As someone that's shot a few squirrels for tying flies with, I'd just buy the damn tails. Squirrels are filthy little beasts and have a pile of parasites that crawl off them when they're dead.
A squirrel tore up one of our lawn chair cushions to make its nest. Little piece of shit. Then bits of lawn chair stuffing blew all over the neighborhood that winter.
I was wondering why I wasn't getting telemetry from my watering bowls and started tracking down the issue. I had leaned a pole with a LoRa antenna up against a tree, and one of the little bastards chewed the line through in about a dozen spots. If they get in the soffet of a house they'll tear all the insulation out, then store thousands of spruce cones in there, making a lovely fire hazard.