Are you bored enough to watch me test a squirrel trap?

Of course we are!

Killing small animals, yeah can’t wait.

It boggles my mind that of all the things people can do to help nature – absolutely loads of really effective things – what a certain subset of people want to do is kill things.

They say “reduce invasive species population” and that sort of sh1t to justify their actions – but what they really want to do is kill stuff.

Looked like you were going to try the bait!

Chevy – I just want to save the flowers and little birdies. I don’t care if they are invasive or not, they are a bloody nuisance and no amount of prayer or reasoned argument seems to work. The population is growing artificially large due to people feeding the ‘cute little fellers’ but unfortunately prayer and argument doesn’t work with these people either.

I did post up another thread for people to suggest alternatives and would happily have tried a holistic muesli based temple if I thought it would stop so many of the new plants getting dug out and the entire magnolia tree being stripped of flower buds.

If you do have a solution that doesn’t involve reducing the squirrel population then I am happy to listen but probably best posted on the other thread : https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/grey-squirrels-removing-the-pest/

Effective trap. Cats do worry me a bit with the Goodnature without the cage on the entry point.
For the record I did want to kill the rat which was in our house. I don’t feel any justification is required. (As a general rule I don’t kill much else, unless I’m eating it)

If you are going to kill them, don’t waste them

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/may/11/recipes.foodanddrink

Somewhat disappointed you didn’t fish out any residual bits of carrot with your finger, you do have a reputation to maintain 😉

If you are going to kill them, don’t waste them

This has been covered in the original thread : https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/grey-squirrels-removing-the-pest/

Killing small animals, yeah can’t wait.

He appears to have set it to kill carrots, not animals.

@worldclassaccident What we all really want to know is what sort of noise it makes when it fires.

I would like to point out that the carrot was already dead and did not suffer..

The only noise was a crunchy sound a bit like when you bite a carrot. Not exciting bangs or whoosh

Aww. I was hoping for a ‘thunk’ sound.

Any sign of squirrels yet?

I much prefer the squirrels over all the cats roaming wild, now there is an invasive species that should be on the list of pests you can shoot year round.

@Mikkel There’s a long background discussion on the other thread.

I am also not a big fan of cats but there is a more human way to curb domestic cats with a national policy of neutering and spaying all of them. Owners responsible to get the cat tagged like they do with dogs. To get tagged they need to be sterilised. Any cat found without a tag is sterilised. The population decline would be rapid without the need to go around shooting things.

Have any of the little pests been terminated yet?

Do they do a bigger one for illegal trail bike users? Would you bait it with two stroke oil?

It is showing 3 on the counter. One was a carrot, one was stiff on the ground, one was disappeared

No more updates as I don’t want this to be a squirrel snuff movie type thread. suffice to say it works.

Mods – if you want to close this top further comments then please do.

one was disappeared

Probably dying a slow painful death right now!

Great. Whats next a spot of badger baiting?

WorldClassAccident

Member

I am also not a big fan of cats but there is a more human way to curb domestic cats with a national policy of neutering and spaying all of them. Owners responsible to get the cat tagged like they do with dogs. To get tagged they need to be sterilised. Any cat found without a tag is sterilised. The population decline would be rapid without the need to go around shooting things.

Yup. Fewer, happier cats.
Apply it to dogs too.

And bring back licences.
Obviously, you’d get a discount if your pet was black and white……

Probably dying a slow painful death right now! Judging by the carrot and the one I found, no. Probably feeding a fox or badger

What happens to any squirel offspring when you kill the mother?

They die

Probably dying a slow painful death right now!

Following the other thread, I watched the video on the trap company’s website. The suggestion is that the counter is because the bodies will be scavenged by passing cats/corvids/etc, and without it you won’t know if it’s working.

No more updates as I don’t want this to be a squirrel snuff movie type thread. suffice to say it works.

It would be interesting in a month or so to know if the trap has had the intended effect on everything else, though?

It’s not exactly hummane to let them die is it. It’s not really a great time of year to kill anything with young. As the offspring will starve to death.

Okay – the young will wander from the dray and be adopted by a lonely she-wolf who will bring them up strong and independent. Then a few years down the line they will recognise their squirrel roots and return and stronger and better animals.

Make you feel better?

Mother nature is neither kind nor cruel. At best she is indifferent

It’s not mother nature doing this it’s a choice you are making. If you want to kill things then do it at a time when they are not breeding. You have a chosen to do this.

squirrels don’t breed once a year, they have two or even three litters iirc. Where do you stand on pregnant squirrels, is a squirrel foetus a life as well?

Do they do a bigger one for illegal trail bike users? Would you bait it with two stroke oil?

No. Weed.

WCA should be commended for researching and paying for a humane solution.

It’s not mother nature doing this it’s a choice you are making. If you want to kill things then do it at a time when they are not breeding. You have a chosen to do this.

For balance, and as per the other thread, grey squirrels are an introduced species that are eating the eggs of native birds. As reintroducing pine martins in his garden isn’t really an option, I agree with @derek_starship

I am very bored but no interest in seeing your trap. Bored enough to bother to post on here that I wager you are a sad, rather odd little man however…

Its the only conclusion i can reach given that you’d want to post a video of how you intend to kill animals on a cycling forum..

All a bit pathetic really..

Probably dying a slow painful death right now! Judging by the carrot and the one I found, no. Probably feeding a fox or badger

Most likely, but you’ve drawn a line under it so hey ho, back to whatever, on with your life.

Horrendous suffering, I do wonder if the world is changing and people are displaying less empathy. But I can read the replies here and see that isnt wholly the case
We slaughter in a controlled environment, long studied to kill as quickly as we can, and to minimize any suffering.
Yeah yeah I’m sure it was dead, but not at least checking your handiwork is pretty darned despicable.

I think this and the other thread hasn’t paint some in a very good light. You especially.

Bruce has a point WCA, Greys can have two litters per year, early spring and late summer. Reinstall the trap in the autum so you can get more bang for your buck!

I’m a professional ecologist, though mammals aren’t my speciality.

There is no published evidence that I am aware of that grey squirrels are driving observed declines of woodland birds – see here for a decent paper on the subject.

Some questions for you OP:

How do you know that if the grey squirrels didn’t predate the nests of birds that you are apparently trying to protect because you killed them, that survival rates of their chicks would increase?

If there are too many birds (including the ones that you are trying to protect), they may not have sufficient food, so their young might not fledge anyway. So even if you kill everything that is apparently killing the chicks of the birds you are trying to protect, there’s no guarantee you increase their survival rates. Had you considered this?

As other people have noted, and I agree, cats are very likely to be a much bigger issue for killing birds, including the ones you’re apparently trying to protect by killing squirrels. Are you going to kill all of the cats too? Other birds will also predate them. Are you going to kill them?

If you’re not going to kill all the other potential predators, why are you specifically targeting the squirrels? Do you think that if the squirrels are eliminated, other predators might take more chicks of the birds you are trying to protect? I think there is a reasonable chance.

In any case, I can’t see a reason why more squirrels won’t just move in to replace the ones you kill, if the habitat is good. So are you going to just carry on killing squirrels forever? If so, why?

A final thought – if you had red squirrels, they would also be predating bird nests. Would you cull them too?

In my view you should only use culling if there is a clear benefit. In this case I do not see that there is. I think that just because its legal to kill squirrels doesn’t mean you should. It does not look like this has been well thought out, and I think you should strongly consider removing the trap until such time as the benefit to killing squirrels is clear – which may be never.

Sorry for the long post but I think most of it is important.

Genuinely curious if the backlash against killing squirrels would be any different if the victims had’ve been rats instead.

I’d wager that you could search back through the forum and find dozens of threads about efficient methods of killing rats and there’d not be even one “Won’t anyone think of the baby ratlings?” post.

It’s not about killing animals. We do that all the time.

It’s about killing cute animals.

I’m with Perchy on this. I’m not a big fan of indiscriminate killing, but it’s legal to kill greys for a reason. They are tree rats. How about cockroaches, we okay eliminating them?

Yep. I agree with Perchy. We had a rat infestation under the shed. I got rid of them.

In my understanding, the killing of rats and mice (and others) is often to do with human health and safety. The same would apply to grey squirrels if they were presenting a similar risk. Other examples would include culling birds at nuclear power stations and airports.

My understanding is that this situation is not about human health and safety, it is about reducing the damage to the nests of particular species of birds.

I have no issue with culling animals where the evidence shows that it may be appropriate to do so. But in situations where other factors are driving decisions, poor decision making can cause a cull to have little to effect on the intended target, or even make things worse. See the badger cull and bovine TB for a good recent example.