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More 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, the official podcast from the Pest Pros of Michigan.
• 0:16
  Richard Piet: You know, a little while ago we talked with Josh Hodge, a wildlife specialist at Pest Pros of Michigan, about some of the wilder stories he has out in the wild.
• 0:28
  Richard Piet: And he's back today with more of those.
• 0:31
  Richard Piet: Hi, Josh.
• 0:32
  Richard Piet: Hey.
• 0:33
  Richard Piet: Thanks for the chance to catch up again.
• 0:35
  Richard Piet: You know, one of the things, and we have talked about them in our episode, so subscribe, look for these episodes.
• 0:42
  Richard Piet: They're really interesting.
• 0:43
  Richard Piet: We get we get together with the aces at Pest Pros and talk about uh behavior of animals and insects.
• 0:50
  Richard Piet: One of them was bats.
• 0:52
  Richard Piet: You have to have encountered bats in your travels, is that so?
• 0:55
  Richard Piet: I mean, we love bats.
• 0:58
  Josh Hodge: Uh a little tongue-in-cheek there, but bats are a big part of our revenue because they get into addicts and people don't like to share the house with bats, uh, which is understandable.
• 1:09
  Josh Hodge: Yeah.
• 1:10
  Richard Piet: So when you've encountered them, how do you handle it?
• 1:14
  Richard Piet: And are there any challenges that you've encountered with them?
• 1:18
  Richard Piet: Yeah.
• 1:19
  Josh Hodge: I mean, there's pretty much one way to deal with bats in a structure, and that is you have to figure out how they're getting in and identify those entry points and also possible entry points because bats have this infuriating thing they do.
• 1:32
  Josh Hodge: They imprint on the structure, they don't want to leave.
• 1:35
  Josh Hodge: So if you take away this entry point and there's another one over here, you're just moving them around.
• 1:41
  Josh Hodge: They're gonna go over there.
• 1:42
  Josh Hodge: So it's pretty much all or nothing with bats, usually.
• 1:46
  Josh Hodge: They will spend the uh the we're mainly dealing with big brown bats.
• 1:49
  Josh Hodge: There's a smattering of other ones, they'll spend the day in the house during the summer, and then they'll spend the whole winter in the house, usually.
• 1:55
  Josh Hodge: Oh boy.
• 1:56
  Richard Piet: So when you get a call about them, and I'm sure you have, how have you handled them and have you had any wild encounters with them?
• 2:05
  Josh Hodge: Yeah.
• 2:05
  Josh Hodge: I mean, usually it's a pretty straightforward process.
• 2:08
  Josh Hodge: We're just showing up, confirming, yeah, there is bat activity, and then we provide a plan.
• 2:13
  Josh Hodge: Here's what we can do, here's how we get the bats out of the house.
• 2:16
  Josh Hodge: And we're pretty we're very successful at that.
• 2:19
  Josh Hodge: That doesn't mean there isn't sometimes a warranty call because bats are a formidable enemy when it comes to finding gaps in a house.
• 2:26
  Josh Hodge: But anyway, yeah, I've been in attics where there's like a lot of bats flying around and you're like you're ducking.
• 2:31
  Josh Hodge: Like, are these gonna hit me?
• 2:33
  Josh Hodge: You know, are they gonna get on?
• 2:34
  Josh Hodge: I haven't had that happen.
• 2:36
  Josh Hodge: They're they're flying, they're really good at.
• 2:39
  Josh Hodge: Uh, it's the walking where they land and like crab walk with their arms that they're a little more clumsy.
• 2:44
  Josh Hodge: But one time, uh I was in an attic early on in my career, and the homeowner was talking to me, and he's like, Did you see any bats?
• 2:53
  Josh Hodge: And I'm like, Yeah, there's like 30 of them clumped together on the wall.
• 2:57
  Josh Hodge: And he's like, Oh my, can you remove them?
• 3:00
  Josh Hodge: And I talked to my manager, he's like, Yeah, I I guess you can.
• 3:03
  Josh Hodge: So I put him, I took a bucket and I like snuck up to them.
• 3:07
  Josh Hodge: I like put them in the bucket.
• 3:10
  Josh Hodge: I like put the bucket over them, and then I think I gently slid something behind them so they fell into the bucket without injuring them.
• 3:17
  Josh Hodge: And I didn't know what to do with them.
• 3:19
  Josh Hodge: So I lived, you know, a ways away, and I lived in the city, and it was on a hill on an intersection.
• 3:25
  Josh Hodge: There were some trees, and there's like a clearing where the intersection is, and I get home and I'm like, what am I gonna do with these bats?
• 3:31
  Josh Hodge: I have to let them go.
• 3:32
  Josh Hodge: So I kind of just went out on the hill in my front yard and got tipped them out of the bucket, and they kind of like start taking off off of the hill, and then they start to form this traffic pattern in the like over the intersection at about like 20 feet up or something.
• 3:48
  Josh Hodge: There's about 30 bats flying a circular pattern, and it looked like something out of a movie, just like a like a circle of bats over the intersection.
• 3:56
  Josh Hodge: I was like, Whoa, holy crap, it wasn't me! Like, is anybody looking?
• 4:01
  Josh Hodge: Kind of but it was kind of like Alfred Hitchcock kind of thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:07
  Richard Piet: So uh their habit is not necessarily to fly away, but to survey their area, kind of get their bearings.
• 4:17
  Richard Piet: That's what that sounds like.
• 4:19
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, I if I remove a bat from a structure, if you do an on-site release, the bat will fly around, try to figure out where it is, and you'll see it actually figure out I there's been a couple times where I saw it figure out, oh, okay, and it actually goes back to the entry point and showed me where the entry point was.
• 4:37
  Josh Hodge: That happened once or twice.
• 4:38
  Josh Hodge: Obviously, like that's not ideal to have it go back in the house, but we're looking to fix that anyway.
• 4:44
  Richard Piet: So, yeah, so that they helped you figure it out.
• 4:48
  Richard Piet: Wow.
• 4:49
  Richard Piet: All right.
• 4:49
  Richard Piet: Uh, we know certainly that bats can be a challenge, so can raccoons.
• 4:55
  Richard Piet: They get into attics too, don't they?
• 4:57
  Josh Hodge: Oh, yeah.
• 4:57
  Josh Hodge: Especially this time of year, we're we're gonna be coming into a time when they're really I mean, they've already been in the attic because of the winter, but now we're gonna be coming into baby season in the spring, and they love to raise the babies in the attic.
• 5:10
  Josh Hodge: So that's always fun.
• 5:12
  Richard Piet: Yeah, a protective space.
• 5:14
  Richard Piet: Uh again, the uh the motherly instincts, they want to make sure that it's it's safe.
• 5:19
  Richard Piet: They're pretty crafty too.
• 5:21
  Richard Piet: I've seen some video with raccoons.
• 5:24
  Richard Piet: Uh they get into chimneys and things and they climb.
• 5:28
  Richard Piet: They're uh pretty agile despite how you might think they look.
• 5:32
  Richard Piet: Yep.
• 5:32
  Richard Piet: Uh they're pretty good, aren't they?
• 5:34
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, so chimney flues are sized perfectly for a raccoon to brace their back against one wall and their feet against the other all wall, and they go up and down with ease.
• 5:45
  Josh Hodge: So to them, a chimney is an extra deluxe hollow tree, basically.
• 5:50
  Richard Piet: Got lots of nice space in there, really warm at the bottom, too.
• 5:54
  Richard Piet: Have you had challenges getting them out?
• 5:58
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, I've had some years, especially early in my career, we had so many raccoon baby calls, and you find yourself crawling through framing, like getting into the tightest spots in attics, just hoping you can reach them.
• 6:12
  Josh Hodge: Because the mom almost never puts the babies where you could actually access them easily.
• 6:18
  Josh Hodge: But raccoons are funny, they'll often be in the attic at the same time you are when you're doing an inspection, and usually they hide, and you'll see a little bit of hair peeking out of the soft or something.
• 6:29
  Josh Hodge: But one time I had a raccoon had just crawled under some insulation, and I was standing there looking down, and his tail is still hanging right out, and he just didn't realize his tail was hanging out.
• 6:38
  Josh Hodge: I'm like, okay, I see you there, buddy.
• 6:40
  Josh Hodge: But pest control operators always want to do the like the cowboy thing, and I mean it's not recommended, but you want to like catch it, you know, like use your catch pole, your bike gloves, your your grabber stick, and like catch it right there.
• 6:55
  Josh Hodge: And that's a good way to fall out, fall through an attic ceiling or make a mess.
• 6:59
  Josh Hodge: But it's it's rare you actually get that chance.
• 7:02
  Josh Hodge: Like, I don't think I've actually caught one in an attic, and I've known better than to go too far trying.
• 7:08
  Josh Hodge: They can get aggressive, right?
• 7:11
  Josh Hodge: You definitely don't want to handle them.
• 7:13
  Josh Hodge: And when you get a big raccoon on the end of a catch pole, which is a the ones we use are a metal pole with a rubber-coated cable that runs through them and has a loop at the end, and it has a locking mechanism.
• 7:26
  Josh Hodge: So you can cinch it down, and usually you want to do that around the body so you're not choking them out, and you can catch them long enough to place them in a trap.
• 7:35
  Josh Hodge: But when you get a big raccoon on a catchpole, you definitely know you have something like you know, they talk about chimpanzees have like a for their size, have like a seven times strength advantage over a human, you know, per pound.
• 7:49
  Josh Hodge: Yeah.
• 7:49
  Josh Hodge: I don't know if it's like that ratio for a raccoon, but for their size, they're really strong.
• 7:55
  Josh Hodge: So like it's not easy to control a big raccoon on a catchpole.
• 8:00
  Josh Hodge: Also, you want to take precautions when you're sealing up the house that they're actually out of the house.
• 8:05
  Josh Hodge: One of the better raccoon stories isn't isn't mine.
• 8:08
  Josh Hodge: It's uh my mentors, another guy named Josh, who taught me when I first came into wildlife work.
• 8:14
  Josh Hodge: This was probably a learning experience for him too.
• 8:17
  Josh Hodge: He was pretty sure the raccoons were out, and he said, I'm just gonna seal up this entry point.
• 8:23
  Josh Hodge: And he did a good job sealing it up because there was one raccoon left and it couldn't get out.
• 8:28
  Josh Hodge: So the next thing the raccoon did is it went down in the wall cavity between two studs and between the drywall.
• 8:35
  Josh Hodge: And this was it ended up in somebody's kitchen wall, and it went down as far as it could, and then it encountered an electrical wire and it bit the wire.
• 8:47
  Richard Piet: See where this is going.
• 8:48
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, it it didn't kill the raccoon, but it it also didn't like being shocked.
• 8:53
  Josh Hodge: So the raccoon was in the wall screeching and it got shocked.
• 8:58
  Josh Hodge: And long story short, my mentor had to go back, cut the wall open.
• 9:03
  Josh Hodge: And I've seen the pictures when you've made the first cut, the raccoon's head comes out of the hole, and it's like, thank God.
• 9:10
  Josh Hodge: I don't even think it was that mad when he like captured it because it was just so happy to be out of the wall.
• 9:16
  Richard Piet: Yeah, and an impromptu decision to run and then no exit out of the attic ends up down in the wall.
• 9:25
  Richard Piet: Yep.
• 9:25
  Richard Piet: Uh even more scary situation.
• 9:28
  Richard Piet: Yeah, they have to go somewhere.
• 9:30
  Richard Piet: That's incredible.
• 9:31
  Richard Piet: You've also dealt with foxes, have you not?
• 9:34
  Richard Piet: I see them occasionally on my uh doorbell camera in the middle of the night.
• 9:39
  Richard Piet: You know, you wake up in the morning, you see, oh, motion at the front door, you look, and at two in the morning, there was a fox going by.
• 9:48
  Richard Piet: Yeah.
• 9:48
  Richard Piet: Uh they're beautiful.
• 9:50
  Josh Hodge: I'm not a canine expert.
• 9:52
  Josh Hodge: I'm not going to claim that.
• 9:53
  Josh Hodge: Trapping canines is something you have to actually be good at.
• 9:56
  Josh Hodge: But I've dealt with some exclusion relating to foxes, which means like seal work, like trying to keep them out from under a building.
• 10:04
  Josh Hodge: You think of a groundhog as a tunneling animal, a fox is on a different level.
• 10:09
  Josh Hodge: We have a product that we were using installing around buildings about 14 inches, and it gets driven into the ground, and it's to keep burrowing animals from going under the building.
• 10:20
  Josh Hodge: So we quoted that.
• 10:21
  Josh Hodge: We thought, okay, this will be this'll be good.
• 10:23
  Josh Hodge: And a guy did the installation, it wasn't me, but there's a warranty call, and I was available, so I get called out.
• 10:30
  Josh Hodge: And the fox had just completely disrespected that product.
• 10:34
  Josh Hodge: Like, not only did it dig under the product, but it like dug down twice the depth.
• 10:38
  Josh Hodge: There's a big mound of dirt.
• 10:40
  Josh Hodge: The fox was like, I'm gonna keep living here.
• 10:42
  Josh Hodge: And I ended up, I ended up using a one-way door for the fox and just kicking it out.
• 10:48
  Josh Hodge: But I had to trench out a fair, like, I think I ended up trenching out like several feet from the building and installing, I don't recall exactly how I trenched out.
• 10:58
  Josh Hodge: It might have been more down than out, but anyway, I installed mesh in the ground and I brought it out farther because the fox had demonstrated it could dig really deep.
• 11:05
  Josh Hodge: So I brought the mesh out so he would be standing on it when he started digging.
• 11:09
  Josh Hodge: But uh, yeah, anyway, they are very impressive at digging.
• 11:13
  Josh Hodge: Also, we were finding like uh groundhog carcasses and stuff.
• 11:17
  Josh Hodge: And you think of a fox as not that big of an animal, but you know, like a smaller groundhog is fair game for them.
• 11:23
  Josh Hodge: They're they're really nimble and able to take on some stuff that's bigger than you think they would.
• 11:28
  Richard Piet: Wow.
• 11:29
  Richard Piet: And uh obviously, this is an example of some of the work that you do, which is not just a come over for half an hour and take care of a situation, digging a trench and installing mesh.
• 11:42
  Richard Piet: This is this is big work.
• 11:43
  Josh Hodge: Yeah, you know, uh, we've really gotten into the mindset of we're looking for that solution to the problem, not a band-aid.
• 11:51
  Josh Hodge: So let's say I show up with a trap, you've got an animal problem, I trap the animal, I take it away, but there's an underlying cause of that problem, the animals burrowing under your structure, the animals getting into your structure.
• 12:05
  Josh Hodge: If that's not addressed, you're gonna quickly have another issue.
• 12:09
  Josh Hodge: And if there has been activity, that increases the likelihood there will be more activity because now you've got those pheromones and smells there, and that's a neon sign.
• 12:18
  Josh Hodge: Hey, vacancy, vacancy.
• 12:20
  Josh Hodge: So when we show up, we're looking not how do we just do a quick fix?
• 12:25
  Josh Hodge: How do we make it so this doesn't happen anymore?
• 12:27
  Richard Piet: How do we disconnect the vacancy signs?
• 12:30
  Richard Piet: Yep.
• 12:30
  Richard Piet: That's what you're talking about.
• 12:32
  Richard Piet: Oh, yeah.
• 12:33
  Richard Piet: This is really interesting.
• 12:34
  Richard Piet: Bats, raccoons, foxes, maybe other things.
• 12:38
  Richard Piet: This is what the pest pros of Michigan are dealing with.
• 12:42
  Richard Piet: And as you can hear from Josh, sometimes these are uh somewhat complicated solutions, but they're looking for them, and they provide them.
• 12:51
  Richard Piet: So if you have a question about wildlife in your area, challenges with them maybe in the past, Josh and the team at Pest Bros can address that for you.
• 13:03
  Richard Piet: By the way, we have a lot of these episodes, including one other one with Josh about wild stories.
• 13:09
  Richard Piet: Thank you for uh the updates.
• 13:11
  Richard Piet: Find them, subscribe to Pest Prospectives and hear those.
• 13:15
  Richard Piet: And Josh will be back with us in the future with more Stories from the Wild on Pest Perspectives.
• 13:22
  Josh Hodge: Thank you, Richard.