Gross, weird question

[TexasErin]

Let me preface this by saying, we are very clean people. A couple of nights ago (the first cold night we have had this season), I was awakened by something either scratching or chewing. Not my dog or my cat !!!! DH works at night so was not home. The next night he was home and it woke me up again. He went into the attic at 3:30 am and said that there's nothing up there and that he should be able to see the insulation moved around if it was something in the attic. I heard it again last night. He just called me and has told me that he's come to the conclusion that there is something living in OUR WALLS!!!!
I am scared to death. I am phobic of rodents- I assume it must be some kind of rodent who came in because of the cold, but I really don't know. Our house is only 3 years old and I have no idea how something could have gotten in our house, much less in our walls!
Has anybody else ever had this happen??? We really are clean people, I promise.....

 

[Pop Daddy]

sounds like your dirty to me j/k

 

[Wish Upon A Star]

Sounds like a mouse. Doesn't matter clean or not they do like to come in from the cold and they get in the tiniest of spaces.

My suggestion would be to set up a trap up in the attic and see what ya get.

We had a small little space in our garage and the mice used to get in and climb up the rafters and enter into the crawl space above our family room.

Good luck.

 

[nativetxn]

Oh YIKES! Call an exterminator, quick!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Yes and ...we used to get mice in our old house as we lived next to a farmers field. Once the mouse was in our bed HEADBOARD. DH was out of town & I had just had a new baby.
I am so thankful we moved.

 

[Kimberle]

Yes, heard the same types of sounds & thought we had something in our attic.

Turns out it was woodpeckers pecking our roof/gutters. Annoying, but no damage.

 

[Meriweather]

Yep...we get mice in the walls every once in awhile. It isn't cold here, but wet. I have one now too
It is eerie to hear them scratching
They will emerge sometime and one of my cats will get it!!

 

[Chattyaholic]

It's "that time of year" for the little critters to invade our homes. New house or old, they can still get in. The other day my cat was sitting in front of the closet by the back door, just sitting there, staring at the closet. I knew there must be a mouse in there, so I opened up the door and still she sat there. A few minutes later she has it in her mouth. She's a good mouser!

Last winter DH put poison in the ceiling of the garage and when we were in the family room you could hear the mice actually rolling the balls of poison across the ceiling, and dropping them down the wall by the laundry room.

 

[dizny4us]

We had similar sounds in our attic... turned out to be bats!
Called an exterminator and they set up a trap so the bats could fly out and but not get back in. That scratching sound can be unnerving though!

 

[disykat]

Call an exterminator quick! In addition to all the things mentioned above it could be yellow jackets. We've had two house's in our neighborhood that had that happen. Fortunately for the second house they caught it before they got into the house because they knew they warning signs. My kids were afraid to go to sleep for weeks.

We had rats in our dorm when I was in college. They made definate scratching noises. The exterminator took care of it over Christmas vacation and we never heard them again.

 

[my3kids]

I bet you have a squirrel. They can chew a hole on a facia board that remains kind of hidden by gutters. That is my guess.

You'll have to report back after the exterminator comes to tell us what you had!!

 

[Lanshark]

We were told by an exterminator that rats/mice are a problem everywhere including million dollar homes. They can get in if there is an opening somewhere the size of a quarter. Dh got some foam stuff in a can and put it in every crack in the garage, One of our garage doors was not fitting tightly and we had to fix that.

As far as poisons are concerned, I don't care for them. The animal sometimes dies in the house and then stinks. We got a Rat Zapper. I've seen them at Ace Hardware. It runs on battery and works wonderfully. No mess at all.

http://www.ratzapper.com/

 

[GeorgeG]

We had squirrels some years back. Like my3kids said, they chewed though behind the gutters were we couldn't even see the holes from the ground.

Lanshark makes a good point about poisons. We tried that and a squirrel died in an area we couldn't get to and the smell was awful for weeks.

We finally used a "have a heart" trap to catch them and then dispose of them outside one by one.

An exterminator should be able to tell you what you have and help you get rid of them. It's also a good idea to check your wiring wherever you can to make sure none of it has been chewed.

When the little critters are gone, don't forget to seal up wherever they got in, which can most likely be in more than one location.

Good luck