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Where To Draw The Line With Backyard Wildlife · PEST PROSpectives

• 0:08
  Richard Piet: I'm Richard Pyatt.
• 0:10
  Richard Piet: Pest Pros of Michigan brings us pest prospectives.
• 0:14
  Richard Piet: That's our episode talking about pests, whether it be wildlife or bugs or other things.
• 0:22
  Richard Piet: We're talking about in your yard, in your home, in your business.
• 0:25
  Richard Piet: Tony Sorrino is an ace associate certified entomologist with Pest Pros of Michigan.
• 0:32
  Richard Piet: Today, we're talking about when tolerating wildlife on your property might make sense.
• 0:39
  Richard Piet: Hi, Tony.
• 0:40
  Richard Piet: Hey Richard.
• 0:41
  Richard Piet: It's good to see you again.
• 0:42
  Richard Piet: Good to see you.
• 0:43
  Richard Piet: So just because we see a raccoon or a squirrel or a rabbit or other wildlife in our yards doesn't automatically mean a pest problem, does it?
• 0:55
  Tony Sorrentino: No.
• 0:56
  Tony Sorrentino: Wildlife presence doesn't automatically equal a wildlife problem.
• 1:01
  Tony Sorrentino: Um we live in Michigan and wildlife is part of the environment around us, like a squirrel moving through a tree or a rabbit feeding, as long as it's not tearing up your garden, or a skunk even passing through, doesn't require control.
• 1:16
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, the first question should be is this animal simply present or is it creating a conflict?
• 1:22
  Richard Piet: And that is the litmus test, I guess.
• 1:26
  Richard Piet: It is it is it creating a conflict?
• 1:28
  Richard Piet: And that's when you would actually say to a homeowner you might want to do something, or leave it alone.
• 1:33
  Tony Sorrentino: That's the series of questions that we ask on client intake.
• 1:38
  Tony Sorrentino: Is the animal simply passing through, feeding naturally?
• 1:42
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, are they nesting in an appropriate outdoor location?
• 1:46
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, are they occupying habitat away from the structure without creating damage or risk?
• 1:52
  Tony Sorrentino: Tolerance can make perfect sense given those scenarios.
• 1:55
  Tony Sorrentino: It's when they when they start damaging the structure, nesting in the structure, that's when it becomes a conflict.
• 2:03
  Richard Piet: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 2:05
  Richard Piet: Is there any point in between, you know, just a happy little transit across your property and causing damage to your structure where there's a boundary?
• 2:16
  Richard Piet: So they get closer.
• 2:19
  Richard Piet: Uh maybe they uh cause some other kind of issue that's short of damaging the structure, but they're getting closer.
• 2:27
  Richard Piet: Is there a boundary there?
• 2:29
  Tony Sorrentino: Um repeated structural activity if they're encroaching on human-occupied structures or causing damage to the adjacent areas, like uh woodchucks nesting or are burrowing underneath the concrete slab that your shed sits on, or skunks uh digging in the the window wells and creating a den next to the foundation of your home.
• 2:56
  Tony Sorrentino: Those are threats.
• 2:59
  Tony Sorrentino: And like you walking through my yard is one thing, but actively breaking into my house and wreaking havoc is is an entirely different bowl of biscuits.
• 3:09
  Tony Sorrentino: Yeah.
• 3:10
  Richard Piet: I had a neighbor years ago at a neighbor at a shed, just what you described, and there was a woodchuck, I think a family of them that had burrowed underneath.
• 3:20
  Richard Piet: And their attitude was one of tolerance.
• 3:23
  Richard Piet: They said, Well, they're not causing any structural problems to the house or to the to the shed itself.
• 3:30
  Richard Piet: They're just underneath doing their thing.
• 3:32
  Richard Piet: We're gonna leave them alone there.
• 3:35
  Richard Piet: And we got the uh great uh benefit of watching them come and go and uh and do their thing, and when babies were around, that was always uh interesting to watch when they would come and go and they would tend to them.
• 3:49
  Richard Piet: And so the whole attitude was one of tolerance.
• 3:52
  Richard Piet: How would you look at that?
• 3:53
  Richard Piet: Yeah, here you have a homeowner saying, eh, you know, it's probably fine.
• 3:56
  Richard Piet: They're not causing any damage.
• 3:58
  Richard Piet: We're gonna leave them alone.
• 3:59
  Richard Piet: Do you look at that and say, great for you?
• 4:02
  Richard Piet: Or do you look at that and say, be careful?
• 4:06
  Tony Sorrentino: Yeah, I I do.
• 4:07
  Tony Sorrentino: I I will state caution.
• 4:09
  Tony Sorrentino: I don't want it to become you can live out in the yard, you can live in the trees, you can live in the wood line, you can't live in here in my home or in any of the associated structures with my home.
• 4:20
  Tony Sorrentino: I I I draw the line there.
• 4:22
  Tony Sorrentino: So, like, yeah, I have a woodchuck that lives in a den out by a pile of rocks in my backyard.
• 4:29
  Tony Sorrentino: It's not structure infesting, it's not structure invading.
• 4:32
  Tony Sorrentino: He's not doing anything wrong.
• 4:33
  Tony Sorrentino: I named him Carlito.
• 4:35
  Tony Sorrentino: He lives there.
• 4:36
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, I don't have a dog, so there's no threat.
• 4:39
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, so I I have tolerance there on my own property because I I think he's cool, just not in my house.
• 4:46
  Tony Sorrentino: I just stress caution.
• 4:48
  Tony Sorrentino: What we allow is what will continue in a lot of cases with wildlife.
• 4:52
  Richard Piet: You anticipated something I was thinking about, and that is I would imagine that if if there was a dog in the house that uh it goes outside to do its thing, uh that could be a different scenario, right?
• 5:05
  Richard Piet: Where someone who might uh have a tolerance approach if they don't have a pet in the home now has a different perspective on it, don't they?
• 5:14
  Tony Sorrentino: Yep.
• 5:14
  Tony Sorrentino: A lot of people look at their pets as as their children, as their their best friends.
• 5:20
  Tony Sorrentino: Our four-legged friends that you know we choose to live inside the house, you know, take precedent then.
• 5:26
  Richard Piet: Yeah, that becomes uh a different kind of priority where tolerance might not be the approach.
• 5:32
  Richard Piet: Could there be something we as homeowners are doing, maybe without realizing it, that might encourage wildlife to hang out?
• 5:42
  Tony Sorrentino: Wildlife is looking for the same things as as humans, essentially.
• 5:48
  Tony Sorrentino: The basic resources, food, water, shelter.
• 5:51
  Tony Sorrentino: It can help concentrate animals in one area where they this is a good spot.
• 5:57
  Tony Sorrentino: There's always food here, we're gonna live here now.
• 6:01
  Richard Piet: Sounds like me.
• 6:02
  Richard Piet: I want to live where food is too.
• 6:04
  Richard Piet: I get it.
• 6:05
  Richard Piet: Yeah.
• 6:06
  Richard Piet: So uh what about babies?
• 6:08
  Richard Piet: We talked about um my example about the woodchuck under the shed.
• 6:14
  Richard Piet: If uh there is a mother with young, does that change the approach about how it should be handled?
• 6:20
  Richard Piet: Particularly if you're saying, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna tolerate it, I'm okay with it.
• 6:24
  Richard Piet: But then if there's young, does that change the tolerance perspective?
• 6:28
  Tony Sorrentino: Again, it falls back on where.
• 6:31
  Tony Sorrentino: Where.
• 6:31
  Tony Sorrentino: If you've got a old oak tree in the backyard and the raccoons have made a den in that, and you like watching the babies and the adults climb up and out of that tree, and your house is effectively sealed, and you don't have to worry about, you know, trash pandas breaking in.
• 6:48
  Tony Sorrentino: It's really a personal, a personal um choice at that point.
• 6:52
  Tony Sorrentino: If I see an adult raccoon with two babies or three babies climbing up on my house, I am going to call the wildlife control people immediately because what I don't want is the raccoons uh breaking and entering and then having a latrine, it causes a sanitation issue.
• 7:10
  Tony Sorrentino: That's a public health threat.
• 7:11
  Richard Piet: And it wouldn't take long to get there.
• 7:13
  Richard Piet: If they're already on your structure, they're looking for a comfy place and they are looking for a latrine pretty soon after that, I imagine.
• 7:23
  Richard Piet: Where's the boundary as far as um tolerance goes?
• 7:28
  Richard Piet: I mean, is there a boundary that you say, okay, we just crossed the line, right?
• 7:34
  Richard Piet: Uh now they're getting closer, or there's been a some kind of interaction, maybe, or some other boundary that you say, okay, now this no longer warrants tolerance.
• 7:46
  Richard Piet: It's another approach.
• 7:48
  Tony Sorrentino: For me, tolerance ends when there's a credible safety issue.
• 7:51
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, repeated close contact, you're you're running into live animals repeatedly.
• 7:57
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, they're getting bolder and becoming more brash, a defensive behavior around the young.
• 8:04
  Tony Sorrentino: Um especially when animals become like like unusually comfortable around people, always keep in mind they're wild animals, they're not domesticated, no matter how often you've you've uh contributed to that or fed them or give them water.
• 8:19
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, they are wild animals and should be treated as such with caution.
• 8:24
  Richard Piet: Have you seen folks who take a tolerance approach, then try to to be kind to them and provide them with food and water, and that then probably changes the story, doesn't it?
• 8:36
  Tony Sorrentino: That's correct.
• 8:37
  Tony Sorrentino: Yep.
• 8:38
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, so you've you've then essentially laid the groundwork or the framework for for human wildlife interactions or conflict, as we just talked about.
• 8:49
  Tony Sorrentino: It's not always harmless.
• 8:52
  Richard Piet: Um I think about deer too.
• 8:58
  Richard Piet: You and I don't talk about deer a whole lot, but uh uh if you just take a look at reels or tick tock, boy, you see a lot of video of uh people who are actually feeding deer and how some of them have become quite tame and they'll come right up to you.
• 9:16
  Richard Piet: Uh is that a threat of some kind?
• 9:19
  Tony Sorrentino: Um there's threat for ticks on the property.
• 9:23
  Tony Sorrentino: Deer carry ticks.
• 9:24
  Tony Sorrentino: We have deer that come on the property.
• 9:26
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, they didn't when we had a dog.
• 9:28
  Tony Sorrentino: The dog is since passed, and now they come and they chill out in the backyard.
• 9:32
  Tony Sorrentino: It's a safe area.
• 9:33
  Tony Sorrentino: Now we don't feed them.
• 9:35
  Tony Sorrentino: However, um their mere presence is kind of cool to see.
• 9:40
  Tony Sorrentino: So I I see where I see where people would find that fascinating.
• 9:44
  Tony Sorrentino: I do.
• 9:45
  Tony Sorrentino: I think it's it's cool to see.
• 9:47
  Tony Sorrentino: There's like three generations of deer that come kick it on my and on my property, and I love it.
• 9:53
  Richard Piet: Yeah.
• 9:53
  Richard Piet: Yeah, that's the thing.
• 9:55
  Richard Piet: When we love it, maybe we aren't as prone to see a warning sign as quickly as opposed to uh some other kind of situation.
• 10:05
  Richard Piet: Well, Tony, what's the simplest thing listeners could remember the next time they see wildlife around their home?
• 10:12
  Richard Piet: Any thoughts on that?
• 10:13
  Tony Sorrentino: Keep it super simple is enjoy wildlife when it's behaving like wildlife.
• 10:18
  Tony Sorrentino: The goal is not to be afraid of every animal in the backyard.
• 10:22
  Tony Sorrentino: Um, understanding the difference between an animal existing in the environment and an animal creating a conflict.
• 10:29
  Tony Sorrentino: Animals can live out there, but they can't live in my house.
• 10:32
  Tony Sorrentino: So that's where I draw the line.
• 10:35
  Richard Piet: All right.
• 10:36
  Richard Piet: And these are the kinds of questions that the pest pros of Michigan take regularly.
• 10:42
  Richard Piet: And if you're having trouble seeing the boundary between tolerance and conflict with wildlife in your yard, call up Tony.
• 10:52
  Richard Piet: Ask him about it at the Pest Pros of Michigan.
• 10:55
  Richard Piet: Contact information in the show notes.
• 10:57
  Richard Piet: Reach out and ask for yourselves and see what his opinion might be.
• 11:02
  Richard Piet: After all, Tony is an associate certified entomologist.
• 11:05
  Richard Piet: He knows about these things, and they talk about and deal with them on a daily basis.
• 11:12
  Richard Piet: Subscribe to our podcast too.
• 11:13
  Richard Piet: You'll get more information.
• 11:15
  Richard Piet: We've done a number of episodes.
• 11:16
  Richard Piet: In fact, Tony mentioned ticks.
• 11:18
  Richard Piet: Go back and check out that episode if you haven't already.
• 11:21
  Richard Piet: Great information there.
• 11:22
  Richard Piet: All right, Tony, we appreciate all the info.
• 11:24
  Richard Piet: We'll check in soon.
• 11:25
  Richard Piet: Thanks, Richard.
• 11:26
  Richard Piet: Tony Sorentino with the Pest Pros of Michigan here on Pest Prospectives.