Wild Wildlife Calls From A Pest Pro

This time on PEST PROSpectives, we hear stories with wildlife specialist Josh Hodge and get a real look at what it takes to move animals out of human spaces safely. From rooftop squirrel standoffs to skunk spray up close and even deer calls that turn into full-on recovery jobs, the work is stranger and tougher than most people expect. 

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Pest Pros of Michigan

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Transcript

Welcome And The Job Setup

Richard Piet 0:08

I'm Richard Piet. Welcome back to Pest Prospectives. It's the podcast from the Pest Pros of Michigan. They're pros, baby. 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. Are you with me here? Can you see where we're going with this? Speaking of wildlife, Josh has some stories about wildlife in his everyday travels, helping us to move those creatures along from our domains. Hi, Josh. Hey, how are you? Great. Thanks for this chance to tell some of these stories. This is one we've really been looking forward to. 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? Maybe until I get going, and then they're like, okay, that's enough. They change their mind. Okay, that's it. Fine. Well, if you get a pest control operator talking, sometimes they have too many stories. I bet you do. And that's part of the reason why we wanted to talk to you because more is always better than less. But a few of them would be good to hear right now. 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. 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.

Josh Hodge 1:52

Is that true? Yeah, especially the female fox squirrels. They're the largest squirrel we have around here. And I've never actually had one attack me, but they'll do their best to make you think that they might. 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? And she'll get to within a foot or two of you sometimes, be like, Oh, they kind of lunge at you. Do a little mock charge, maybe, and act threatening. 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.

Richard Piet 2:28

But they're not intimidated. First of all, they probably don't encounter too many humans on rooftops, so that gets their attention. But uh, I would imagine that if there's a female and she's aggressive, there's probably young around. Typically, that's gonna let you know that there are young in the house.

Josh Hodge 2:46

So they try to be intimidating. Yes. Yep. So the other thing they'll do is, and this is gray squirrels and fox squirrels will do it, red squirrels a lot more. 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. 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.

Richard Piet 3:11

Yeah.

Josh Hodge 3:12

So they'll react for sure.

The Attic Trap Packed With Squirrels

Richard Piet 3:13

That's a good indicator. And some of us have probably seen that. I mean, if we get close enough to them sometimes, uh, they might do that to us. So is there the potential then for significant infestation of squirrels? I mean, do they get in attics and populate them?

Josh Hodge 3:32

Yes. Different species are different. Red squirrels are pretty territorial. If you've got a male in there, he'll probably be alone. If you got a female, she might have her cubs with her. Flying squirrels, I've seen an attic where it looked like there were probably over a hundred of them. I haven't encountered a colony that big myself, but guys have. The biggest colonies I've encountered were gray squirrels and with some crossover with fox squirrels because they're pretty similar size and species. But we had one that comes to mind. It was a floral company. They did flowers, and they have a uh they had a hole in the back roof line. And the squirrels had gotten really comfortable in there. So we didn't really know the extent of it. We put a large trap, you know. I would say the trap was it's a squirrel excluder. 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. Anyway, it's it's fairly voluminous, but we come back. I think they called us back that same day. 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. So we come back, and the trap is so full of squirrels that like their arms and legs are sticking out of the bars. There's a squirrel sitting on another squirrel's head. 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. So, like, oh my god, like, holy cow! Like, we we ended up having to install multiple traps after that. And that actually happened twice at that location. We basically filled two traps, like I would say it was probably like 15 that came out of that one building.

Richard Piet 5:12

Oh my gosh. And they all obviously were trying to get out at the same time and ended up together in that trap.

Josh Hodge 5:18

Yeah, yeah. 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. But I released them elsewhere.

Richard Piet 5:34

I was about to ask that. You you you get to let them go somewhere else that uh they'd be comfortable, we presume anyway.

Josh Hodge 5:40

Yeah, and and a lot of it also depends on the time of year. Like if it's really brutal conditions, releasing a squirrel might not be the right thing to do. 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.

Getting Sprayed And What Helps

Richard Piet 5:56

So yeah, well, this is uh this is the challenge. So uh we've talked many times about access points and things uh for wildlife over the course of these episodes. You just underscored that by talking about the hole in the roof, and they just make their way in. They find it and off they go, don't they? Oh, yeah. All right, there you go, squirrels. Next one on our list is one that intimidates a lot of us, skunks. Uh, you have had lots of experience with skunks, and of course, they're intimidating to us because we know we could get sprayed. I spent many years leaving the house to go to uh a radio show in the morning, long before it was daylight. And one morning I opened the door to leave, and there's a skunk right next to the driver's door of my car. 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. You've probably been sprayed, right, Josh?

Josh Hodge 7:08

Yeah. Here's a funny uh perspective on it. A lot of people probably have a dog that's been sprayed. I have a dog that maybe he doesn't learn real well. He's been sprayed five times. I don't know what this says about me. I've been sprayed ten times, so I doubled his record. The first time I got sprayed, it was I was early on, probably my first time really dealing with skunks. Skunks in a trap. I'm like peek around the corner. Oh, it seems pretty calm, kind of edge over there. Something was up with the trap. I start messing with that. Whack, it was snowy out, and that provided like really good contrast for this. 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. I just I have that burned in my memory, slow motion stream of that stuff in the air right into my eyes. Oh my gosh. It burns. I I I haven't been pepper sprayed, uh, thankfully. But I can imagine that this is as bad. I don't know. But the the real thing you notice is the smell. Like when you smell it from a distance, it's strong, but you know what it is. I mean, sometimes people are like, oh, maybe that's like a you know, a medicinal herb or something. But I mean, skunk, you kind of know it's skunk. But when it's on you and it's fresh in the air, it it's it smells like it's burning. Yeah, like it's acred, is the right word for it. That was not a good day. I'm like, what am I doing with my life? I'm like wiping skunk gel out of my eyes and they're burning. I'm trying to figure out. I'm out behind the maintenance shed at a facility. 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? I think I found a hose and like washed my eyes out.

Richard Piet 8:58

What do you do? I mean, there are a lot of uh I don't know, are they wives' tails or do they work? I mean, the one I remember most is tomato juice. You know, go take a bath in tomato juice, and that will neutralize it. Is that true?

Josh Hodge 9:12

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. But I have heard good things about tomato juice. I've also heard good things. 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. 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.

Reading Skunk Moods On Site

Richard Piet 9:45

So some of those things are not old wives' tales, they actually do work. You know, I think there's uh also a notion, uh, an approach that you have, don't you, about skunks. They might not, this is of course difficult to know, but they might not be uh inclined to spray you.

Josh Hodge 10:07

Is that right? Yeah, so skunks don't have too many natural predators or enemies. 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. So they can be very chill and they they have funny personalities. 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. 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.

Richard Piet 10:44

Yeah, but they and they may not be too intimidating.

Josh Hodge 10:47

Yeah, when you approach a skunk, you want to figure out which skunk are you dealing with. Are we dealing with fight or flight skunk or are we dealing with happy chilled-out skunk? 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. I've showed up in flip-flops and board shorts, and I'm like, hey, are you cool? The skunk's like, yeah, you know, I can tell. He's like, pretty cool. I just gently pick the trap up and no sudden moves, and we head to the truck. Now, one thing to watch out for is I can control my walk to the truck. What I can't control is the Michigan roads. And skunks are not fans of potholes. So I always try to double bag the trap in the truck. Otherwise, next time I bring my stepladder into a lady's really nice house, she's gonna be like, What's that smell?

Richard Piet 11:42

Yes. Well, that's a great point. 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. And then that intimidating thing might uh trigger the spraying. I'll tell you what I did. 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. The noise, that little bit of noise, was enough to send him on his way.

Josh Hodge 12:18

Sometimes they will come toward you instead of going away. 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. I don't know if they're confused. I'd have to actually talk to like a biologist or something, but they will do that sometimes. So watch out for that.

Deer Calls And City Roadkill

Richard Piet 12:37

Well, they're just curious, I suppose. What's that noise? Oh, a friend. It could be. Yeah. Let's talk about deer for a second. We see deer a lot. Of course, the hunters help us out with a population uh of those. 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?

Josh Hodge 12:57

Yeah, yeah. Most often it's roadkill, which, you know, unfortunately happens a lot. And people people in the country pretty much ignore it. 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. They probably don't own a pickup truck, and it might not even, you know, be that fresh. So it's a call we get. It's not cheap because we've got to pick up a large deceased animal and find something to do with it. But sometimes they get a little weird. I had one a little while back and they called and they said it was in the backyard. I thought, oh, in the backyard, that can't be too hard. The office was like, hey, can you take this one? I was like, you know, I'm running behind, pretty busy, but I think I can take it. 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. Oh my. The creek is 10-15 feet across, several feet deep, and the deer is on the other bank. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's the backyard. I'm like, so how did this happen? And they're like, Well, we were in the backyard hanging out, our neighbors were also witnessed this. The deer was back there in the woods, and a large, like, mail mute, like a really big stray dog, attacked the deer. And now the deer is right there. I'm like, that's wild. Hey, you've got to feel kind of weird about having a crazy big dog like that running around. 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. But yeah, you know, kind of thing you would think of because as far as pest control goes, they're a game animal. You know, we're not we're not out there like controlling deer. That's something the government does, and they do hire sharpshooters, you know, sometimes for certain situations, but that's not us. If people have deer eating their plants, all I can say is try the nets, try the deterrents. But yeah, sometimes they die in weird spots.

Richard Piet 15:12

Well, we promised you a couple of wild stories about wildlife, and Josh has delivered, so there's some of it. That last story sounds a little bit like a live National Geographic special for uh for those people in that uh neighborhood. But there you are, and there's just a few. And uh, we appreciate knowing this. We're gonna come back with Josh in a future episode and talk about some more. He's got lots, folks. Josh Hodge, wildlife specialist, test pros of Michigan. Thanks for the stories. Hey, thank you. See you next time.