Squirrel or neighbor with a grudge?

TravCam

TravCam

New member
Does this look like it's cut or a squirrel bite? I keep finding multiple failures in my mini light strings and many are wire breaks that looks like cuts at and around bulb bases like this one
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I was thinking the same thing but some of them looked so darn clean I began to wonder


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My neighbor refers to them as "tree rats". I guess there is a reason for that attitude. :(
Definitely a critter doing this. (I'll give the squirrels the benefit of the doubt, at least until it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.)
 
I had a wire "cut" three times. I thought it was a neighbor also, turned out the wire was blocking a path used by a rabbit. He didn't like it there. Lucky for him he bit it while it was unpowered. Moved the wire and all was well.
 
If you have any remote suspicion about your neighbors I would invest in security camera.

Sadly, the house next to ours is a rental and the new tenants are very sketchy so I will probably be adding 2 Nest outdoor cameras to my display.
 
Its definitely squirrels. I had that issue last year. 250 bucks worth of lights trashed. Reason squirrels like it? The wire is using soy based materials. Not much you can do about it other than filling their bodies with lead. BTW. I know for a fact it's squirrels. My neighbors can't reach 30 feet in the air to chew on wire.
 
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Last year my girlfriend's Jeep required $1200 in repairs when squirrels chewed up the wiring harness. After it was repaired I painted the wiring with castor oil. No damage since.

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DaveMcK said:
Last year my girlfriend's Jeep required $1200 in repairs when squirrels chewed up the wiring harness. After it was repaired I painted the wiring with castor oil. No damage since.

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Click to expand...

Any other repercussions, like a sent of cooking oil in the air? :)
 
pmiller said:
Its definitely squirrels. I had that issue last year. 250 bucks worth of lights trashed. Reason squirrels like it? The wire is using soy based materials. Not much you can do about it other than filling their bodies with lead. BTW. I know for a fact it's squirrels. My neighbors can't reach 30 feet in the air to chew on wire.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why that possiblity didn't occur to me. I ought to know better...

Where I work, we use use GPS for base station timing & 911 compliance. We kept having GPS antennas drop like flies one year and as it turned out, the plastic housing was being chewed up by squirrels. Come to find out, the manufacturer has switched to using peanut oil in one of their processes to save money and be more environmentally friendly... the squirrels noticed... and so did we once they filled with water and stopped working.
 
Had squirrel to chew the bulb off and leave bare wire. Found bulb buried in a flower pot a year later.

Thomas
 
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