Update: Who Throws a Shoe, Honestly?

Well, this ending wasn't as exciting as I had hoped for.  The "shoe thrower" did do a drive by to stare at the trap hanging off the customer's carport.  During the process we had a friendly neighbor who was helping our company and checking the customer's traps for her.  The "shoe thrower" was scared away by the friendly neighbor who told him to leave the property before she called the cops.  She knew what he was up to.  He was on the stake out for another "shoeicide" I'm sure.  We were able to catch one more animal and the job was closed yesterday.  Oh and by the way, we were trapping raccoons at this house, not squirrels.

Calls are slowing down.  Keep your fingers crossed for our next weirdo...

Who throws a shoe? Honestly...

We have a current customer who is dealing with squirrels in her attic space. She finally got fed up hearing them chase each other around her attic so she did the most reasonable thing, she called our company. I scheduled our technician out to her home to evaluate and set the proper traps to remove the animals. Our squirrel traps are pretty precise. They are "kill type" traps that are very similar to a mouse trap, only bigger, heavier, and are made completely of metal. We put these traps directly over the hole that the animal uses to enter and exit the home. The trap also hangs on the exterior part of the house. This does allow the homeowner to actually see the animal once it is trapped. She was totally fine with that. Unfortunately, through this whole process, she is finding out that her neighbors are not so happy with it.

The actual customer called me last week to tell me that there was an animal in the trap. She said that she was wanting it picked up before the children got home from school and had to walk by her house and see the dangling squirrel. I totally agreed. She then also mentioned that her neighborhood was going against her. They weren't happy with the fact that she was killing these squirrels who were ultimately on a mission to take over her home (okay... that might be a bit of an exaggeration but they could). I told her that we would just have to see how those neighbors feel when it's their turn to have squirrels in their attics. They might change their minds on hating her and hating our company. 

We then got a call over the weekend that there was another squirrel in the trap. Our technician went out and picked up the animal and reset the trap. He then went out yesterday (Monday) morning to check the trap again, just in case. Well, someone did the unthinkable. In the whole 5 years that I've been with the company, I've never seen or heard of this happening. One of these neighbors committed a "shoe-icide". This guy (we know that from the shoe) was so angry about our traps that he sacrificed his own shoe to trip our trap to prevent us from trapping another squirrel (reminds me of one of the best movie quotes ever). Our technician had to go out and remove the shoe and reset our trap. We're currently waiting for the left foot shoe. Our tech could use some new brown shoes... I'll keep ya posted.

Well... What did you expect?

It has been a slow summer for our crazy customers. Business has been going pretty smooth and I really haven't had many problems. Let me take that back, I did have one woman who exclaimed "that's the problem with you white folk, you're all arrogant and rude!" This was after I explained to her our pricing for an service call, inspection, and trap set up. I guess we were a little out of her price range. That is the first time in my life I have ever had racism thrown in my face and it wasn't pleasant. Believe me, I held my own. I was growing concerned that I would no longer have stories for my blog. I was scared that people were getting smarter and smarter and that I would have nothing to write about anymore! Then this popped up...

I received a call from a nice, young gentleman who was very concerned about some raccoons that he had getting into the eves of his house. Let me remind you, raccoons have THUMBS! They are very destructive. They have the ability to get on your house and completely tear apart your house. They can pull shingles off the roof, they can tear siding off the house, and they can chew a hole right into your house. They are dangerous. Of course, this customer was already experiencing a few of these problems and that is why he called our company. He needed us to come out immediately to help him get rid of the four raccoons that he observed consistently going up into the eves of his house. I sent one of our best technicians out to investigate and get traps set to remove the animals.

It should have been a pretty easy set up. On a usual set up our company will use the "kill type" traps. It doesn't sound humane, but it really is. I have seen what happens to some animals who get trapped in a live trap and actually beat themselves to death inside the trap trying to get out. Also, when you remove an animal from the environment that they have been living in and put them in a new place, they will most likely die due to starvation or be killed by another animal that is already taken residence in the new environment. The most humane and guaranteed way to deal with wildlife getting into your house is to unfortunately use the kill type trap. Our tech went to the customers house and explained the set up process and the trap that would be used. This is when the customer quickly informed the tech that he was a writer for PETA and that no kill type traps would be used at his house. We do understand that some people don't understand the pros and cons with all traps so we are always accommodating to people who only want us to use the live, cage traps. Our tech re-evaluated the situation to try and figure out where he could exactly set those traps. You can't put a live trap on the side of the house (for obvious reasons) and you can't put a live trap on a black roof in 100 degree temperatures (the animal will fry). The customer wanted a live, cage trap placed on the ground in the shade of a large tree. Okay....

Our technician receives a phone call a day later from this customer and he is ANGRY! The trap caught an opossum!! Unbelievable (please note the sarcasm). We are not out there to catch opossums, we are out there to catch raccoons. Didn't the opossum know that it was not suppose to go into that trap that is sitting on the ground under a large tree! Only raccoons are to go into that trap! (again sense the sarcasm?) This customer told our technician that he will not be paying for this animal pick up and that he no longer wants our company out there trapping animals. He was going to find someone else to take care of him since we obviously have no clue how to do our job. Moral of the story, raccoons need to learn how to read and our company needs to get signs for our live, ground set, cage traps that say Raccoons Only!

Annie Get Your Gun

From Whitney (I don't even know why I put this anymore since Erica has maybe written one of these! From now on, just assume it's me... haha)

I got a phone call last week from a woman who was calling for her mother. Her mother had called her, hysterical. The mother explained to her daughter that she had been at her house when all of the sudden an opossum shows up...inside the house. The mother contacts her daughter and explains that she is terrified and that she is going to vacate her house. She was now leaving the problem up to her daughter while she spent her day at her friend's house. This is obviously what prompted the daughter to call us. She explained to me that her mother was pretty scared and wouldn't go anywhere near her home while an opossum was inhabiting it. It is currently our busiest time of the year (those bats, squirrels and raccoons are havin' their babies!) and luckily I was able to get a hold of the owner of our company to go out to remove the opossum. We scheduled the appointment and arranged to meet the owner of the home (or mother) out at the house to essentially save the day...cause that's what we do...

The owner of our company meets the woman at her home (out front of course) and prepares to enter the house to fight off this scary, crazy, intimidating opossum who has now most likely taken over the entire house. He slowly enters the house and to his left he turns and is face to face WITH... the smallest opossum he has ever seen. It was even smaller than a chipmunk at this point. This woman vacated her own home and dialed her daughter for assistance with a tiny, baby opossum. The owner also turns to walk out of the house when he sees an "old school" revolver sitting on top of the television. After noticing his interest, the woman explains that she was trying to shoot at the animal as it ran around her living room floor. The revolver was so old that it wouldn't release the bullet out of the camber. He unloaded the gun (free of charge) and went on his merry way with the baby opossum in his grasp.

Driving Me Batty!

From Whitney:

You would think that since I'm "just" the office manager of my company, that I wouldn't have to ever deal with the actual wildlife that our company controls. I actually prefer it that way, to be honest. I really want nothing to do with the rats, opossums, snakes, and other nasty things that our techs have to see all of the time. I mean I take that back, I'm fine with them as long as they are in a trap and headed the opposite direction of me. I'm really good at sounding tough and educated on the phone. I sound like I deal with these gross animals every day, but in all actuality, I'm a wuss. I couldn't even throw away a mouse that was dead on a mouse trap at my parent's house so yes, I'm a HUGE wuss. There is one thing though that I just can't handle. My fear is even worse then the dead mouse I just spoke of. That terrifying animal is....wait for it... BATS.

When I accepted this position almost 5 years ago, I had no idea that Kansas City had such a problem with bats. I figured oh yeah you see your average bat only in things like caves and wilderness areas but NOT people's homes in Kansas City!! When I first started as the office manger, my boss required that I do some ride along days with him so I could get a taste for what the technicians did on a regular basis. It seemed like a good idea. I would get to see how he does the service calls and what he says to the customers after I've set up the job over the phone. We went to one house where the people were complaining of a bat issue. I went into the job completely blind to the possibility of actually having to see an animal. I mean it was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was shining. My thinking was, "bats are like vampires right?.. only out at night?" HA... Now i understand how ridiculous that thinking was. I went into the house with the owner of our company. I followed close behind so I could make sure to impress my new boss and make him think that I was really interested in everything he was showing and telling me. I'm kind of a suck up, I'll admit it :) We walked into the bedroom where the attic access was and that is when I slowly started backing up. There was a freaking bat on the floor by the door to the attic!! I was terrified. Here I was supposed to be the employee of a Wildlife Control business and I was literally hugging the opposite wall. The owner grabbed a pair of tongs, picked up the bat (it was screeching this horrible noise) and put it into a box to transport it to the Health Department for rabies testing. It didn't really occur to me, until we were leaving the customer's house, that I would have to ride around for the rest of the day with a bat in a box sitting on the dash of the truck until we could get it delivered. That thing was in my eye sight the entire day.

Five years later, I still am terrified of the darn things. I have an office that is on some land that the owner of our company owns. I usually sit here for most of the day by myself answering phones, invoicing customers, doing regular office duties. Last Friday I sat here all day at my desk, working away. Towards the end of the day the technicians started to come back to the office. I was patiently waiting for the owner to sign our paychecks so I could leave the office for the weekend. As I walked past my desk I noticed something on the floor next to the base of my desk. I screamed as I past because it was a BAT!!! AHHHHH!! The owner laughed and said "so that's where that is!" Apparently, he had brought some bats back to the office that he had picked up during the day. Bats are federally protected animals so we have to either take them to be tested for rabies or release them. He was planning to release them when all four of them broke out of their box they had been in. Two fled the garage and two decided to fly around the garage. He decided to leave the garage doors open in hopes of them flying out. Well, obviously they didn't. So I spent an entire day in my office with a disgusting bat. God only knows where the other one is. If it ends up anywhere on me, that will be my last day of working here...

Try Before You Buy!

During the early years of our company and when the current owner was just starting up and doing lots of service calls and jobs on his own he received a very interesting call. One night, after regular working hours, he got a phone call with a hysterical woman on the other line. She had woken up to find a 5 ft python snake slithering across her bedroom floor! Now these snakes are not your everyday, household snake. Our company handles all sorts of different snakes such as garter snakes, black rat snakes, king snakes and copperhead snakes, but NEVER pythons!! Our company doesn't usually do the "emergency calls" unless they are pretty serious. This one was serious and I secretly think the owner wanted to see if this woman was really telling the truth or not. So out of suspicion, the owner of our company went out to the house for the "emergency call". Believe it or not, she was not lying!! The person who owned the house before her had lost his 5 ft python. The snake must have lived in the wall until it felt comfortable enough to come out and surprise it's new owner. Yikes! What a surprise!

"Hole"y Moly!!

(from Whitney)

Our company had an owner of an estate call regarding a house she was renting out to an elderly woman and her mentally handicapped granddaughter. The house was not in a bad area. It was actually located in a nice, little neighborhood in Kansas City, MO. The owner was concerned about the state that the inside of the house was in and particularly concerned about the health of the granddaughter. This call came in the early years of our particular company. The owner was one of the only technicians that would run the service calls. He was the "lucky" one to go out to this home for the service call and inspection. The owner of our company is always very respectful of people's homes. He always removes his shoes and does the interior inspection in his socks alone. He knocked on the door of this home and as he walked into the house, he saw rats scattering all over the floor. At this point, he returned to his truck and placed booties on his shoes to protect his own shoes from whatever might be on the floor of this house.

He went back into the house and watched as the daughter sat at the kitchen table and actually fed the rats as they sat on the kitchen table. I do believe she was actually feeding the rats part of her own rice crispy treat! They would have Meals on Wheels deliver food to the two women and the rats would eat straight through the packaged meals before the women could get to them. There were holes all over the house where the rats had eaten through the walls to enter and exit the house. There were holes up by the counters, all behind the refrigerator, along the base boards of the floor, and around the back door. There were holes through the bottoms of every bedroom door allowing complete access for the rats throughout the entire house. The owner of our company continued his inspection to the basement. As he walked down the stairs he flashed his flashlight around the basement and along the ledge of the basement, many pairs of rat eyes stared back at him. Our company has a Padderdale Terrier dog that works for us. He assists in pin pointing where rodents are or sniffing out dead odors. The owner would not even allow his dog in this house, in fear that the rats would take him over!

Our company set rat snap traps in the basement and then had to live trap the rats in the upstairs, since the grand daughter had befriended these "pets". We ended up trapping about 120 rats out of the house. Come to find out, the only real entry point the rats had were from an open sewer drain located in the basement. They had gained access and basically took over the entire house. Everyone check to make sure your sewer drains are covered!!!

High on Life?

(from Whitney)

I was unfortunately late coming into work today, due to traffic, so the owner of our company was selling jobs for the first hour of the day. He got a call regarding two bats being inside this couple's home. They wanted someone to come out, remove the bats, and inspect the house to find our how the bats were getting into the house. Bats have had a weird winter. You don't usually see bat activity in the winter because they are typically in hibernation. When bats are living in houses we will usually wait until the spring, when they are active, to install exit only tubes to help them to leave and then not get back into the home. This winter we have seen some activity of bats getting into homes and being active in the living space. Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do to release them from the house since the main population of bats are hibernating. We usually simply seal up the house to prevent them into the living space until the spring when we can actually release them.

Our technician went out to the scheduled appointment. He went into the house to do his inspection and was quickly swallowed up by the smell of marijuana. He wasn't sure that he would even be able to complete the task at hand with the amount of weed he thought he was breathing in. He was overwhelmed with Bob Marley posters and beaded curtains. Let me also mention, the couple had an infant daughter and she was there in the house as well. Our technician was completing his inspection and found a shoe box lid full of marijuana just laying out in the open on the dresser of the master bedroom. He then completed his tasks at hand and walked around and temporarily sealed all openings that would allow bats into the house. He also pulled two bats out of the actual living space of the home and went to collect our service call and inspection fee.

The wife and child were the only two home at the time. She requested that our technician talk with her husband before any payments were made. The tech called the husband and explained the entire situation to him. He was super nice in the beginning of the conversation but then as it went on he mysteriously got more and more angry. He began cursing at the tech over the phone and telling him how he was going to start his own business doing what we do. He refused to pay the inspection fee and requested that the owner of the company call him. The technician agreed and turned to the wife. She told our tech to wait at her house while she went to pick up her husband. She also mentioned to the tech that things were not going to be good when her husband got home, insinuating that our tech better watch out! The owner and myself suggested that our technician just assume we aren't getting paid on this one and for his own safety, he should leave the house. He put the bats back on the property of the home and left.

As the technician was leaving the "pot" house he got about two houses down the street. A woman came sprinting out of her house screaming at the top of her lungs and crying uncontrollably. Our technician pulled over to see what was wrong. All he could hear was that she had seen a bat in her house! He said that she sounded like she had seen a dead person by the way she was screaming and crying. He told her how much it would cost for us to go in and remove and surprisingly enough, she screamed even louder. He decided to just go in and remove the darn thing for free. Basically, this poor tech, spent two hours dealing with crazy bat people and made no money!!

UPDATE: Our owner talked on the phone with the husband from the first house. He started off with the owner being angry and hateful. Our owner said that he would just need to find some other company to help him. At that point, the husband almost started crying and explained to our owner how afraid he is of bats and how he hadn't slept in 48 hours in fear of one getting him. He said he would be calling our technician to apologize. We're still waiting on that call...