Raccoon Removal

My son didn’t figure raccoon removal into his business plan, poor thing, but it’s turned into a valuable business lesson for him.

When my son was ten years old, he decided he wanted to do something every year to make extra money.  He’s a saver, not a spender, and I have the feeling he’s going to be a great business man some day.  So, when he came to me five years ago and told me his business plan, my husband and I had to support it.  His big plan was to “lease” our garden plot from us in June, plant pumpkin seeds, grow pumpkins as big as he could, and then sell them in the fall for the Halloween and Thanksgiving seasons.  My husband and I quizzed him about all the ins-and-outs of his plan, but he really had thought of just about everything.  I had been a lazy gardener that first year, so I had no problem leasing the garden plot to him in exchange for extra chores.  He purchased pumpkin seeds using some of the money he’d earned mowing lawns in the spring.  He researched the best pumpkin growing practices for our area.  And, he spent the summer and early fall helping his cash crop to grow.

I hate to admit it, but my husband and I were surprised at how vigilant he was.  He stuck it out, worked really hard, and had a fairly good-sized crop by the beginning of October.   He worked up some fliers, handed them out to his classmates in school, stuck them on neighbor’s doors, and sold every last pumpkin that year.  He saved every dime from that first crop, with the exception of purchasing better seeds for the following year.

Every year since then, he’s made a profit, which he’s saved, and he’s developed quite a reputation.  He doesn’t even talk about buying a car when he turns sixteen, or spend it on hobbies, but he’s currently talking about his next business venture.  He hasn’t settled on one, yet, but this year’s fight with the raccoons have pushed him away from pumpkins and towards something a little less troublesome.

His pumpkin patch has gotten bigger over the years as we’ve dedicated more and  more yard space to his business.  He walked out to work in it the other day and found, to his dismay, some animal had invaded and eaten some of his pumpkins.  He set up watch one night, and discovered he needed to remove raccoons from his pumpkin patch.

There were two raccoons, who waddled and scuttled furtively into the patch, then used their sharp claws and teeth to rip into a couple of pumpkins.  They kept scooping pumpkin flesh up into their mouths until my son ran them off.

Since then, he’s tried several raccoon removal techniques, but nothing’s worked for him.  He’s finally come to the conclusion that he needs to get a raccoon removal service.  Fortunately, one call to Allstate Animal Control got an expert out to his patch, who removed the raccoons.  Also, fortunately, the cost was much lower than my son had expected.  He’s decided raccoon removal is just part of the cost of doing business.  He’s also decided that maybe it’s time to try growing Christmas trees on the plot, instead of pumpkins.

Honeybee Removal

bee removal

“Well, do you happen to know of a good honeybee removal service?”  The young, athletic, blond woman asked her two older visitors.  She and her husband had just moved into the neighborhood, and a couple of friendly ladies had stopped by to say hello.  She and her husband had gotten really lucky, finding this beautiful home for an extremely low price, in a well-established subdivision.  Sure, it was a home they bought directly from the bank, who had foreclosed on the prior homeowner.  Her new neighbors had filled her in on the details, including a prior homeowner who moved away suddenly, hadn’t said goodbye to anyone, rented the house out to someone, and then failed to make the mortgage payments even though he received rent.  His tenant got wind of that last part and quickly found herself another place to live.  Eventually, as happens all too often these days, the bank reclaimed the home, and sold it.

Unfortunately, since the home had been left vacant for several months, there were a lot of little problems with it.  Including the need for honeybee removal.  The new homeowner looked at her neighbors and asked their advice.

They thought they knew better, though.  They glanced at each other knowingly.  “Do you mean wasps?”  There had been a huge boom in the wasp population lately, and every homeowner in the neighborhood was fighting them off – spraying down children’s play sets, knocking down wasp nests, tending to those who were unfortunate enough to get stung.

Not wanting to offend her new neighbors, the young woman bit her lip and said, “Well, maybe.  But, they look an awful lot like honey bees.”  She grew up in a rural area.  She knew the difference between wasps and bees.  But, she humored her guests.  “Would you like to see?”

Good-naturedly, her guests agreed, although one suggested they take wasp spray with them.  She led them around the side of the home to a window and pointed up to a window on the second story.  Sure enough, honey bees were everywhere, swarmed around the window frame and disappearing inside the wall.  Her neighbors had never seen such a thing.  One of them realized her mouth was still open in shock.

“I’m so . . . well . . . sorry.  I had no idea.  Did you know about this before you moved in?”

“No, the bank sells foreclosed properties as-is, and we didn’t see this during our walk-though.  No one told us we needed honeybee removal.”

“Are they inside the house?”  Her astonished new friend asked.

“No, thank heavens.  But, I think it’s only a matter of time, don’t you?  I mean, with the new baby and everything, I don’t want to take a risk.”

“OK,” the oldest visitor exclaimed, taking charge of the situation.  I know just who to call.  Allstate Animal Control can send someone to take care of honeybee removal.”

“Wait, shouldn’t I call a bug removal service, instead?”

“Not with honeybees.  They’re special, protected, and have to be removed just so.  And, by the way, I’m so sorry I sounded so smug when I thought you were talking about wasps.”

“No problem.  You can make up for it by getting me the number for Allstate Animal Control so I can get them to remove the honeybees.”

“Consider it done!”

Rat in the House

rat removal

Laundry is one of those chores I actually don’t mind, as long as a rat in the house is not part of the process.  My wife loathes doing the laundry.  She would much rather take care of the garbage, the vacuuming or the dishes.  She says she can’t stand sorting through dirty laundry, looking through the pockets of our boys’ pants to make sure they don’t contain rocks, sticks or other debris they treasure for a moment until it’s forgotten in the dark recesses of their pants.  Once everything’s finally washed, my wife just cannot stand turning clothes right-side-out, folding them, and fighting with our boys to put them away before they are unfolded.  Plus, she says the process dries her hands out.  So, I made a deal with her – she takes care of the garbage, and I will stay on top of the laundry.

 

Rat
A typical rat.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I keep my end of the deal, and secretly rejoice that I don’t have to face the disgusting garbage can ever again.

 

So, one night, after we put the boys to bed, I trundled off into the laundry room with the upstairs hamper in tow, and proceeded to prepare the clothes for the washing machine.  My elbow bumped the liquid detergent, and some of it spilled onto the floor, so I pulled open the drawer on the bottom of the dryer to grab a rag with which I could wipe up the sticky detergent before it made a bright blue path under the machines and down the drain.  It was at that moment that I discovered we have a rat in the house.

 

Apparently, the rat in the house loves the warmth that comes from the dryer, and the relative quiet it enjoys in that laundry room, since I’m the only one who really uses it.  It had made a nest out of the rags that I’d neatly folded up long ago and placed in the drawer.  I have no idea if the rat explored the rest of the house often, or if it just stuck to the laundry room, feasting on whatever tidbits I’d fished out of the boys’ pockets and tossed in the small garbage can.  And, I have to admit, I was simultaneously glad my wife hadn’t been the one to discover the rat in the house, and jealous of her.  Really, of the two of us, you would have thought the one who dealt with the garbage would be more likely to discover a rat in the house.  But, no, it was me.

 

Fortunately, we’d already used Allstate Animal Control in the past, when we’d discovered another critter digging holes in the lawn.  So, it was a no-brainer to email them again and have them get rid of the rat in the house.

 

You know, after that incident, I haven’t left a single pile of laundry just sitting in the laundry room.  I hate to imagine a rat making a nest in our clothes!

 

 

Armadillo on the Lawn

armadillo removal

A new puppy and an armadillo on the lawn do not mix.  It’s getting to the point where I hate both.  I’ve always considered myself an animal-lover, but this new drama between a rowdy puppy and a destructive armadillo on my lawn at two in the morning is starting to take its toll.

 

We already have a small dog who prefers to stay indoors as he is aging, but as he gets older and more sick, he prefers to be left alone.  I had the not-so-brilliant idea that we should get another dog, a puppy that could grow with the kids.  The children could play catch with it outside, I’d get more exercise as I took the dog out for walks, and it might ease the imminent trauma of losing our current pet.

 

So, we got a boxer/terrier puppy mix.  We found him at the local shelter, and I could not believe how beautiful and friendly he was.  Then, we took him home.  He is a forceful ball of non-stop energy.  He makes the children happy, when I feel he’s safe enough for them to play together.  Most of the time, he just tries to chew everything and everyone in a playful way.  He’s like a small tank with happy genes, and he never stops.

 

You can imagine, then, the racket that woke us up the other night when our puppy discovered an armadillo on the lawn.  It had already been a long day at work and with the kids, and I didn’t get to bed until late.  When the puppy started barking sharply and constantly, it woke us all up, including our ornery old indoor dog, who started howling, angry at being disturbed.  I felt his pain.  If I could have howled, I just might have.

 

I threw on my robe and slippers, and rushed outdoors, trying to quietly yell at the dog to shut up so I wouldn’t wake up whichever neighbors had managed to sleep through the earlier noise.  It took a while for me to understand why the dog was so noisy.  We had an armadillo on the lawn.

 

The puppy seemed satisfied that he had done his job, and finally hushed up, but he still chased the armadillo around the lawn.  As soon as the puppy approached the armadillo, it would jump straight up into the air, and run in a different direction, surprisingly agile.  If I’d been watching a video of it, I’m sure I would have laughed at the antics of both creatures.  Since it was two in the morning, I was annoyed, embarrassed and cold, it wasn’t as funny.  It became even less amusing when I saw the holes the armadillo had scratched in the lawn.

 

I’d hoped the armadillo in the lawn would be too scared to return, but it has returned several nights in a row, taunting my puppy.  I’m done with the drama.  Let Allstate Animal Control get rid of the armadillo on the lawn, and let a trainer teach my dog some manners.  Then, maybe, life will be a little more normal.

 

 

Moles in the Lawn

get rid of moles

The moles in my lawn are driving me absolutely crazy.  Every day, I knock down about ten or fifteen mounds and try to fill in the holes.  Every morning, when I look out the window, I see ten or fifteen new or re-built mounds.  I’ve lived in this house for eleven years, and never had moles in the lawn before.  But, now, the yard looks bumpy and ugly, grass is dying, I’ve lost a couple of bushes, and I’m just sick and angry about it.  I don’t even want to let my kids go out and play back there, because I’m afraid they might twist an ankle in a hole left behind by a mole, or fall over one of the tunnels.  What if they catch some disease from mole droppings or parasites that might live on moles.  Do parasites live on moles?  I didn’t know anything about them, except what they look like and the kind of destruction they leave behind.

 

So, I’ve hopped on the internet and I’ve done some research.  I know how often they breed, what they like to eat, how they killed my bushes, how quickly they dig through dirt, what kind of tunnels they use to travel through and the types of burrows they use as nesting grounds.  I know all kinds of facts, and they only make me more frustrated and angry.

 

Of course, there are all kinds of websites that tell you how to get rid of moles in the lawn.  People will suggest anything, and they all swear that their method is the best technique.  I’ve read about and watched on-line videos of idiots with dynamite or firecrackers.  Some people advocate liberally spreading poison all over your lawn, or piping the exhaust from a car or truck down through the tunnels.  I just have to shake my head.  I don’t want to do any further damage to my yard, I’m afraid of what the poison would do to my dog (who is useless at catching moles, by the way), and I don’t want to risk blowing myself or my property sky-high.

 

I did get one important fact from my web searching.  I found the Allstate Animal Control website.  They are a national network of professionals.  These are people who are trained to remove moles from my lawn and who can even help me repair the damage the moles caused.  Despite what my mother-in-law believes, you really can’t believe everything you read online.  Results are results, though, and I can believe in a legitimate company that seeks out professionals in every region who know exactly how to handle the problem animals in their area.  So, thanks to my online research, I know a great deal more about moles.  More importantly, I have an excellent company that will solve my problem with moles in the lawn.

 

 

Gophers in the Lawn

get rid of gophers

If I hadn’t ignored the problem, I wouldn’t have so many gophers in our lawn.  But, when the first dirt mounds appeared, I had other things to think about.  So, instead of getting the gophers out of the lawn right away, I gave them time to populate my yard.  Stupid.  Just stupid.  And, now I need help.  I can’t afford gophers in my lawn, or my garden, or anywhere else on my property, especially since I’ve spent so much time making it beautiful.

 

I was starting up a new garden, so every moment that I got to spend outside was dedicated to my garden.  I plotted out a huge area, then I had to spend back-breaking hours de-sodding the area.  We’re not well-off, and I couldn’t afford the big fancy diesel machines that looked so promising and shiny at the garden stores I frequented.  I settled for the hand-me-down tools I got from my father and father-in-law, borrowed some tools from a neighbor as needed, but mostly, everything I did was done the old-fashioned way.  Hauling the grass away was done by cutting the vegetation up with a shovel, and then rolling it up as best I could, using the shovel as leverage.  I hauled the heavy grass away by hand.

 

Then, it was time to churn up the dirt, preparing it for planting.  I used the old hoe that sat in our garage, unused since we moved in, and went to work.  My shoulders and arms ached every single night, but my garden plot was starting to look like a lumpy brown opportunity.  I dreamed of walking up and down the rows in my back yard, pulling a weed or two, deciding whether I should pick this vegetable or let it grow just a little longer.  My wife wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store or the farmers market for our vegetables, since we’d just pull it straight out of our own garden.

 

As I worked, and dreamed, and ached, I had decided to ignore the ugly mounds of dirt, and holes, that appeared in the other areas of our property.  I had other things to worry about, like which seeds I was going to buy, and exactly where everything would get planted.  Do I plant the potatoes next to the cabbage?  Should I devote a portion of the garden to herbs?

 

One morning, I woke up and noticed a couple of holes in my newly planted garden.  We had gophers in the lawn, and now we had gophers in the garden.  All my hard work, all the sweat, all the money I’d devoted to this small plot of land, would be for nothing.  I contacted Allstate Animal Control right away to get the gophers out of the lawn as fast as possible.  Why had I ever allowed them to breed and tunnel, and enjoy the fruits of my labor?  No more!  I was getting a professional out to my property right away to get remove the gophers from my lawn so I could go back to my part-time job as home farmer.

 

 

Swallows on the House

I know it’s an irrational fear, but I’m very much afraid of the swallows on our house.  Some people are afraid of heights, some people are afraid of water.  I am afraid of birds.  They call it ornithophobia, and apparently it’s pretty common.  Some people are terrified of large birds of prey, but I can’t stand any bird whatsoever, large or small.  I don’t overreact, for the most part.  When I have a run-in with a bird, I freeze, get the sweats, and then, depending on the situation, I might run away screaming like a fourth-grade-girl chased by a boy with cooties.  Like I said, I don’t normally overreact.

 

We have a skylight in our second floor, which I’ve absolutely loved.  I was lying on the couch underneath it, staring up at the sky, trying to think through a problem at work.  That’s when I heard it.  It was a small sound at first, but enough to jolt me out of my brainstorming.  Something alive was restlessly stirring around over my head.  Then, something brown, with pointy wings, flew over the skylight, directly above me, joining whatever creature already occupied my roof.  Some part of me detached from my knee-jerk fear reaction, and the rational part of my brain analyzed what I had just witnessed, causing me to realize there were swallows on my house.  The irrational part of my brain wanted me to throw things at the ceiling to scare them away, and then hide in a fetal position in a closet until the disgusting things were gone.  I’m a grown man.  I rejected the desire to flee to the dark protection of the nearest closet.  Instead, I ran out of the room calling for my wife.  I thought I used a very normal tone of rational voice to call her name.  She says I squeaked and croaked something unintelligible.  Whatever I said, and however I said it, she did come running right away.

 

I somehow managed to communicate the reason for my flight, and she walked in the room to investigate.  Sure enough, we had two swallows on the house, and it looked like they were building a nest.  My loving and supporting wife laughingly suggested I climb onto the roof to take a look for myself.  In response, I looked up the contact information for Allstate Animal Control and made an appointment for someone to come and take a look for me.  For the first time since spotting the revolting things, I was relieved.  Someone was going to remove the swallows from my house.

 

It might be a while before I can relax under my skylight again, though.  I won’t even try to analyze why I’m so afraid of birds, but one thing’s for sure.  I refuse to allow any bird, including swallows, on my house.

 

 

Squirrel in the House

get rid of squirrels

I’m just about to go insane with squirrels in the house.  I think we’ve taken care of the problem, and then it starts up again, and the kids and I are being terrorized by the maddening gnawing and running and crashing going on above our heads.  It started with a squirrel in the house last spring.  The first time we heard the noise, my son had just returned from a sleep-over at a friend’s house, and they of course had watched a scary movie.  Hearing chewing and running sounds above his room early in the morning, while it was still dark, just about threw him into a screaming fit.  I climbed up into the attic to see what was going on, and saw the flash of a little bushy tail as the squirrel in the house scampered across the attic space.

 

Squirrels
Squirrels making a nest in your attic.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I tried everything I could to get rid of it, from making sure the vent was open so it could escape to setting out poisoned bait.  It still woke us up all night and early morning with its constant noise.  When I investigated again, the attic space was a mess.  Boxes had been chewed into.  It had gnawed on the soffits and joints.  Squirrel droppings were littered everywhere.  I’m not very handy.  In fact, I’m kind of useless when it comes to this kind of thing, so I wasn’t surprised that my efforts hadn’t worked.

 

I had a friend come over, who’s a lot handier at this kind of thing.  But, he just ended up doing exactly what I’d done.  This time, though, it worked.  The noises stopped for a while, and I realized the squirrel was probably dead.  By this time, it was winter, so I didn’t think about it too much.  The kids and I were just happy the noises had stopped and we could finally sleep all night through.

 

When it warmed up, though, I was reminded we’d had a squirrel in the house.  Since we don’t go in the attic that much, we didn’t have to deal with the odor.  But, the invasion of flies reminded me of the death above.  I begged another friend to come over and help me get rid of the dead squirrel in the house, and she and I managed it, even though we gagged the whole time.  I thought that was the end of it.

 

Now that it’s fully into spring, we have squirrels in the house again.  This time, there’s more of them.  A nest, maybe?  The constant noise is awful, and I am afraid to even think about the damage they’re doing.  No more calling favors in, and begging friends to help.  I’m going to get a professional.  I’ll call Allstate Animal Control, get the squirrels out of my house, get the damage repaired, and get it all cleaned up upstairs.  If this goes on much longer, I really will go insane.

 

Woodpecker on the House

woodpecker removal

A woodpecker in our tree is a science lesson, but a woodpecker on the house is a disaster.  My two children love our little science projects.  I’m the kind of mother who’s more worried about the cleanup than the project itself.  If it’s messy and the kids are happy and learning, then it’s completely worth it.  So, we make rain storms in bottles and water splashes on our floor that has to be mopped up.  We make dinosaur tracks and toy car tracks through colored salt dough, that dries up into tiny little specks that have to be vacuumed.  We liberally sprinkle glitter and feathers over art projects covered in glue.  My preschool-aged children adore learning, and are starting to get to the point where they are asking endless questions about the world around them.  I don’t mind cleaning up after my children’s science projects.  I do, however, mind cleaning up after the woodpecker on the house.

 

We were straightening up the front room, getting ready for a playgroup, when I spotted the woodpecker on our tree in the front yard.  It was beautiful, with spots on its chest and a red crest.  I couldn’t believe my luck, since I had just taught the children about woodpeckers two days earlier.  I excitedly called them over to the window, and we spent fifteen minutes watching the woodpecker listen for bugs in the tree, then confidently tapping away and grabbing the bugs up in its beak.  The front room didn’t get straightened up to my usual standards before the playgroup showed up, but it was worth the chance to watch nature.

 

Then, when we all went outside to play, I was chatting with one of the other mothers and noticed small black specks on the side of my house, up by one of the second story windows.  Coming down from the black specks were streaks of brown and reddish black.  The woman I was talking with told me they had the same thing.  “You have a woodpecker on your house.”  Now, I was all excited to see the woodpecker in our tree this morning, but thinking of it pecking small holes into the side of my home, and bird feces staining the side of the house, really annoyed me.  Just an hour before, I had thought of the woodpecker as a stately and interesting bird, and shared my love of nature with my children.  Now that I know that woodpecker was on the house, possibly we even had a woodpecker in the house, it became a nuisance that must be taken care of.

 

Unfortunately, I also knew that most woodpeckers are protected.  I couldn’t just pull out the bee bee gun.  If only it had been content in my tree, I would have been just fine.  But, a woodpecker on my house is an entirely different matter.  Time to call Allstate Animal Control, since they get rid of birds, too.  Science lessons are great, but not when they’re destroying my home.

 

 

Vole in the House

My landlord says we can’t have any pets, but he seems to be completely okay with a vole in the house, as long as it’s not a pet.  He swears there isn’t a mouse problem or a rat problem, but I started to doubt that when I saw some little brown, black and gray pellets in several different places throughout the house.  They weren’t in the kitchen, thank heavens.  But, I found some little droppings scattered under the bathroom sink, in the garage, and by one of the basement windows.  When I contacted my landlord, he said he’d already taken care of the mouse problem before I moved in.  That was news to me.  I think I would have liked to have known if there had been a problem with rodents living in the house I intended to occupy for the next couple of years.

 

My personality, though, is such that I can’t just not do something about a problem.  I have to take it on until it’s solved.  It’s the kind of personality trait that drove my mother crazy and made her proud at the same time.  So, I headed to the hardware store, picked up a few mouse traps, and set them around the house near the areas that had the droppings.

 

I was really surprised by what I caught, though.  It was definitely not a rat.  Nowhere near big enough.  It didn’t really look like a mouse, either.  I mean, it was small, brown and furry.  But, its nose was a lot longer and the face was, just different than a mouse.  So, I took a picture and threw it out, and then re-set the trap.  Then, I looked it up online.  Turns out, I have a vole in the house.  I’ve never seen a vole up close, until today.  I’ve seen the damage a vole does in a yard, though.  But, I was pretty sure they stayed out in the yard.  Chewing through tulip bulbs, the roots of bushes, and making yucky brown trails all over the yard, evidence they’ve successfully killed the grass over their tunnels.

 

And, now it turns out I actually have a vole in the house.  Well, at least I did.  But, my research shows that, where there’s one vole, there’s many.  I bet the voles just use the little mouse holes left by the mouse population my landlord swears he killed.  While I don’t have any plants or things for them to eat inside, it is warm and dry, and I’m sure looks like a perfect place for a vole to burrow.  I don’t care.  A rodent is a rodent.  Whether it’s a mouse, rat or vole, it needs to be out of my house.  Now, if I can only convince my landlord to call Allstate Animal Control to take care of the voles in my house . . . maybe I should fish the vole out of the trash and show it to him.  Sometimes, a visual aid is the best argument.