My kid thought we had ghosts in the attic.
I wish it was that simple! We moved into this remote farmhouse knowing that it was a fixer-upper, but we really didn’t know how much fixing was required.
The place had been empty for years, so while it had not been damaged, it had not been cared for in quite some time. My wife and I thought we could handle anything except for maybe the specialty work that would come later. Even though the central system was antique, the furnace in the basement still worked fine. Air conditioning would be a problem for another month, there were too many other things that needed fixing first. The first night there, little Jane said there were ghosts in the attic, but what she was hearing was the pitter-patter of squirrels in the air ducts. The ductwork had been infested with generations of squirrels while the house was empty. Thankfully they had never ventured down into the house itself, but all of the ductwork would need to be removed and replaced. That couldn’t happen until the ductwork was free of all living creatures, which was something none of us knew how to do. If we poisoned them or gassed them, then we just have air ducts jammed full of dead squirrels, which is not much better than what we have. We actually have no problem removing the ductwork and putting in the new set ourselves, but we are clueless about how to clear them out! Anyone have pointers on how to get squirrels out of ductwork?