Saturday, April 9, 2011

Getting Rid of Birds


Have you ever gone day after day with the same nuisance bothering you, and then finally one day you wake up and say no more? That happened to me recently. We have some birds that have taken up residence in the soffit of our home. I think that's the right term. it's the part of the house under the eaves of the house, that part between the walls and the gutter. There are openings on the ends of the house that are allowing birds to get in there and make nests. Plus, they seem to be wrestling or having foot races or something, because they sure make a lot of noise moving around in there.

I recently discovered two products that are designed to deal with just this kind of problem. One of them I had never head of before called Xcluder. What Xcluder basically does is close off any openings that pests, like birds, use to get into other places - places you don't want them in. The Xcluder is a special type of steel wool that is very easy to work with. The basic idea is to locate the crack, hole or opening that the birds, or any pest for that matter, are using to get into the area that you don't want them in. Once you've found the entry point, you cut some of the Xcluder material into a chunk that fits into the opening, and that's it! I thought about using copper fabric, as someone told me that was the way to go, and then I found this video that actually compared Xcluder with the copper mesh. take a look:





I searched all over locally and could not find anyone that would sell me the Xcluder fabric without wanting to do the installation. I am pretty handy myself, I mean after all I was the one that built the garage in the first place, so I went online to find out where I could buy the Xcluder, and found that prices varied greatly. The best delivered price was at Optimal Pest Control. So here's a link for Xluder.

The installation is very straight forward. XCLUDER can be cut to any size or shape with ordinary scissors. Install it by pressing it into rodent-prone crevices with gloved hands or simple tools like a putty knife or screwdriver. Cutting XCLUDER to 2-3 times the size of the opening makes a good tight fit.