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We have unwelcome guests in our house.
We first heard the noises a few weeks ago -- scurrying, scratching noises coming from the outside the house, somewhere on our roof, above our bedroom. It was faint, and we dismissed it as just some critter running across the roof.
Since then, we've heard it more and more often, to the point that while it rained in the early morning a week or so ago, it kept me awake. The scratching and scurrying had gradually become louder and louder and had "spread" from the east side of the house to the north.
"There is DEFINITELY something living up there," I said.
"But I went up there [on the roof] a few weeks ago and saw nothing," my BF said. "I didn't find anything. But I can look again."
"I have an interesting development in the roof situation," he told me over the phone. "I'll show you when you get home."
When I got home and put my things down, he grabbed a flashlight. We went out to the pool deck through the master-bathroom door. He led me to the corner of the house, on the outside of the sliding glass door to our bedroom.
"Check this out."
He pointed the light from the flashlight to the roof overhang, underneath where the gutter would be if there were one on that side of the house. Four holes in the mesh wiring underneath the overhang that served to ventilate the attic area stared back at me. Next to a couple of the holes were bunches of leaves, twigs and paper.
"Uh oh."
"We need to get rid of them and get that fixed ASAP," he said.
"I know," I said. "But I want to do it humanely. I know there are places that do that."
"I just got off the phone with this place called Critter Control," I said. "Good news and bad news."
"Yeah?"
"They trap the animals and release them. And they do repair work. And they come out as often as it takes to get all the animals out. Bad news is, it's expensive. $190 for the service, plus $60 per animal."
"WHAT?!?!?! What if there are several up there? So it would be $60 per animal?!?!"
I don't want to get into the details, but that phone call led to a pretty ugly argument about our differences of opinion on certain things and how we've somehow managed to agree to disagree on them. It was strongly suggested that if it's THAT important to me that I would spend hundreds of extra dollars to save the animals scurrying around in our attic, then he won't stop me from spending MY money on it. I sheepishly nodded my head.
"Yes, it is that important to me, and I'll put it on my credit card."
I'm terrible at arguing, but I'm an expert at passive-aggressiveness.
The Critter Control guy, Tim, came by late this afternoon in a bright yellow pickup truck decorated with paw prints and a raccoon. The bed of the truck was full of boxes and equipment, and on top were several ladders of varying lengths.
Tim looked to be in his mid-20s. He wore khakis, a yellow shirt, a yellow baseball cap and a charming, disarming smile. (For those of you who had the pleasure of working with Hardyboy, Tim looked like he could pass for his brother or play him in a movie.) I led him around back, to the roof overhang next to our sliding glass door.
"Ohhhh yeah. Squirrels. Not uncommon at all." He explained to me how they trapped them, that he would check the trap every day and how he might have to go up into the attic itself if the squirrel has had her young.
"So they're actually in the attic?"
"Oh yeah." He pointed the light from his flashlight into one of the holes in the mesh. "You see that silver, reflective stuff there? That's insulation from your attic. They're using it for nesting material."
Sigh.
"Don't worry. We'll get them." He went on to explain how it's right at the beginning of nursing season, so it might take a little bit longer to catch the mother. The nursing females get very finicky about what they eat, so they might not take the bait as quickly as they would outside of the season. But I was steadfast that as long as we had made the effort to get them out without killing them, I was fine with it taking up to a week.
I left him to set up his trap. It's basically an alternate brand of the Havahart-type traps you can buy at retail stores. He ended up just setting the trap on top the pool screen, on a horizontal support beam, aimed at one of the holes. Apparently the squirrels have been crawling up the pool screen like Spider-Man to get to, enter and exit the holes in the mesh. (That explains how a squirrel got inside the screened-in pool area a couple of weeks ago; it must have scaled the outside of the pool screen, entered one hole on the outside and exited another hole on the inside of the pool screen.)
Tim knocked on the front door about 10 minutes later. He went through a short spiel about their repair services, and when I asked if it was optional (after seeing him write the rather expensive price on the invoice), he said, "Of course it's up to you. You can buy the repair material at Home Depot and do it yourself, actually. But you definitely want to patch it, otherwise other animals will just move in once it's vacated."
Tim was unusually cheerful and refreshing for someone who had set up, carried and climbed ladders in 100-degree heat all day -- every day. I couldn't get over how well-groomed, professional and polite he was. I really was feeling better and better about calling them despite my BF's fit over the cost.
He went through the fees once more for my BF, who asked about the per-animal charge. It's likely there are young in the attic, he said, but it being so early in the breeding season, they likely are still squirming around in the nest and not individually running around. And for that cluster of young, they would charge us for one animal's capture. Now if they were juveniles individually scrurrying around the attic, he would have to charge to capture each juvenile. But that was very unlikely, he said.
I shook Tim's hand and thanked him for his time and trouble. I was happy. I was sure I was doing the right thing, despite the money. Even my BF was in a good mood, which seemed to take some pressure off of me.
As Tim turned to walk back to his pickup, his face lit up like a little boy who'd just spotted the boxes under the tree on Christmas morning.
"So you want to see the snake I caught earlier today?"
The BF and I looked at each other. "Sure!" I said excitedly, my curiosity piqued, as I slipped on some sandals. "Where did you catch it?"
"In someone's apartment!" Tim opened the driver's side door and pulled out a brown patterned pillowcase. "The man went to check on his baby at 2 a.m., and this guy was in the kitchen." He reached his arm into the sack, which caused my eyes to pop out of their sockets.
"I take it the snake isn't poisonous!" I gasped.
He gently pulled out the cutest little ball python I'd ever seen. It was coiled around and around itself in a tight ball about the size of a softball. "That's why they call 'em ball pythons," he said, holding it out for us to touch. "He hides his head in the middle. He's a little scared."
The snake was beautiful. I stroked it with my finger, and prodded my BF -- who does NOT like critters -- to touch it too. He pet it a few times and seemed genuinely intrigued.
"So this one's obviously young," I said. "And probably someone's escaped pet."
"Yeah," Tim replied, gently pulling apart the snake's coils so we could see its head. "It can't be more than a few months old." The snake's tongue quickly flicked the air and disappeared between its lips. "They're the perfect pet if you have kids, really. Only needs to be fed once a month, only poops once a month." I smiled. He placed the little python back into the pillow case.
"So what are you going to do with it?" the BF asked.
"This guy's worth about $100," Tim replied. "I think I'm going to give it to one of the guys who works for me. He loves snakes."
"So what's some of the stranger things you've caught?" the BF asked, now curious and full of questions.
Tim's eyes lit up again. "You wanna see what else I caught today? This is SO cool..."
He spun around, put the pillow case back in the truck and pulled a trap out of the cab that was jammed with dried twigs and straw. I could hear something rustling and moving around inside the ball of straw but couldn't see what it was.
"This guy is so cool because you NEVER catch 'em. He's really rare." Tim turned the cage over and over and over. I saw a gray, hairy back that looked like a rat's. "You really gotta see his face." He kept spinning the cage, and then I saw a pink face and two huge, pink hands. "It's a mole!" he said. "I was on a bat job, and he'd run out of someone's yard, but he couldn't get back up over the 7-inch curb on the other side of the street. I spotted him running back and forth, trying to get back up."
It was easy to see poor Mr. Magoo now as he scurried in a panic around the outside of the ball of straw, flailing his oversized front paws, which were like flippers with sharp talons.
This really was fascinating. And Tim, who you'd expect to be some Trapper John, cable-guy, plumber's-butt, rural-rube type, was nothing like that. He could easily have passed for a med student.
"I was thinking about keeping him," he continued. "He'd be great to show to the kids. I thought I could build a home for him similar to an ant farm, so that you can see him digging."
Immediately, a mental image of a house full of all sizes of cages, tanks, aquariums and critters popped into my head -- which I happen to think is pretty cool, assuming the owner is clean, sanitary and responsible.
"So you go to schools and talk?"
"Oh yeah, like once or twice a year we go out. They love seeing the critters. You know what's GREAT?! Baby possums. They are the cutest things you'll ever see, and they have the softest fur of any animal. But then they yawn and open their mouths, and all you see are rows of vicious, razor-sharp teeth staring back at you! The kids get a kick out of that."
"Where do you take the animals?"
"We have a few places around town. Mostly landowners who have 5, 10, 15 acres who have given us permission to release the animals on their property. We're lucky in this state. Some places require that the captured animals be put down."
"How did you get into this business?" my BF asked, as we both continued to watch Mr. Magoo's plight in the metal cage Tim held.
"Well you know, my wife wanted to be a veterinarian. But we couldn't afford to send her to school just yet. So I encouraged her to look for something else where she could work with animals, and when we had some money saved, she could go. So she just found this place [he nodded at the Critter Control logo on the side of his truck] and got a job with them. She'd come home every night with all sorts of crazy stories: 'Honey, you will NEVER guess what I caught today!'
"So I was a commerical beekeeper by trade..."
Tim just kept getting more and more fascinating! How old IS this guy?
"... and that, you know, was really hard. It's manual work. So I fell into this business because my wife was doing it. Later, she got tired -- and I'm not saying women can't do this job, because my wife did it -- but you know, you have to be strong to carry those ladders every day and get them on and off the top of the truck all the time. So she works in the office now, and I work out in the field. And now we own our own office. You probably talked to her when you called us," he winked.
They are SO lucky, I thought. They get to save critters AND get paid for it AND be their own boss.
"Well I better be going. I'll see you tomorrow when I check the trap. And you're welcome to call me anytime if you see that the squirrel is in there. That way I can come get it as soon as possible."
I thanked Tim again for his time and the wonderful animal show. I couldn't thank him enough, really, for making my afternoon, smoothing over my previous day's angst and helping me to believe I did the right thing. To me, meeting interesting, adventurous people like him is priceless.
I wonder what Tim will have in his truck next visit?
Current mood: Happy
Replies: 2 shoutouts
Humm, you going to be a pet message therapist now?
Posted by P @ 09/04/2005 09:25 AM EST
great story!!
Posted by tiff @ 09/04/2005 03:02 AM EST