I am catching shrews in my house in glue traps. I can’t find their point of entry, I sealed up the holes I could see, but one year later, i have probably killed about 30. Is there anything at all I can do to deter them? spray?…your sprays say to put them at point of entry, What to do if I can’t find it?…do they climb up steel siding?.. they are driving me crazy. any ideas? thanks
As explained in our SHREW CONTROL ARTICLE, shrews are quite cunning and adapt well to their local environment. More importantly, once a few have been active in any given area for awhile, their scent will attract others for years to come. In other words, what you’re experiencing is to be expected. And I’m pretty sure as long as this scent is in place, more will come around so don’t look for it to stop anytime soon.
So what can you do to stop them? Well, sealing entry holes won’t do it. As cited above, shrews are quite adaptive so even if you did find their route of entry and closed up any noticeable holes, there are simply too many ways into any home for this to be a successful strategy in of itself. Remember too the reason they keep coming around is because of the scent previous shrews have left and not because they’ve learned a way to get in. In other words, it’s the shrew scent that’s causing them to enter and not the holes or entry points you seem worried about. Armed with this information, you can then go about attempting to take away that which is luring them inside: the old odor.
Now if you were somehow able to isolate all the scent locations and neutralize them with NNZ, you would no doubt cut down the vast majority of shrews coming inside. But for obvious reasons, this would be a tough thing to do since they could have been most anywhere in the house. So if you know of any areas inside the home where they’ve been, treat them with NNZ. But treating the outside foundation, around the entire home, is really where it matter and in my estimation, where it needs to be applied. I would spray a good 4-5 feet up the house all the way around focusing on the ground adjacent to the side of the home where most of the activity has been. I’d also pull back any ground cover, mulch, pine straw, wood chips or anything else that’s tight to the foundation. Organic material close to the house will almost always hide routes of entry so be sure there aren’t any such areas around the home. I’d spray this area on the ground too, adjacent to where they’ve been most active inside, treating at least 2 feet of soil out and away from the home. This will help neutralize any scent in case there are tunnels down in the ground you’re not able to see.
Lastly, I also recommend applying RED FOX URINE around the home. This will need to be place another 5-6 feet outside the ground treated with NNZ. The net result would be a circular treatment of NNZ around the home, basically on the foundation and some ground close to the house, and any areas in the home where you’ve either seen shrews or smell their presence. The Urine should then be applied in the same circular shape but outside and around the NNZ. This would make the urine a bigger circle which will serve as a repellent warding off any small animals that might come into your yard.
As long as you’ve done a good job of removing the shrews currently inside the home before you go about treating, there is no reason you can’t repel any that come into your yard with the Fox Urine. But the key will be neutralizing the odor left by all the shrews that have been on and in your home the past year. Failure to get rid of the scent will almost certainly lead to some traversing through the urine because the chance of getting to where other shrews have been is sometimes so strong they won’t quite till they get inside any structure that smells of shrew.
Here are direct links to the information and products listed above:
Shrew Control Article: http://www.bugspray.com/article/shrews.html
NNZ: http://www.bugspray.com/item/nnz.html
Red Fox Urine: http://www.bugspray.com/catalog/products/page1713.html
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