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!