Egads. Those marmorated stink bugs made it across the US to my neck of the woods!! Found 4 in the house last month!
I thought I was the only one with stink bugs. They are everywhere!
Sorry for squirrel fest. I honestly can’t imagine the chaos since I have two beagles.
We did have a terrible field mice problem when we tried composting too close to the house. They were in the wall behind our fire place. Every morning my husband retrieved them from the humane traps and relocated them across the neighborhood. They never came inside, but did damage to our insulation. Also, in NC so many species are protected from relocation – beavers and woodpeckers are particularly destructive. Good luck tonight.
I strongly recommend hiring a professional. I’d send you “my guy” if he were willing to drive halfway across the country. He found where the raccoons were getting into and out of the house, trapped them, transported them, and fixed the place on the roof where they were getting into the house.
Edited to add: I was just talking to my brother, who lives a few blocks away, and told me that his next-door neighbors feed raccoons and possums! Ugh!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/when-twenty-six-thousand-stinkbugs-invade-your-home
Stink bugs: it’s only going to get worse 
Regarding transporting critters and varmints after catching them in the havaheart traps… some learn how to beat the traps. Please don’t drop any more off in the country where I live.
@BunsenBurner only four in a month? Oh, I wish! Our antique house is a colander, and we see that many in a day! They really creep me out. The only poison that kills them is also deadly to cats, so I’m researching other methods.
@TwinMom2023 We’re in Maine! Stink bugs are taking over the east coast. And now we’re in black fly season, but at least they stay outside!
I have picked up only a dozen stinkbugs today. Easy day. My exterminator says no poisons work??
We have been moving them outside, but I think it is time to kill them. The fake lady bugs are annoying too - Asian beetles?? I had no idea that stink bugs could survive a cold winter like that. My colleague said one bit her, but I didn’t think they could bite. I haven’t looked it up b/c I think I just don’t want to know. 
@Massmomm - these are new insect pests to my county! So four is four too many. 
Here’s the best and really simple solution we found to get rid of flying squirrels and other nocturnal animals from the attic:
Use timer to turn on the lights in the attic at night
Be sure to use LED bulbs in the attic to save energy.
I feel for you. We live in a wooded area. Had flying squirrels in the attic a few years ago. They are persistent and destructive. Called in a pest control company. They set multiple traps, came regularly and set more traps until they were gone. Their propensity for chewing wood and wires makes them dangerous, as well as destructive. We plugged as many exterior holes as possible, thanks to my diligent carpenter who found tiny openings in peaks of eaves, etc. We also have had to remove some trees nearer the house for other reasons and that may have helped. We found the pest control company worthwhile.
On one of his visits, the animal control guy brought along his dad, from whom he had learned the trade. His dad pointed to a couple of trees and told me those were the ones the raccoons were climbing and then jumping the short distance from to get to the roof. I hadn’t realized that the odd appearance of the bark was from the raccoons’ claws but animal control dad noticed immediately.
If a human enters your house you are welcome to shoot him, but not a squirrel?
I’m not shooting anything, @sorghum .
The little stinker was back last night, even after my husband plugged up any radiator pipe holes with steel wool. It pushed the steel wool out! So we resorted to old school tactics and brought the cat into our bedroom, which worked, at least for the rest of the night. Hubby has put rat traps out. And I wish there was a better way, but they are rodents and can carry rabies. A good friend had one run across her face in the night. So they are going, one way or another. As far as I can tell, they are not protected. There are umpteen different flying squirrel species.
We hired a wildlife removal guy the first time around. He basically did what many have suggested here. We did eventually catch or kill them all. But here’s a hilarious solution my kids came up with, back then. The kids found an empty cat litter box, and a wrapping paper tube. They put the tube in the opening of the box, and put a nut in the opening of the tube. I remember laughing as they did this, saying how cute, but it would never work. And I had to eat my words, because darned if they didn’t catch one! They we jumping for joy. We put the whole box in a garbage bag, drove to the other side of the lake, and tipped the flying squirrel out. It wasn’t 25 miles away though, so I have to wonder if our new friends are descendants of the one we took mercy on.
Yeah, so 26,000 stink bugs, “Everyone get their five favorite things and we’re burning the house down”.
So, my cat wasn’t so useless after all!
I went to bed at ten last night, zonked from two nights in a row of flying squirrel-disrupted sleep. Slept like a baby, figuring that hubby’s further improvement on blocking the flying squirrel’s entrance and setting more traps was effective. Hubby was quite cheerful this morning, even complimenting the cat on what a good job he had done. This was strange, because hubby rarely (never) compliments the cat about anything and is very much a cat tolerance specialist.
Hubby apologizes for all the noise in the night, and how he thought about letting the cat sleep in the room for doing a good job, etc… I am very perplexed. I wake up if I hear a pin drop, but I heard nothing in the night. So here’s what actually happened: hubby came up to bed at 11:00 to a dark room and heard telltale signs of the pesky intruder. Thinking fast, he went back out of the room and fetched the cat. Put the cat in the room where he suspected our intruder was hiding, went back out of the room to get a box and gloves, then came back in the room, where I am obliviously sawing logs. Well, the cat is having a great time chasing the flying squirrel all over our bedroom. Hubby is also attempting to keep the intruder confined to one part of the room, navigating by means of a flashlight. And all the while, I’m STILL ASLEEP! Darwinism kicks in, and poor flying squirrel has met his match in our cat. Hubby opens the door of the bedroom, intending to put not yet deceased flying squirrel in the box, but the cat has other ideas and runs into the basement with the soon-to-be-no-more flying squirrel. Hubby then waits around for a few minutes unitl the cat puts down the no-longer-interesting dead creature. The cat got an extra reward of cat treats, and hubby got into bed at nearly midnight.
The kicker is that I woke up at 2 am and realized my 17 year old son wasn’t home yet. I immediately called him, waking up him, and also waking poor hubby, who didn’t even mention the flying squirrel, because he was sure I had heard it and must have just been too sleepy/lazy to help out! (Don’t worry, son had just fallen asleep at friend’s house and was home in ten minutes, after my initial freakout of “where the heck is he?”). I went right back to sleep.
Imagine my surprise to realize that what had really happened is that poor flying squirrel was actually trapped in our bedroom for 24 hours because, in fact, the hole was blocked. So I went to sleep with the critter in my room, quite possibly under the bed! I’m super bummed that my ability to wake up at the drop of a pin failed me on this occasion. :))
First, congratulations! Second, this reminds me of the time a raccoon was trapped in our car and I realized after the fact that it must have been in the car when I got in to shut the windows.
Good kitty! Maybe your husband will have more respect for him from now on.
I had a raccoon in the attic a few years ago. It had entered by tearing up an old vent on the roof which was directly above my bed. I could hear the little creature coming and going. It was quite unnerving hearing claws on metal above my head, knowing only a 5/8" sheet of drywall separated it from me. Needless to say, his entrance/exit was repaired not knowing it was still up there. I set a live trap and baited it with all sorts of goodies, but it refused to get in it. At the end of the second week, it was very actively (and noisily) trying to find a way out. Luckily, my attic entrance is in the ceiling of the garage and not inside the house. I opened the attic, pulled down the stairs, left the garage door open about 6 inches then spread flour on the garage floor. The next morning, there were footprints in the flour leading under a car and then out of the garage, so I knew he was finally gone!