AW, NO! Brazen squirrels are overrunning a Queens neighborhood, even nesting under the hood of Natasha Conklin and daughter Taylor’s car (above). (Matthew McDermot)
CAGEY: Pest hunters, like maintenance manager Frank Portella (above), have been releasing the critters miles away — but they return.
AW, NO! Brazen squirrels are overrunning a Queens neighborhood, even nesting under the hood of Natasha Conklin and daughter Taylor’s car (inset). (Photos: Matthew McDermott)
They are marauding gangs of troublemakers who set fire to cars, cut electrical wires and cause power outages, evading capture by scaling walls and climbing trees.
But while the Queens co-op residents being terrorized by the daredevil vandals say they know exactly who their tormentors are, they insist that they’re helpless in stopping the crime wave — because the suspects are sex-happy squirrels.
“It’s like Occupy Wall Street here,” lamented Bob Friedrich, president of the under-siege co-op at Glen Oaks Village. “It’s gotten worse in the past six months. We’re getting calls that they are in people’s apartments.”
Late winter is when gray squirrels mate and look for safe places to make their nests. And that’s exactly what they’re doing around the co-op — but homeowners say the frisky critters are finding love in all the wrong places.
Two weeks ago, resident Justin Conklin said he was driving his Volkswagen SUV when he smelled something burning. When he popped the hood, he saw a smoldering squirrel’s nest made of twigs and leaves. He got rid of the nest, but 36 hours later another one had replaced it.
“You could see the little circle in the nest where [the squirrels had been] sleeping,” Conklin said. “The squirrels are occupying our vehicle, and it’s dangerous.”
A groundskeeper’s car also caught fire and was a total insurance write-off because of the creatures’ antics. And up to six maintenance vehicles have had to be rewired, causing thousands of dollars in repairs, because of squirrel damage.
“They are so aggressive,” Freidrich said. “We are humanely trapping them and dropping them off miles away, but they keep coming back.”
Freidrich is certain that the same troublemakers keep returning.
“We trapped one and marked [its] tail with a little dab of red paint and took it to a wooded area off the Grand Central Parkway,” Freidrich said. “Within 24 hours, it was back at the same location where it was trapped.”
Rita Berger, one of the co-op’s 10,000 residents, said they took over her second-story back porch.
“The squirrels in this neighborhood are the most arrogant,’’ she said. “They look at you like, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ ”
Last month, Berger said she found a litter of six babies even living inside a gnawed-out patio-chair cushion. A female squirrel can produce an average litter of four hairless, blind pups within 60 days.
“I screamed so loud,” she said. “I untied the cushion and flung it off the deck like a Frisbee.
“The next thing I know, the mother is back up on my deck with a baby in her mouth. A few hours later, I looked out the window and saw a squirrel sitting on the railing with tufts of cushion in her mouth.