The Wall Street Journal - 16.08.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, August 16, 2019 |M3

pected Jobs.” He showed a video

of himself pulling a growling rac-

coon out of a client’s bathroom

wall by (gloved) hand, then wran-

gling it into a steel Tomahawk

Live Trap. “That’s how we do it,

folks!” he said.

The crowd cheered.

Escorting out uninvited guests

is a big part of the gig, but so is

sealing up entry points and in-

stalling devices such as chimney

caps to prevent home invasions in

the first place.

Educating clients is, too. “Peo-

ple call up all the time saying, ‘Oh

my God. There’s a coyote in my

backyard!’ ” said Mr. Hartley. “I’m

like, ‘Yup, that’s nature. Call me if

it gets aggressive.’ ”

Added Mr. Tucker: “Customers

are clueless. A guy once de-

manded I find the squirrel eggs in

his attic. He was from New Jersey.

Notthatthatmatters.”

Rates range, uh, wildly, depend-

ing on animal and location, ur-

gency, severity and number of vis-

its required. A middle-of-the-night

bat call in Chappaqua might be

$325; a midday squirrel call, mini-

mum $485; a raccoon eviction in

San Francisco, $140 for an inspec-

tion and $400 for Junio Costa—

aka Mr. Raccoon—to, say, catch

pole one feasting in your kitchen.

Most wildlife-control operators

do it all—snakes, squirrels,

skunks—but they often have a

soft spot for certain animals.

Keith Markun, owner of Beast

THE TRADE

Dan Bailey with traps in

Manchester, N.H., above. Gregg

Schumaker with his pet skunk,

Tybalt, at his home in Brutus,

Mich., left. Keith Markun in St.

Paul, Minn., below.

‘I

get lot of calls about

animals in pools,” said

Ray Hartley. “Squirrels

in pools. Skunks in

pools. Usually I tell peo-

ple, ‘You don’t need me. You’ve got

a skimmer, just gently scoop it

up!’ ” Recently, though, a woman

rang about a deer in her pool.

“That was a first,” said Mr.

Hartley, owner of Intrepid Wildlife

Services in Westchester County,

N.Y. His tagline: “Your castle

shouldn’t be a zoo.”

We can deal with pesky

seagulls on the beach. But when it

comes to raccoons in our chimney,

chipmunks in our yard and bats in

our bedroom, we human beings

are helpless, especially in this era

of Uber-Insta-On-Demand every-

thing. Why would we handle a

snake in our garage when we

don’t even hand-select our own

groceries?

Mr. Hartley is one of a growing

breed of professional critter git-

ters—also known as nuisance-

wildlife-control operators. They

are a fearless group of (mostly)

men willing to rescue us from

wildlife that has gotten in our

way. (Or is it vice versa?)

“It blows my mind what people

pay me to do,” said Mr. Hartley.

And lately people have been

paying for woodchucks—starting at $400 for up to

four visits. Woodchucks, or groundhogs, tear up the

lawn, burrow tunnels, erode the foundation and eat

away at the electrical. “I jumped, like, 250% on wood-

chucks!” he said. “Been jamming on squirrels, too.”

And last summer—every summer—bats, 24/7. Bats

in toasters. Bats in washing machines. “Bats and

squirrels are my bread and buttah,” he said, joking.

He fields anywhere from 200 to 300 frantic calls a

month, he said. Winter (mating skunks), spring (fly-

ing squirrels), summer (rabid bats) or fall (den-seek-

ing raccoons), all you’ve got to do is call. Whether

it’s two in the afternoon, or four in the morning—

he’ll rush over in his Toyota Tundra Rock Warrior.

And charge accordingly.

Mr. Hartley, 53, got his start snaring beaver and

catching coyotes in the 1990s in rural New Hamp-

shire—long before the industry had formal training

and Facebook groups and national conferences. He

was pretty much a lone wolf back then, self-taught,

aided by a bimonthly magazine called Wildlife Con-

trol Technology and his buddy’s VHS: “Snaring Bea-

ver Alive.”

“The farmers loved me,” he recalled.

They paid him in bushels of corn and bottles of

maple syrup. But he didn’t love New Hampshire. “Too

many do-it-yourselfers,” he said. “Business is way

better in Westchester.” (Plus, people there pay cash.)

Business is booming, said many of the wildlife-

control operators who attended last year’s Wildlife

Expo in New Orleans, which had a record turnout and

offered programs such as “Zoonotic Disease: What

You Wish You Didn’t Have to Know” and infrared rat

tours of downtown.

“The industry has grown expo-

nentially,” said Mike Tucker, 60,

who has been chasing squirrels in

Minneapolis for 40 years. He and

Mr. Hartley stood on the second

floor of Harrah’s New Orleans Ho-

tel & Casino surrounded by furry

replicas of rats and cans of Critter

Ridder repellent.

“It’s urbanization,” explained

Mr. Tucker, sporting a navy “Wild-

life Removal Services” cap.

“We’ve made it more hospitable

for animals. Sleeping under a

porch is cozier than sleeping un-

der a rock. We put out our bird-

feeders. We house them, we feed

them, and then we complain

about them!”

As city populations surge and

developers push into previously

uninhabited areas, humans and

wildlife are interacting more. And

more interaction means more con-

flict.

“People are used to having a

pool guy and a landscape guy,

now they need a raccoon guy,”

said Mr. Tucker.

As an industry veteran, Mr.

Hartley led a conference session

called, “Preparing for the Unex-

BYRACHELLEVIN

Woodchucks? Bats?

There’s a Guy for That

Professionals deal with nuisance animals in homes—and some who aren’t owners

Wildlife Solutions in St. Paul, Minn., likes working

with birds and bats, and has a bat colony etched on

his arms to prove it.

Jimmy Hunter, of Nashville, has seen an influx of

armadillos. And Gregg Schumaker is all about skunks.

He calls himself the Skunk Whisperer of Northern

Michigan, where he removes some 200 a year from

vacation homes and high-end hotels. He also has a

skunk as a pet. His name is Tybalt, like the Shake-

speare character, and he is allowed to sit on the couch.

“I like the smell of the spray,” Mr. Schumaker ad-

mitted. “A lot of people do.”

Newbie Dan Bailey, 24, with a degree in wildlife bi-

ology, handles a lot of snakes in New England. Once,

he removed a 2-foot-long milk snake from a nail sa-

lon. “That was fun!” he said at the expo, beaming be-

side a stack of pigeon birth-control pamphlets.

It may take time for him to learn what Mr. Hartley

and his peers confirmed after decades of house calls.

What’s the craziest animal they’ve ever dealt with?

They replied in unison: “People.”

Rachel Levin is a freelance journalist and the author

of “Look Big: And Other Tips for Surviving Animal

Encounters of All Kinds” (Ten Speed, 2018).

base, come back and

check the traps, re-

move them, make sure

they’re all out—and

then seal up the house.

It’s all about properly

animal-proofing your

home.

SKUNKS

We’ll do some deodoriz-

ing, a fresh-breeze scent

andafogmistertofog

out the various rooms in

the house. We’ll set

traps with sweet stuff,

come back and remove

them, and close up the

holes they came in.

BATS

I’ll come over and grab

it. I have my rabies

shots. Do not try this

at home. I send it to

the lab for testing. Ra-

bies can be fatal.

Someone could’ve

been bitten in

their sleep

and not

even no-

ticed—so

we test

any bat

found in

a living

space.

FACING IT LIKE A PRO

Ray Hartley, of Intrepid Wildlife Services,

shares his tricks of the trade:

RACCOONS

We come survey the

situation, set traps. It

can take anywhere

fromacoupleofdays

to a week. For bait, we

usually use sweet stuff

like persimmon and ap-

ple, marshmallow. Egg

and fish baits are too

pungent—no one wants

to smell that.

SQUIRRELS

We’ll set up a couple of

cages, baited with

seeds and nuts. Yes,

squirrels really do love

acorns. And once

they’re out, we’ll seal

up the entry points

so they can’t get

back in.

RATS

We’ll set traps,

baited with fruit

or Slim Jims, pea-

nut butter as a

CATHERINE PEARSON (ILLUSTRATIONS); SIMON SIMARD FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (BAILEY); TONY DEMIN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (SCHUMAKER); ACKERMAN + GRUBER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (MARKUN); GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO (2, RACCOON; SKUNK)

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