(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!!!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
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...
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...
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