in north GA). I trap at my house to keep the squirrel population in check. I few hopping around in the yard and trees are fine; lots running all over the place and chewing on my roof are not okay.

The Duke 110 traps work great; they are small, cheap and lethal. The last time, I used two traps to kill 5 squirrels in two days. I bait them with peanut butter and mini-marshmallows (spread or stuck on the trigger wires). You can purchase the traps from many places.

Duke #110 Body Trap

Duke #110 Body Grip trap is designed for use in a wide variety of predator control, fur trapping and wildlife management. Trap works well on the ground, suspended, submerged in water, under ice or when covered with light snow. When used properly they result in a quick, humane kill. Should not be...

www.flemingtraps.com

 

[The Evil Twin]

In the camper, we use peppermint oil on cotton balls. It's kept the rodents out since day 1. Back when I was a kid, we used ammonia in the engine bays of the boat. It also kept critters out.

 

[rc51stierhoff]

Uggg...... See pictures

Tractor basically sits outside, under one of them Harbor Freight car port type of shelters.
Open on 3 sides, 4th side / long side backs up to a row of pine trees. Pines trees that have a lot of pine cones..!!
When i leave camp, I put a bag of moth balls on the radiator one on top of the dash, and another under the seat..... hoping to keep the critters away.
Well.... as ya can see, the moth balls have no effect.
The red squirrels , ( I believe they are red squirrels that are doing this ) brought all these in this week. I was up at camp last weekend and was just there this past Saturday.
I picked them all out, looked the motor and tractor over real good, got the leaf blower and blew everything out / off and started the tractor up. All was good .
After i was done for the day, backed the tractor back under the shelter , let it cool, and put the moth ball bags back on the rad, dash & seat.
I left the side panels off so hopefully the squirrels won't store any more pine cones in there seeing that it is all " open" .

Is there anything more i can do... to keep these squirrels out of there..?

What do you guys suggest.?

In order of my preference:
(For me I have other pets so I would not use a poison)
1. Dog - I would not trade mine for 10 relatives…if close to a street/road I’d be a little cautious about that.
2. Barn cats…they do great but always seem to shit exactly where I step or put my hands on the ground in the garden.
3. Get some owls…maybe put up a couple of boxes.

 

[lynnmor]

The ingredients of moth balls have changed over the years, perhaps the old stuff worked. Info

 

[RBsingl]

Maybe a motion detector that sounds a loud alarm when triggered will scare them away.

I don't have a squirrel problem but even with barn cats on my rural property, the 2006 GMC 2500HD I used to own got "moused" several years ago.

One morning I was getting ready to go into the village post office and I noticed the check engine light was on before I even put the key in the ignition, NOT a good sign. I turned the key on and the preheat light came on normally and the engine then started normally. It drove fine but when I got to the post office, turning off the key left the engine running and when I got home I had to pull the ECM relay to kill the engine. I was busy that day but the next morning I planned to troubleshoot but everything worked perfectly as it should.

Over the next couple of months it showed its odd behavior a couple of times. The only trouble code indicated was loss of communications with the separate TCM for the Allison transmission. I spent a few hours reading the service manual and the next time it acted up I was ready to make some key measurements. I found that when it was in a fault condition, with the key off connecting the batteries would cause the ignition switched 12 volt line to slowly begin rising from zero and when it reached a few volts the ECM would activate the relay energizing the switched 12 volt line and the CEL would come on.

I traced the problem to leakage between the constant and switched 12 volt lines in what GM calls the UBEC (underhood bused electrical center). The top layer contains the plug in relays and fuses, the bottom layer has several large multi-pin connectors that connect to the various wiring harnesses and the center layer is where the problem occurred. It has bare copper wire in a grid that provides the interconnections. A mouse had used the top layer as a urinal and this caused corrosion of the copper in the middle layer. When the humidity was high enough (thus the intermittent nature of the problem), there was sufficient leakage via the corrosive residue to energize the switched bus and slowly charge bypass caps on that bus until it reached a sufficient voltage level to wake up and energize the ECM. It took about four hours of reading the manual and making measurements to find the problem, a used UBEC from an identical model via Ebay was $50 shipped and installation was an easy 20 minute job. Both garages have since been equipped with multiple mouse traps which get checked regularly, especially during harvest. One of the barn cats learned to recognize when I was doing this task and would follow me to harvest freshly killed mice.

Images of the UBEC and damaged area below, the last shows resistance between the constant and switched 12 volt buses which should have been infinity but dropped to under 300 ohms once I had raised the humidity to 70% in a box containing the old UBEC.

Rodger

 

[ve9aa]

I saw the little thumbnail pictures before I made them larger and then read the thread.
For about 1/2 a second I was thinking:
"How in heck did a dog leave his doo-doo's under that flap on buddies tractor?"

LOL!

 

[TxTom]

About two months after I got my new L3301 tractor squirrels chewed holes in the seat.
I wasn't happy.

 

[DaveFromMi]

When we lived in suburban Detroit, we had problems with red squirrels. I used a crossman pellet pistol to dispatch several. They are out during the day. At dusk, they come back to the nests and I was waiting for them.
Also, I filled a 5gal bucket 1/2 full of water and poured in sunflower seeds so it looked like solid ground to them. I dispatched 4 of them using that method. They act more like rats and are more destructive than larger squirrels.

 

[Drifthopper]

When we lived in suburban Detroit, we had problems with red squirrels. I used a crossman pellet pistol to dispatch several. They are out during the day. At dusk, they come back to the nests and I was waiting for them.
Also, I filled a 5gal bucket 1/2 full of water and poured in sunflower seeds so it looked like solid ground to them. I dispatched 4 of them using that method. They act more like rats and are more destructive than larger squirrels.

Dave..... I LIKE that idea.... bucket with sun flower seeds..!! Thanks.!

Thanks for all the replies... but the tractor is at our camp. Its an off the grid camp, no electricity, so a plug in device won't work.
now with hunting season on....Uncle and cousins come periodically thru the week but they are not going to sit there and trap / shoot squirrels for me.

NCL ... cool lookin' cat. !

Nick.... along with Dave's sunflower bucket idea, i'll try the predator urine.
And.... evil twin.... mom used peppermint oil in the cabin for mice,,,, i can try that too.... she may even have some in there.

 

[GBJeffOH]

Uggg...... See pictures

Tractor basically sits outside, under one of them Harbor Freight car port type of shelters.
Open on 3 sides, 4th side / long side backs up to a row of pine trees. Pines trees that have a lot of pine cones..!!
When i leave camp, I put a bag of moth balls on the radiator one on top of the dash, and another under the seat..... hoping to keep the critters away.
Well.... as ya can see, the moth balls have no effect.
The red squirrels , ( I believe they are red squirrels that are doing this ) brought all these in this week. I was up at camp last weekend and was just there this past Saturday.
I picked them all out, looked the motor and tractor over real good, got the leaf blower and blew everything out / off and started the tractor up. All was good .
After i was done for the day, backed the tractor back under the shelter , let it cool, and put the moth ball bags back on the rad, dash & seat.
I left the side panels off so hopefully the squirrels won't store any more pine cones in there seeing that it is all " open" .

Is there anything more i can do... to keep these squirrels out of there..?

What do you guys suggest.?

Get a steel storage container to put the tractor in.

 

[GeoHorn]

”Spread predator urine around your garden”

Pay careful attention as to how tightly you hold the predators private-parts while aiming tho’.…..

 

[DaveFromMi]

Seems peppermint oil and cut up hedge apples keep the spiders out.
Mice are moving in and the cats are dispatching them.

 

[number two]

Maybe a motion detector that sounds a loud alarm when triggered will scare them away.

I don't have a squirrel problem but even with barn cats on my rural property, the 2006 GMC 2500HD I used to own got "moused" several years ago.

One morning I was getting ready to go into the village post office and I noticed the check engine light was on before I even put the key in the ignition, NOT a good sign. I turned the key on and the preheat light came on normally and the engine then started normally. It drove fine but when I got to the post office, turning off the key left the engine running and when I got home I had to pull the ECM relay to kill the engine. I was busy that day but the next morning I planned to troubleshoot but everything worked perfectly as it should.

Over the next couple of months it showed its odd behavior a couple of times. The only trouble code indicated was loss of communications with the separate TCM for the Allison transmission. I spent a few hours reading the service manual and the next time it acted up I was ready to make some key measurements. I found that when it was in a fault condition, with the key off connecting the batteries would cause the ignition switched 12 volt line to slowly begin rising from zero and when it reached a few volts the ECM would activate the relay energizing the switched 12 volt line and the CEL would come on.

I traced the problem to leakage between the constant and switched 12 volt lines in what GM calls the UBEC (underhood bused electrical center). The top layer contains the plug in relays and fuses, the bottom layer has several large multi-pin connectors that connect to the various wiring harnesses and the center layer is where the problem occurred. It has bare copper wire in a grid that provides the interconnections. A mouse had used the top layer as a urinal and this caused corrosion of the copper in the middle layer. When the humidity was high enough (thus the intermittent nature of the problem), there was sufficient leakage via the corrosive residue to energize the switched bus and slowly charge bypass caps on that bus until it reached a sufficient voltage level to wake up and energize the ECM. It took about four hours of reading the manual and making measurements to find the problem, a used UBEC from an identical model via Ebay was $50 shipped and installation was an easy 20 minute job. Both garages have since been equipped with multiple mouse traps which get checked regularly, especially during harvest. One of the barn cats learned to recognize when I was doing this task and would follow me to harvest freshly killed mice.

Images of the UBEC and damaged area below, the last shows resistance between the constant and switched 12 volt buses which should have been infinity but dropped to under 300 ohms once I had raised the humidity to 70% in a box containing the old UBEC.

Rodger

View attachment 88148

View attachment 88149

View attachment 88150

Excellent Post!