House under attack

My neighbour's daughter, Natalie, knocked on my door about 20 minutes ago, to tell me that there was a squirrel trying to get into my house. I stepped outside, looked up and sure enough, the offending beastie was on the edge of the roof. As we watched, it scuttered down the wall and then, from about 12 feet up, it launched itself onto the path and ran away.

Natalie's dad then invited me to walk down their driveway to see the state of my roof. Now, I've always been aware of a small piece of loose mortar and had it down as a 'round to it' job. However, it was far worse than I'd thought. From the vantage point of their driveway, I could see that there's actually two whole tiles-worth of mortar missing. I have at least two nest in the soffits, starlings and tits. If the birds can get in, so can squirrels.

I'm not a very happy bunny now, because Vic told me that the mortar was missing before I moved in - so why didn't the surveyor pick it up? Apparently the previous owner was well aware of the missing mortar and the birds' nests, but never bothered to do anything about it.

I am currently feeling not very fluffy at all. I don't like the idea of turfing out the baby birds until they're ready to leave, but I really don't want squirrels rampaging in my house :o(

I think I'm going to have to get a few quotations from roofers to see what needs to be done and how much it's going to cost me. I think I could do with a lottery win.