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Wild Wildlife Calls From A Pest Pro · PEST PROSpectives

• 0:08
  Richard Piet: I'm Richard Piet.
• 0:09
  Richard Piet: Welcome back to Pest Prospectives.
• 0:11
  Richard Piet: It's the podcast from the Pest Pros of Michigan.
• 0:14
  Richard Piet: They're pros, baby.
• 0:15
  Richard Piet: And can you imagine what it is like a day in the life being a pest pro, like Josh Hodge, for example, who is a wildlife specialist.
• 0:27
  Richard Piet: Are you with me here?
• 0:28
  Richard Piet: Can you see where we're going with this?
• 0:30
  Richard Piet: Speaking of wildlife, Josh has some stories about wildlife in his everyday travels, helping us to move those creatures along from our domains.
• 0:42
  Richard Piet: Hi, Josh.
• 0:42
  Richard Piet: Hey, how are you?
• 0:44
  Richard Piet: Great.
• 0:44
  Richard Piet: Thanks for this chance to tell some of these stories.
• 0:47
  Richard Piet: This is one we've really been looking forward to.
• 0:50
  Richard Piet: And I imagine when you go to parties and tell people what you do, they probably want to know some of these stories, don't they?
• 0:57
  Richard Piet: Maybe until I get going, and then they're like, okay, that's enough.
• 1:02
  Richard Piet: They change their mind.
• 1:03
  Richard Piet: Okay, that's it.
• 1:04
  Richard Piet: Fine.
• 1:05
  Richard Piet: Well, if you get a pest control operator talking, sometimes they have too many stories.
• 1:10
  Richard Piet: I bet you do.
• 1:11
  Richard Piet: And that's part of the reason why we wanted to talk to you because more is always better than less.
• 1:16
  Richard Piet: But a few of them would be good to hear right now.
• 1:20
  Richard Piet: And some of these are pretty interesting because some of us at least might not consider some of these animals as all that threatening, but sometimes they can be like squirrels, for example.
• 1:35
  Richard Piet: I mean, we see squirrels every day, but sometimes when they get a little cozier than we'd like and maybe end up in somebody's attic, we call somebody like you, and then you come around, and sometimes they might be a little bit aggressive.
• 1:52
  Josh Hodge: Is that true?
• 1:52
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, especially the female fox squirrels.
• 1:55
  Josh Hodge: They're the largest squirrel we have around here.
• 1:57
  Josh Hodge: And I've never actually had one attack me, but they'll do their best to make you think that they might.
• 2:03
  Josh Hodge: When and you'll know when you're on the right house, because she'll come out on the roof and be like, Who are you?
• 2:09
  Josh Hodge: And she'll get to within a foot or two of you sometimes, be like, Oh, they kind of lunge at you.
• 2:15
  Josh Hodge: Do a little mock charge, maybe, and act threatening.
• 2:19
  Josh Hodge: Like I said, I've never had one jump me, but they get they get close, which is kind of funny because I weigh a lot more than them.
• 2:28
  Richard Piet: But they're not intimidated.
• 2:30
  Richard Piet: First of all, they probably don't encounter too many humans on rooftops, so that gets their attention.
• 2:36
  Richard Piet: But uh, I would imagine that if there's a female and she's aggressive, there's probably young around.
• 2:42
  Richard Piet: Typically, that's gonna let you know that there are young in the house.
• 2:46
  Josh Hodge: So they try to be intimidating.
• 2:48
  Josh Hodge: Yes.
• 2:49
  Josh Hodge: Yep.
• 2:50
  Josh Hodge: So the other thing they'll do is, and this is gray squirrels and fox squirrels will do it, red squirrels a lot more.
• 2:56
  Josh Hodge: You can you can tell a lot of times when you get close to the right spot, they'll start making angry noises at you.
• 3:02
  Josh Hodge: Like you'll hear it in the tree right over there, be like, start chittering at you or making grumpy noises, and you're like, Oh, okay, I'm getting close.
• 3:11
  Richard Piet: Yeah.
• 3:12
  Josh Hodge: So they'll react for sure.
• 3:13
  Richard Piet: That's a good indicator.
• 3:14
  Richard Piet: And some of us have probably seen that.
• 3:16
  Richard Piet: I mean, if we get close enough to them sometimes, uh, they might do that to us.
• 3:21
  Richard Piet: So is there the potential then for significant infestation of squirrels?
• 3:29
  Richard Piet: I mean, do they get in attics and populate them?
• 3:32
  Josh Hodge: Yes.
• 3:33
  Josh Hodge: Different species are different.
• 3:34
  Josh Hodge: Red squirrels are pretty territorial.
• 3:37
  Josh Hodge: If you've got a male in there, he'll probably be alone.
• 3:39
  Josh Hodge: If you got a female, she might have her cubs with her.
• 3:42
  Josh Hodge: Flying squirrels, I've seen an attic where it looked like there were probably over a hundred of them.
• 3:47
  Josh Hodge: I haven't encountered a colony that big myself, but guys have.
• 3:50
  Josh Hodge: The biggest colonies I've encountered were gray squirrels and with some crossover with fox squirrels because they're pretty similar size and species.
• 3:59
  Josh Hodge: But we had one that comes to mind.
• 4:01
  Josh Hodge: It was a floral company.
• 4:02
  Josh Hodge: They did flowers, and they have a uh they had a hole in the back roof line.
• 4:06
  Josh Hodge: And the squirrels had gotten really comfortable in there.
• 4:10
  Josh Hodge: So we didn't really know the extent of it.
• 4:13
  Josh Hodge: We put a large trap, you know.
• 4:16
  Josh Hodge: I would say the trap was it's a squirrel excluder.
• 4:19
  Josh Hodge: It's I'm going off the top of my head, two foot by like, and the it's a rectangle, it's a square tube, maybe eight inches tall, eight inches across, maybe six inches.
• 4:26
  Josh Hodge: Anyway, it's it's fairly voluminous, but we come back.
• 4:30
  Josh Hodge: I think they called us back that same day.
• 4:33
  Josh Hodge: It's a one-way door, it's placed over the hole, so the squirrels inside basically end up in the trap when they try to come out.
• 4:40
  Josh Hodge: So we come back, and the trap is so full of squirrels that like their arms and legs are sticking out of the bars.
• 4:47
  Josh Hodge: There's a squirrel sitting on another squirrel's head.
• 4:50
  Josh Hodge: The trap was so full that the other squirrels couldn't even get out the door to open because squirrels are sitting on the door.
• 4:56
  Josh Hodge: So, like, oh my god, like, holy cow! Like, we we ended up having to install multiple traps after that.
• 5:02
  Josh Hodge: And that actually happened twice at that location.
• 5:05
  Josh Hodge: We basically filled two traps, like I would say it was probably like 15 that came out of that one building.
• 5:12
  Richard Piet: Oh my gosh.
• 5:12
  Richard Piet: And they all obviously were trying to get out at the same time and ended up together in that trap.
• 5:18
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:18
  Josh Hodge: We showed up, it was pretty early, and the ones that were in there, it was time to go out, do their squirrel business outside, and when they went out, it turned out they were going into a prison in like a cage instead of the uh great outdoors.
• 5:32
  Josh Hodge: But I released them elsewhere.
• 5:34
  Richard Piet: I was about to ask that.
• 5:35
  Richard Piet: You you you get to let them go somewhere else that uh they'd be comfortable, we presume anyway.
• 5:40
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, and and a lot of it also depends on the time of year.
• 5:43
  Josh Hodge: Like if it's really brutal conditions, releasing a squirrel might not be the right thing to do.
• 5:48
  Josh Hodge: But in more temperate times of year, taking them out of their territory isn't like, you know, the nicest thing for them, but hey, they shouldn't have been in that building.
• 5:56
  Richard Piet: So yeah, well, this is uh this is the challenge.
• 6:00
  Richard Piet: So uh we've talked many times about access points and things uh for wildlife over the course of these episodes.
• 6:08
  Richard Piet: You just underscored that by talking about the hole in the roof, and they just make their way in.
• 6:14
  Richard Piet: They find it and off they go, don't they?
• 6:16
  Richard Piet: Oh, yeah.
• 6:17
  Richard Piet: All right, there you go, squirrels.
• 6:20
  Richard Piet: Next one on our list is one that intimidates a lot of us, skunks.
• 6:27
  Richard Piet: Uh, you have had lots of experience with skunks, and of course, they're intimidating to us because we know we could get sprayed.
• 6:35
  Richard Piet: I spent many years leaving the house to go to uh a radio show in the morning, long before it was daylight.
• 6:45
  Richard Piet: And one morning I opened the door to leave, and there's a skunk right next to the driver's door of my car.
• 6:52
  Richard Piet: And uh needless to say, I was late that morning because I wasn't gonna go out there and risk being sprayed, and then obviously I wasn't going right to work after that.
• 7:05
  Richard Piet: You've probably been sprayed, right, Josh?
• 7:08
  Josh Hodge: Yeah.
• 7:08
  Josh Hodge: Here's a funny uh perspective on it.
• 7:11
  Josh Hodge: A lot of people probably have a dog that's been sprayed.
• 7:14
  Josh Hodge: I have a dog that maybe he doesn't learn real well.
• 7:16
  Josh Hodge: He's been sprayed five times.
• 7:17
  Josh Hodge: I don't know what this says about me.
• 7:19
  Josh Hodge: I've been sprayed ten times, so I doubled his record.
• 7:23
  Josh Hodge: The first time I got sprayed, it was I was early on, probably my first time really dealing with skunks.
• 7:29
  Josh Hodge: Skunks in a trap.
• 7:30
  Josh Hodge: I'm like peek around the corner.
• 7:32
  Josh Hodge: Oh, it seems pretty calm, kind of edge over there.
• 7:35
  Josh Hodge: Something was up with the trap.
• 7:37
  Josh Hodge: I start messing with that.
• 7:38
  Josh Hodge: Whack, it was snowy out, and that provided like really good contrast for this.
• 7:44
  Josh Hodge: I could see the spray, it was neon green, like oh my god, like toxic green, and this time it can be liquid, but this time it was more of a almost like a gel consistency and a stream.
• 7:55
  Josh Hodge: I just I have that burned in my memory, slow motion stream of that stuff in the air right into my eyes.
• 8:01
  Josh Hodge: Oh my gosh.
• 8:03
  Josh Hodge: It burns.
• 8:04
  Josh Hodge: I I I haven't been pepper sprayed, uh, thankfully.
• 8:08
  Josh Hodge: But I can imagine that this is as bad.
• 8:11
  Josh Hodge: I don't know.
• 8:12
  Josh Hodge: But the the real thing you notice is the smell.
• 8:15
  Josh Hodge: Like when you smell it from a distance, it's strong, but you know what it is.
• 8:19
  Josh Hodge: I mean, sometimes people are like, oh, maybe that's like a you know, a medicinal herb or something.
• 8:24
  Josh Hodge: But I mean, skunk, you kind of know it's skunk.
• 8:27
  Josh Hodge: But when it's on you and it's fresh in the air, it it's it smells like it's burning.
• 8:33
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, like it's acred, is the right word for it.
• 8:36
  Josh Hodge: That was not a good day.
• 8:38
  Josh Hodge: I'm like, what am I doing with my life?
• 8:40
  Josh Hodge: I'm like wiping skunk gel out of my eyes and they're burning.
• 8:44
  Josh Hodge: I'm trying to figure out.
• 8:45
  Josh Hodge: I'm out behind the maintenance shed at a facility.
• 8:48
  Josh Hodge: It was actually a uh special needs housing facility, uh, cabins out in the woods, and I'm out behind the maintenance shed in the woods, like, what are we gonna do?
• 8:55
  Josh Hodge: I think I found a hose and like washed my eyes out.
• 8:58
  Richard Piet: What do you do?
• 8:59
  Richard Piet: I mean, there are a lot of uh I don't know, are they wives' tails or do they work?
• 9:04
  Richard Piet: I mean, the one I remember most is tomato juice.
• 9:06
  Richard Piet: You know, go take a bath in tomato juice, and that will neutralize it.
• 9:10
  Richard Piet: Is that true?
• 9:12
  Josh Hodge: People have asked me this a lot, and I'll bet what I do, I just take a shower and wash with soap, and it it goes away pretty quick.
• 9:21
  Josh Hodge: But I have heard good things about tomato juice.
• 9:24
  Josh Hodge: I've also heard good things.
• 9:25
  Josh Hodge: There's a mixture you can make, it's easy to look up, but I believe it's hydrogen peroxide, Dawn dish soap, and and maybe there's one other thing in there.
• 9:34
  Josh Hodge: The tomato juice you'd probably want to do a sponge bath because I don't know where you're gonna get enough tomato juice to fill a bathtub, but I think it it definitely wouldn't hurt to wash yourself down with that and uh you know rinse off.
• 9:45
  Richard Piet: So some of those things are not old wives' tales, they actually do work.
• 9:50
  Richard Piet: You know, I think there's uh also a notion, uh, an approach that you have, don't you, about skunks.
• 10:00
  Richard Piet: They might not, this is of course difficult to know, but they might not be uh inclined to spray you.
• 10:07
  Josh Hodge: Is that right?
• 10:08
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, so skunks don't have too many natural predators or enemies.
• 10:13
  Josh Hodge: There are animals that and birds that will kill them and eat them, but in your typical interurban environment, they're not encountering a lot of things that are a real threat to them besides a car, you know.
• 10:23
  Josh Hodge: So they can be very chill and they they have funny personalities.
• 10:27
  Josh Hodge: Like if the skunk isn't just in fight or flight mode, they're pretty funny, like they'll look at you, they kind of stomp their little feet.
• 10:36
  Josh Hodge: You know, they've got funny little personalities to them, they're not like a cat, they're not like a raccoon, they've got their own thing going on.
• 10:44
  Richard Piet: Yeah, but they and they may not be too intimidating.
• 10:47
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, when you approach a skunk, you want to figure out which skunk are you dealing with.
• 10:51
  Josh Hodge: Are we dealing with fight or flight skunk or are we dealing with happy chilled-out skunk?
• 10:55
  Josh Hodge: And if it's a chilled-out skunk, I've approached a trap with a chilled skunk when I showed up on the weekend because there was an animal in a trap, and we, you know, we got to pick it up the same day because you can't let an animal sit, you know, in a trap.
• 11:08
  Josh Hodge: I've showed up in flip-flops and board shorts, and I'm like, hey, are you cool?
• 11:12
  Josh Hodge: The skunk's like, yeah, you know, I can tell.
• 11:14
  Josh Hodge: He's like, pretty cool.
• 11:15
  Josh Hodge: I just gently pick the trap up and no sudden moves, and we head to the truck.
• 11:21
  Josh Hodge: Now, one thing to watch out for is I can control my walk to the truck.
• 11:26
  Josh Hodge: What I can't control is the Michigan roads.
• 11:28
  Josh Hodge: And skunks are not fans of potholes.
• 11:31
  Josh Hodge: So I always try to double bag the trap in the truck.
• 11:35
  Josh Hodge: Otherwise, next time I bring my stepladder into a lady's really nice house, she's gonna be like, What's that smell?
• 11:42
  Richard Piet: Yes.
• 11:42
  Richard Piet: Well, that's a great point.
• 11:44
  Richard Piet: First of all, I don't know who likes potholes, but uh, if you can just put yourself in the position of the skunk for a second in a trap, bouncing around in the back of a car, you don't know what's going on.
• 11:57
  Richard Piet: And then that intimidating thing might uh trigger the spraying.
• 12:02
  Richard Piet: I'll tell you what I did.
• 12:03
  Richard Piet: That morning that the skunk was out there next to the door of my car, I ended up just rattling the handle of my screen door and off he went.
• 12:13
  Richard Piet: The noise, that little bit of noise, was enough to send him on his way.
• 12:18
  Josh Hodge: Sometimes they will come toward you instead of going away.
• 12:21
  Josh Hodge: It's a funny thing that skunks do, but people I've people I've had people like, I'm not gonna say been chased, but the skunk actually comes toward you.
• 12:30
  Josh Hodge: I don't know if they're confused.
• 12:31
  Josh Hodge: I'd have to actually talk to like a biologist or something, but they will do that sometimes.
• 12:35
  Josh Hodge: So watch out for that.
• 12:37
  Richard Piet: Well, they're just curious, I suppose.
• 12:39
  Richard Piet: What's that noise?
• 12:39
  Richard Piet: Oh, a friend.
• 12:41
  Richard Piet: It could be.
• 12:42
  Richard Piet: Yeah.
• 12:42
  Richard Piet: Let's talk about deer for a second.
• 12:45
  Richard Piet: We see deer a lot.
• 12:46
  Richard Piet: Of course, the hunters help us out with a population uh of those.
• 12:50
  Richard Piet: But do you ever encounter someone who calls you up and says, I got a deer in my yard, I need to get rid of it?
• 12:57
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:58
  Josh Hodge: Most often it's roadkill, which, you know, unfortunately happens a lot.
• 13:03
  Josh Hodge: And people people in the country pretty much ignore it.
• 13:07
  Josh Hodge: But when you live in the city and you've got a a large dead animal on your front lawn, a lot of times people don't know what to do with it.
• 13:15
  Josh Hodge: They probably don't own a pickup truck, and it might not even, you know, be that fresh.
• 13:20
  Josh Hodge: So it's a call we get.
• 13:21
  Josh Hodge: It's not cheap because we've got to pick up a large deceased animal and find something to do with it.
• 13:27
  Josh Hodge: But sometimes they get a little weird.
• 13:30
  Josh Hodge: I had one a little while back and they called and they said it was in the backyard.
• 13:35
  Josh Hodge: I thought, oh, in the backyard, that can't be too hard.
• 13:37
  Josh Hodge: The office was like, hey, can you take this one?
• 13:39
  Josh Hodge: I was like, you know, I'm running behind, pretty busy, but I think I can take it.
• 13:44
  Josh Hodge: I show up and the house is it's in the city, but there's a like a kind of wooded area that runs through the city there with a creek, and in the backyard, there's like a six-foot embankment, like almost straight down.
• 13:56
  Josh Hodge: Oh my.
• 13:57
  Josh Hodge: The creek is 10-15 feet across, several feet deep, and the deer is on the other bank.
• 14:03
  Josh Hodge: And I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's the backyard.
• 14:07
  Josh Hodge: I'm like, so how did this happen?
• 14:10
  Josh Hodge: And they're like, Well, we were in the backyard hanging out, our neighbors were also witnessed this.
• 14:16
  Josh Hodge: The deer was back there in the woods, and a large, like, mail mute, like a really big stray dog, attacked the deer.
• 14:25
  Josh Hodge: And now the deer is right there.
• 14:27
  Josh Hodge: I'm like, that's wild.
• 14:29
  Josh Hodge: Hey, you've got to feel kind of weird about having a crazy big dog like that running around.
• 14:34
  Josh Hodge: But uh anyway, I'm like, I really don't want to do this call, but I'm already here, so I got my waders out, I got a rope out, I like winched the thing out of there and actually pulled the truck in the backyard, got it on the truck.
• 14:49
  Josh Hodge: But yeah, you know, kind of thing you would think of because as far as pest control goes, they're a game animal.
• 14:54
  Josh Hodge: You know, we're not we're not out there like controlling deer.
• 14:57
  Josh Hodge: That's something the government does, and they do hire sharpshooters, you know, sometimes for certain situations, but that's not us.
• 15:03
  Josh Hodge: If people have deer eating their plants, all I can say is try the nets, try the deterrents.
• 15:08
  Josh Hodge: But yeah, sometimes they die in weird spots.
• 15:12
  Richard Piet: Well, we promised you a couple of wild stories about wildlife, and Josh has delivered, so there's some of it.
• 15:19
  Richard Piet: That last story sounds a little bit like a live National Geographic special for uh for those people in that uh neighborhood.
• 15:28
  Richard Piet: But there you are, and there's just a few.
• 15:30
  Richard Piet: And uh, we appreciate knowing this.
• 15:32
  Richard Piet: We're gonna come back with Josh in a future episode and talk about some more.
• 15:36
  Richard Piet: He's got lots, folks.
• 15:38
  Richard Piet: Josh Hodge, wildlife specialist, test pros of Michigan.
• 15:42
  Richard Piet: Thanks for the stories.
• 15:43
  Richard Piet: Hey, thank you.
• 15:44
  Richard Piet: See you next time.