How to Get Rid of Squirrels in an Attic (2026)

The way to get rid of squirrels in your attic is not chasing them out with noise or repellent. It is finding the entry point, confirming there are no babies inside, letting every animal leave through a one-way exclusion door, then repairing every hole with metal so none of them can come back.

Squirrels are diurnal, so they run at dawn and dusk rather than all night like rats. That timing matters twice: it is when you will usually hear them, and it is the window when adults are out foraging and you can inspect the attic safely. Most of the work is not the removal, it is the sealing.

Budget a weekend for a straightforward exclusion job, and longer if the entry point is high on the roof or if nests are tucked behind a soffit. Anything electrical, structural or above a two-story roofline belongs with a licensed trade. The steps below follow that order.

What You Need

Gather everything before you go up. Half of attic failures happen because someone patched a hole from the ladder, found a squirrel still living behind the drywall, and had to start over.

Protective gear

• Respirator: a properly fitted N95 or P100. Attic droppings dry to dust, and heavy accumulations in older homes can carry fungal spores that stir up the moment you move an insulation batt.
• Gloves: disposable nitrile or work gloves, plus sleeves and long pants. Squirrels carry fleas and their droppings may carry bacteria.
• Eye protection: safety glasses. You will be looking up into dark cavities with a headlamp.
• Respirator-grade mask for cleanup: if the droppings are deep, dry and you are going to shovel them, wet them down first with a water mister and let them sit before disturbing anything.
• Walk boards: your ceiling joists are not a floor. Lay planks across the joists so you put weight on wood that is meant to carry it, and step only on the boards.

Inspection tools

• Headlamp plus a handheld flashlight
• Hand mirror or inspection camera to look into roof cavities and behind soffits
• Smartphone for photos, so you can map damage and every entry point before you patch anything
• Measuring tape and marker for the entry point and the access hatch
• Extension ladder and a properly rated step ladder, plus someone steady-footed to hold them
• Tin snips, drill and driver, hammer, pry bar, staple gun, gloves and a utility knife for the repair work

Sealing materials

• A one-way exclusion door sized to the main entry point. These mount over the hole with the flap facing outward, so an animal can push through to leave but not get back in.
• Galvanized or stainless hardware cloth, 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch mesh. If a squirrel can gnaw wood siding or trim, it will gnaw a wood repair. Metal is the only repair that holds.
• Sheet metal flashing and 18-gauge galvanized furring strips to fasten mesh flat against trim
• Roof cement, mortar mix and high-density exterior sealant for masonry work around vents and chimneys
• Vent covers and a chimney cap if screening is missing or damaged, plus replacement soffit, fascia or trim boards where rot has started
• Masonry screws or structural screws rather than plain fasteners, which squirrels work loose in a season

Trapping supplies, if you use traps

• A humane cage live trap sized for squirrels, checked at least twice daily
• Peanut butter, unsalted nuts or dried fruit for bait
• A trap placed at the entry point or along an obvious travel run, with a solid door or plank behind it so nothing pushes the trapped animal back inside

Help worth hiring

• A licensed wildlife control operator for anything involving young animals, trapped animals you cannot reach, or entry points in wall cavities, chimneys or inaccessible roof valleys.
• A roofer for torn shingles, opened roof felt, missing flashing or holes in roof decking.
• A licensed electrician the moment you find gnawed wire or a circuit that trips or scorches.
• An attic remediation crew when insulation is soaked with urine, compressed into batts, or contaminated across a wide area.

Step-by-Step: How to Get Rid of Squirrels in Your Attic

1. Confirm the Signs of Squirrels in Your Attic

Do this from the ground and the attic hatch before you buy a single thing. Getting the identification wrong costs you weeks.

Sound. Fast, light scurrying and scratching at dawn and dusk points to squirrels. Rats and mice run mostly after dark. Bats are quiet and flittery, and raccoons are heavy, with a thudding walk across joists.

Droppings. Squirrel droppings are dark brown to black, oval, about the length of a large raisin, and often piled in one spot. Mouse droppings are tiny and look like grains of rice. Raccoon droppings are larger, blunt-ended, and frequently in a latrine tucked under a roof overhang.

Chewing. Look for fresh, pale wood at the edges of a hole and dark staining around it. Squirrels strip bark and gnaw into the roofline, around the attic hatch frame and the top of the ladder. Existing chew damage does not prove they are still inside, but fresh pale wood does.

Food and nesting. Seed hoards, chewed acorns and a bulky nest of twigs and leaves high in the roof cavity are hard evidence.

Rub marks. A dark, grease-like stain on wood or siding where a squirrel repeatedly squeezes through the same spot is often the clearest tell. Look for daylight through gaps, a strong musky animal odor, and traffic marks radiating out from the opening.

2. Inspect the Attic and Check for Young Squirrels

Go in mid-morning to early afternoon on a warm, still day. Adults are out foraging, and heat is lower under the roof than at dawn.

Bring the walk boards, the respirator and the camera. Photograph everything: nests, droppings fields, chewed wiring, damp insulation, entry points. Those photos are your removal plan and your record for the roofer and the insurance file, because squirrel damage is typically treated as preventable and often excluded from coverage.

Now the part people skip. Squirrels in much of the US raise two litters a year, commonly in late winter to early spring and again in early to midsummer, so kits can be present at almost any time. Listen for a repeated high squeak that does not move with the adult sounds, and look closely in sheltered corners near the roofline, behind a chimney, inside a soffit bay or on top of a joist near a vent.

What to do if you find young:

• Leave them alone. The mother comes back and moves them out on her own, usually within a few days to a couple of weeks.
• Never seal a mother in. Trapping or excluding while she is inside is the single most common way people create a dying nest in their attic.
• Keep the entry point open and seal everything else, so when she leads the litter out they go through one predictable route.
• Call a licensed wildlife control operator if the nest is out of reach, if the kits are already mobile and roaming loose, or if you hear continuous squeaking in a wall cavity you cannot open. Handling young wildlife for relocation also runs into state rules that vary widely.

3. Repair Access Points and Prevent New Entries

Find the entry point before you patch anything, because it tells you where to put the one-way door. Follow the trail from inside: rub marks and grease stains lead outward, droppings thin out away from the opening, and you will often find bits of insulation dragged in.

The usual weak spots, roughly in order of how often I see them:

• The roof-to-fascia and soffit joint where siding, trim and roofing meet, especially where paint has failed or boards have pulled away.
• Behind gable and ridge vents and inside soffit vents, including the small open gap at the top of vent frames.
• Roof vents such as gable, dormer and turbine-style units that were never screened.
• Chimneys. A standard spark cap is designed to keep rain out and embers down, not squirrels. A cap at least 2 feet above the flue opening, held off the opening by 1 to 1.5 inches, with the screen ends covered by 1/4 inch hardware cloth, closes it properly.
• Plumbing, dryer and AC penetrations, satellite dish mounts, siding corner gaps, and gaps where siding meets the foundation.
• Dormer corners, roof valleys and the corners where roofing butts into a wall, which look small and get widened by chewing before you notice them.

How to close them: cut 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch hardware cloth larger than the opening, push it into the gap so it sits behind the trim, and fasten it every few inches. On flat trim, cover the mesh with an 18-gauge furring strip screwed down with structural or masonry screws. Around roof vents and masonry, use sheet metal, roof cement or mortar, not caulk alone. Squirrels pull cured sealant off a warm roof the way you would pick at a loose tile.

Also give branches a clear 6 to 8 foot gap from the roofline. A squirrel is an excellent jumper and climber, and a branch resting on the roof is a ramp to every vent you just closed.

4. Remove Squirrels Humanely

Once every animal, including any litter, can walk out on its own, exclusion is the cleanest method. It needs no handling, no relocation and no dead end.

Fit the one-way door over the primary entry point with the flap swinging outward. Seal every other opening at the same time, not afterward. A squirrel inside a sealed attic with one open route will find it; a squirrel inside a sealed attic with none will chew a new one.

Check the door every day or two. After roughly three to five days with no new droppings, no fresh chew marks on the flap and no sounds, the last animal has left. Remove the door and permanently patch that opening with the same metal you used on the rest.

Live trapping is the alternative, and it makes sense when an entry point is unknown, when animals are living in a wall cavity where a door cannot be mounted, or when you have reason to think a non-breeding adult is trapped in a space you cannot reseal. Bait with peanut butter, check the trap at least twice a day, and keep a solid barrier behind the trap so the captured animal cannot be shoved back inside. Never leave a live trap unattended in summer heat.

Two things to sort out before you do either method. First, state law: in several states grey squirrels fall under wildlife regulations, and licensed operators are required for removal, trapping or relocation of some animals. Check your state wildlife agency rather than assuming.

Second, the methods to leave alone. Poison is illegal for this in many places and it is miserable for the animal either way: a poisoned squirrel chews through walls or nests before it dies. Glue traps are inhumane and prohibited in multiple states. Relocation frequently fails, because many squirrels find their way home or a new den within days, and moving a lactating female can strand young.

Repellents are worth a separate mention because they come up constantly. Ultrasonic units, mothballs, fox urine, cayenne, owl decoys and predator-scent products do not clear a squirrel out of an occupied attic, and the noise and smell ones are mostly temporary at best. Some people in homeowner forums have tried them and watched squirrels keep bedding in the same spot. They are not a removal method, and they are not a substitute for the one-way door.

5. Repair Damage and Clean the Attic

Once the attic is quiet, do the damage walk with the photos from step 2 beside you.

Roof and structure. From inside, look up at the underside of the roof decking for daylight. Squirrels strip shingles, roofing felt and tar paper from above, and a chewed-through deck lets water in. Anything showing bare decking, daylight or a lifted shingle course goes to a roofer.

Wiring. Check every exposed cable, junction box, recessed light and attic fan. Gnawed insulation on a wire is a fire risk, and rodents often follow squirrel damage. Kill power at the breaker before touching anything, and have a licensed electrician assess any circuit that was chewed, any scorch mark, any outlet that trips or smells burnt. Do not simply re-cover damaged wire with tape.

Insulation. Pull out anything saturated, matted, compressed or crusted with droppings. Do not fog sealant onto old fiberglass or cellulose and call it done; the material loses much of its performance and you have hidden the contamination instead of removing it. Reseal or replace the batts, and match the depth to the joist bay.

Ductwork and HVAC. Flex duct is easy to gnaw, and duct leaks show up as ductwork-shaped stains on the decking. Seal or replace damaged sections and check any registers that dropped dust or smell musty.

Cleanup. Bag nests, droppings and sodden insulation and take them out. Wet down dry droppings first, let the area sit, then vacuum with a HEPA unit and wear the respirator. Wipe hard surfaces and insulation with a pet-safe disinfectant or enzyme cleaner, let everything dry fully, and deodorize. Keep the walk boards in place while you work.

If the contamination is widespread, or heavy urine soaked insulation has to be removed across several bays, that is attic remediation work for a crew, not a weekend. Ventilate the house during and after, and get the ducts and returns checked before you move back in.

6. Prevent a Return

Removal only holds if the house is less inviting and less reachable than it was.

• Walk the roofline twice a year and after any storm, checking the same spots from step 3. A gap that a squirrel worked open once will be widened quickly.
• Screen every vent, including the ones that were fine when you patched the main hole.
• Keep branches 6 to 8 feet clear of the roof, and recheck after pruning season.
• Move the food. Garbage lids that latch, pet food indoors, bird feeders set back from the roof and taken in during squirrel season, and harvest dropped fruit from under the eaves.
• Fix the wood that started it. Rotted fascia, loose soffit and peeling paint near the roofline invite the next animal back, squirrel or not.
• Keep hearing your attic. Dawn and dusk sounds stop when they should. If they come back, look for a new opening rather than assuming the old repair failed.

Common Mistakes

Most repeat calls I hear about come down to the same handful of errors.

1. Sealing the entry points while a family is still inside. This strands a mother with kits or a lone adult, and the result is either a death in the attic or a chewed-through new hole. The fix: confirm the attic is clear, or leave one open route and seal the rest.

2. Using poison, glue traps or relocation. Poison creates a slow death and often drives a dying squirrel into the walls. Glue traps are inhumane and restricted in several states. Relocation often fails. The fix: a one-way exclusion door, or a licensed operator using humane live traps.

3. Handling droppings with no respirator. Dry attic droppings and contaminated insulation put dust and fungal spores into the air the moment you move it. The fix: N95 or better, gloves, and wetting down dry accumulations before they are disturbed.

4. Installing the one-way door backwards, or leaving other gaps open. With the flap facing inward, a squirrel can walk right back in. With secondary gaps open, the trapped animal simply moves to one of them. The fix: flap out, every other opening sealed on the same day, then verify the door after a few days before removing it.

5. Patching with wood, caulk or chicken wire. A squirrel that chews through your fascia will chew through the repair the same way, and welded wire is heavy enough to be lifted away. The fix: 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch galvanized or stainless hardware cloth, backed by a furring strip or flashing and fastened with structural or masonry screws.

6. Skipping the roof repair afterward. Removing the animal does not fix the hole it chewed in the shingles, the lifted flashing or the gnawed wire. Water damage and a fire risk both start there. The fix: photograph the damage before cleaning, and get the roofer and electrician out before you restore insulation.

One more worth naming: relying on owl statues, mothballs or ultrasonic repellers as the removal plan. They may shift behavior for a day or two. They do not evict a nest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Six actions, in order: confirm it is squirrels and not raccoons or bats, check the attic for young in daylight hours, repair every entry point with metal except one, let the last animal out through a one-way door under your local wildlife rules, then repair the roof, wiring and insulation and clean the space. After that, keep branches clear, keep the vents screened and walk the roofline twice a year. If it were my attic, I would spend the money on a wildlife operator the moment babies were involved, and do the metal sealing work myself the rest of the way.