You Shall Not Pass

We have a psycho raccoon on our deck, and I mean absolutely bonkers.  I guess technically it’s not my house, it’s my 90 year old aunts; but I am there at least 3 days a week while her caretaker is at home.  The fact that the home belongs to my sweet, elderly aunt is the reason that I’m so concerned about this raccoon, how do I know it won’t hurt her while I or her caretaker isn’t watching?  This thing is territorial and protective, and I don’t even know what of! All I know, is that if my auntie opens the back door without checking the porch first, it could be a disaster.

So the story of this wild raccoon on the deck goes like this: about 2 weeks ago we started to notice a raccoon lingering around in the backyard.  We really didn’t think much of it at first, living in a slightly more rural area it’s not uncommon for us to see wildlife around when the sun starts to set.  What clued us in to the problem, was when it started to get closer and closer at night, until eventually it was practically at our feet with no fear.  After that it started to live under the deck and would spend the nights lounging outside the door like a cat.  We became alarmed, when we tried to go inside the house one night after a bonfire, and the raccoon hissed and growled and wouldn’t let us in the back door, and when we finally got back inside we couldn’t go out the back door again!

My concern is that my Aunt will open the back door to let some fresh air in when we have our backs turned and will let this crazy thing into the house.  Having a raccoon on the deck is bad enough, I don’t even want to get a taste of having a raccoon in the house.  I don’t know what we could do to make it leave? We walk across the deck, we’re loud, we have music playing – it just stays put!  I’m a little worried because what if it has babies under the deck and that’s why it’s so territorial? What do you do with raccoons, PLURAL? We need some help, and we need it before my aunt makes things worse.

Solar Problems

There are pigeons nesting on my solar panels, and I can’t stop them.  Imagine this: you have spent years working to build a greener lifestyle for yourself, you drive a Prius, you recycle, and you work and save for 3 years to buy yourself a $15,000 Solar Panel system that you’ve been dreaming of since you were 16 when you wrote a report on the development of cleaner energy.  Then, one day, after a trip home to your parent’s house, you come home to find 23 pigeons happily roosting, crapping, and tarnishing your beautiful and expensive solar panels.  Would you be distressed, angry, or sad? OR WOULD YOU BE ALL OF THE ABOVE BECAUSE I AM!

Two weeks ago, these stupid flying rats began to roost on my solar panels, defecating all over them and building their nests underneath them.  I couldn’t believe it!  I trying installing small bird spikes along the edges of the solar panels but that didn’t deter them one bit, and the reflective tape I put up there didn’t do jack-squat either.  I’m not sure that loud music or anything like that will do any permanent damage but that’s my next move.  I know that trapping would be the most obvious solution, but my problem is that I don’t know what to do with them once I’ve got them trapped.  I’m all about the environment, so I don’t think I would be able to shoot them, but I know releasing them would mean they just returned?

The best thing to do is call in a professional, and I know that whatever price there is to pay won’t for pigeon control wouldn’t even compare to the bill I would get if I had to do serious repairs to the solar panels.  The problem is that I’d prefer to solve this on my own and save all my money all together (which is implausible, I know).  But you know what they say, if wishes were horses beggars would ride.  I’ll eventually have to man up and call in the professionals, and probably sooner rather than later; personally I think the world would be better off without pigeons and their pointless pigeon problems.

Bat Season

‘Tis the season for bat problems.  Late spring and early summer are when we as wildlife control specialists see an influx of bat related calls, so we want to give you some important information to help keep your home safe from these intruders.  First of all, bat problems are not something to take lightly, bat guano can contain traces of the virus Histoplasmosis which is an airborne virus which means it mainly affects people through the air they breathe.  While it’s not an all-too-common thing to find in household bats, it is a serious illness that can cause major health problems.  With the risk of illness, it is important that when you are cleaning guano, you have protective gear like masks and gloves.

Sealing entrances can be tricky because bats can fit into a multitude of gaps in your home; as long as a space is larger than ¼ of an inch, bats can squeeze right in.  Common bat entrances include broken tiles/shingles, gaps in soffit, attic vents, gaps between the roof/walls and chimneys, gaps in overhangs, and places where pipe and wiring enter the home.  There are, of course, many other places where a bat could gain entrances, but it is unique to the home making them hard to identify for the untrained eye.  It is important that you don’t seal off your home with the bats inside, and we recommend hiring a professional to assist in the removal process to make sure all the animals have gone before and final sealing is done.

It’s also important to remember that, although they prefer higher places, it is just as common to find bats in basements, cellars, and other rooms in the lower parts of the house – which, again, just makes finding entrances more difficult.  While bats are good for the environment and kill many harmful insects like mosquitos, they can pose health hazards to you and your family’s health if they are in your home.  Above everything, your safety comes first, so if you feel uncomfortable with your bat problem, and you don’t want to take care of the problem yourself, don’t be afraid to call for help.  That’s what people like us are here for, to protect you and your home from wildlife.

Cue Medusa

We have a major snake infestation in our farm house.  We bought it just about a year back, and we haven’t gone more than two days without finding some semblance of a snake somewhere.  There are even a lot of times when we just find plain snakes; whether it’s when they crawl out from under the porch or slither up the stairs from the basement, we’ve found three dead in the attic and two dead behind the cupboards.  Everywhere we turn it seems like there’s a snake just waiting to jump out at us.

We bought the ten-acre lot as a summer cabin that we could go visit, but so far all we’ve been able to do with it is renovate and exterminate.  It was built on a faulty foundation which has resulted in some damage to the outer frame which is how I think the snakes have been getting in.  Roughly a month after we bought it, we transferred the home onto a new foundation. The move shook a couple of snakes loose and we found several more living, dead, and just skins floating around the house.  As we tore out walls and cupboards, we found several more snake skins and one 3-footer curled up into a corner.  I’m amazed at how many have taken up to nest and infest this house.

We left the house sitting over the winter without any appliances in it, and no heating, hoping to freeze the snakes out.  I’ve been over there a few times since it warmed up just to check things out and I haven’t seen anything new (or alive) in the house, and I wanted to know if it was possible that any snakes living inside of the building were frozen? Ideally, we’d like someone to come perform a quick inspection to tell us if we’re still infested by snakes, or if we can finish installing the appliances and finally make good use of our summer home.

Ra, Ra, Rat-sputin

Listen, my sister has a rat running through the walls of her house. It’s invincible; we, can’t, kill it. She actually thinks it’s a squirrel solely based on the fact that she has squirrels in her yard, but I’ve watched it run into the hole behind the refrigerator, I’ve seen the hairless tail whip around as ran for the water heater. I know what it is, but I can’t figure out how to kill it. This thing is attacking her from the walls of her home, and I’m as useless as an ice cube in a snow storm.
This thing has to be monstrous, because it’s causing severe damage. Last week we found one of my nephews onesies pulled behind the couch; anywhere that may have had spit-up, leftover food, or anything other than just fabric was eaten completely through, leaving it in tatters. The bottom inside of the pantry door is covered in claw and teeth marks, woodchips everywhere, and rat droppings hiding in every corner. If you stay through the night, you’ll hear it around 3 in the morning, chewing on anything he can get his grimy little claws on. Not only will you catch snippets of the rat running through the walls, but you can hear it under the floors and in the ceilings. It has a maze of tunnels mapped through every inch of the house, it has chewed holes through the walls to get inside, and it’s not stopping. Just yesterday I heard it behind the fridge, so I pulled it away from the wall and discovered it had chewed through much of the wiring. I can’t believe how much has happened in only 2 weeks of its being here.
I want to help my sister, I’ve tried everything. I’ve set traps and baits only to find the springs released with nothing inside, and boxes of poison emptied to no avail. Every day it comes back and taunts me, daring me to try to kill it another way, but I have nothing left (short of shooting holes in my sisters walls). I know she called me to help, but I think I’m out of my league here, we need some professional help. Before we know it, it will have chewed through the foundation and leave us to watch the house collapse before moving on to torment another family. This rat in the walls, or squirrel, or whatever it is needs to be gone.

Invaders!

There are raccoons invading my house! I don’t know what to even do; I’m retired and live on my own so I don’t deal with these difficult problems myself, I usually call my brother or a neighbor to help.  I don’t even clean my own windows, I pay a sweet boy from my neighborhood to deal with that and my rain gutters.  I maintain my house well, but I don’t do it on my own.  So let me ask you this, if you were a 72 year old woman who can barely control her 6 pound Yorkie, what would you do when 5 raccoons invaded your kitchen and wouldn’t leave?

Two nights ago, I made a fairly large dinner for my book club gals to celebrate our finishing of the classic “The Art of War”, by Sun Tzu.  Not an easy read, but worth the time.  We spent hours talking about the book and our families, and before I knew it, it was 10:30.  We wrapped up and I started to clean up, but I was just so knackered I left anything that didn’t need to be refrigerated on the counter and went up to bed.  The problem was, I forgot to put the doggy door cover on that keeps my little Tiny inside and other critters out.  Which means at 12 am bright and early when I got up to visit the loo, there was quite a racket coming from downstairs.

I was shaking in my slippers as I made my way down to the kitchen to see what kind of intruder I had, and I was absolutely mortified when I was met by five raccoons tearing through my leftovers.  Though I was scared, I remembered the words of the great General Tzu: “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”  I repeated those words to myself as I ran out the backdoor with Tiny in my arms, leaving the door open behind me.  My brother went back to the house yesterday morning to check it out, and there were no raccoons left, but there was quite a mess.  I’m glad that the problem is over, but boy did it give me a fright.

A’drawer’able

I’m Snow White.  That’s the only reasonable explanation to the raccoons in my house, and the birds in my closet, and all the rest of my childhood wildlife encounters.  When I was little I was always the person that animals trusted, no matter what.  Dogs didn’t bark at me, cats wanted to lay on my lap, and deer would walk up to me for snacks.  Everywhere I went, some kind of animal seemed to follow.  Which is actually why I ended up studying Wildlife Ecology in college, but that’s a completely different story than the ones I want to tell.

Two years ago, when I was a junior in college, I woke up to a bird chirping and it was beautiful.  But when I went downstairs for breakfast, came back up, and could still here the chirping, I got a little worried.  I looked outside my window to see if there was an injured bird but there was nothing there.  Then the chirping started again, except now I knew it wasn’t from outside, but inside of my closet.  Inside of the air vent that connected to my room through the closet, was a small bird’s nest that contained two small birds.  Well we got that sorted out fairly quickly and sealed the hole from the outside that let the bird in from the first place and that was that.

Except apparently that wasn’t that, my at-home wildlife visits wouldn’t end there.  Now, I’m starting my Master’s program and moving into an off campus apartment by myself; I actually just started staying here myself two days ago.  This morning I woke up and went to the bathroom to start my morning routine a little earlier than usual.  While brushing my teeth I heard a muffled sound coming from the empty bottom drawer of the vanity; I pulled it open to find four baby raccoons huddled together, and mewing softly.  I absolutely couldn’t believe it!  In what world do you find baby raccoons in your bathroom vanity!  In my world, I guess.  But they can’t stay – I’m already looking for someone to come and safely remove them, but man what a story I have to tell my professors.

A Berry Unpleasant Situation

We have a porcupine in our yard, and I’m just about at the end of my rope when it comes to accompanying the little thing.  I think he’s cute as can be, but he’s pushing the boundaries of our relationship.  He’s been around every summer for about three years now, and at first as long as I kept my little dog inside when he was out, he would just visit and wander through the yard.  It was great, my daughter could see a really cool creature in its natural habitat, and he never bothered us.  When he came back the next year, I was reasonably excited but also a little nervous.  I really didn’t want him to make my small yard into a home, and luckily he didn’t decide to live there, but he did decide to eat there.

Last year, he started stomping through my small gardens and ripping up my plants.  He ate through most of leafy stuff which was alright I guess, I don’t use much of my garden lettuce anyway, but then he found my berry bushes.  When I was little, my grandmother taught me to prune and grow raspberries and blackberries to produce delicious berries; as they ripened up we would make jams and pies and I have treasured those memories, and my berries, ever since.  My daughter is 5 this year, so I was ready to start teaching her the lessons my nana passed on to me; that was until the porcupine returned to wreak havoc on my berry bushes yet again.

We tried to deal with the little guy ourselves and my husband built a short fence around our garden, but porcupines are better climbers (and more invasive) than I thought.  I know that since now he has a safe place that supplies food, it’s not likely he’s going to just go away on his own, so I need help.  I’d prefer if he was relocated because let’s be honest, even if he can be a pesky porcupine, I still like the guy.  I just want protection for my plants so I can carry on the family tradition with my daughter, so any help and advice is appreciated.

Going Nuts

I am losing my freaking mind trying to control the squirrel problem I have in both my backyard and attic.  This is the second spring that we’ve had a genuine issue with the little rats, before then they just came and went, never bothering us a bit.  So what changed? Why, after so many years of peace and harmony between my family and the squirrels, did they overtake our attic?  Walnuts.  When my wife and I first bought this house 12 years ago, we decided to leave our mark on the property and boost the environment by planting two walnut trees in the backyard. Obviously, without the knowledge that the native tree roamers (squirrels), would someday use it to cause chaos in our lives.

Do I sound like I’m being dramatic? I promise I’m not; if you had squirrels inviting themselves to hoard inside of your attic, you would react this exact same way.  It was only a couple of years ago that the walnut trees starting actually producing nuts and seeds, and that’s right around when we started to experience the squirrel problem.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t have been cursed with JUST the squirrels, but soon thereafter a major windstorm hit, undoing soffit, shingles, rain gutters, you name it.  The access points the squirrels had to the house were innumerable, and we just couldn’t keep up.  Before long, we started finding walnuts, apricot seeds, and other various plants tucked inside insulation and corners of the attic.  We did our best to seal everything off, but when the squirrels returned this spring, it was obvious we missed something.

We have been trying our hardest to stay on top of this, we just want to go back to the good old days of looking at the squirrels – not watching them invade our house through unseen holes.  I have tried everything I can think of, and obviously I’m not the mountain man that my wife thought she married, because so far these squirrels have been outsmarting my every move.  I need some outside help, and the sooner the better.  We just want our house back.

From a Drip to a Downpour

It’s not uncommon for leaky pipes to lead to bigger problems; but how often do they lead to BAT problems? When the my sink pipes started leaking, I knew there was a concern; when the ceiling started showing water stains from the attic above my apartment, I knew there was an issue; and when I called the landlord to take a look at what was going on, I knew there had to be a solution.  I didn’t know, nor could I ever have guessed, that this was the bigger picture that all of the pieces would lead to.

Everyone’s pipes leak now and again, so last month when my kitchen sink started to have a little drip, I called the landlord immediately for maintenance so that we could stop the problem early.  Except, it didn’t stop; or at least it didn’t seem like it had.  Last Friday, I became aware of the growing stain on my bedroom ceiling that seemed like water leaking from the pipes in the attic so again, I called maintenance right away trying to control this problem before serious damage was done.  I was a little disappointed that they weren’t able to come immediately because they were out of town for Memorial Day Weekend, but I settled for a Monday appointment and waited out the weekend with my ever-growing pipe leak and tried not to let it ruin the family barbecue.

Unfortunately, my good weekend was ruined when Monday morning, the head maintenance worker climbed up into my attic and found something much more severe than a leaky pipe: a bat problem.  Instead of a rusted bolt (or whatever makes pipes leak), he found 50 plus bats hanging from the louver, unbothered by the visitor.  Along with the animals themselves, he found a pile of guano sitting directly above the “water” stain, which didn’t turn out to be water at all.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we’re tackling this bat problem now, but I’m a little upset that I have to stay in another apartment for 4-6 weeks while they clean out the guano, vent out the bats, and return my apartment to a no-pet apartment.