Interview with Mike Ring of Advanced Wildlife Control- Click to play to right or read below
Welcome to the Seacoast Home Crush Podcast presented by the Brick and Barn Real Estate Group. I’m your host, Jennifer Fried and today we are sitting down with Mike Ring from Advanced Wildlife Control to talk about what to do when some of the local wildlife changes its status from the neighbor to a roommate.
Let’s get ready to Home Crush the topic of critter control!
Jennifer Fried: Well, welcome Mike Ring to the Seacoast Home Crush Podcast!
Mike Ring: Thank you, Jennifer.
Jennifer: So, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be in the Seacoast area?
Mike: Well, I was born in Dover and I moved around quite a bit. My father was in construction so I was in 19 different places in 16 years. I came back to the Seacoast area somewhere in the middle of eighth grade and I’ve been here ever since.
Jennifer: Excellent. So, how did your passion for helping people handle run-ins with wildlife develop?
Mike: I’ve always liked the outdoors in some capacity whether it’s hunting, fishing or camping. Just being outside has always been something that I have enjoyed and a neighbor of mine, actually when I moved to Barrington, he owned this company originally. He started it.
I was always interested in working with him, but with having a family and kids, it just wasn’t financially something that I could do. Over time I befriended him, we’d talk a lot about what he did, and there came a time where he was ready to retire and it happened to be right about the same time that I was looking to find some sort of a change. So, we worked something out and I bought the company from him about 13 years ago.
Jennifer: Excellent. As you know, the podcast here is just for the people on the Seacoast. Let’s kick-off with, what are the most common problems you’re called about here, in the Seacoast area?
Mike: The thing about our line of work is there are always some constants, but for the most part some of the animals can be kind of seasonal. This time of year, obviously we are dealing with a lot of skunks, young skunks, woodchucks and critters of that sort. Most of the time right now that work seems to be our biggest concern and the biggest concern for customers as well. So, we’re still doing some squirrel work, but I would say during the summer months, that’s really taking the precedent.
Jennifer: Oh, ok excellent. So there’s actually a different set of issues for each set of seasons of the year really?
Mike: Yeah, you really can run into different things. You know, coming into the fall things start coming in and wanting to nest in your home. Animals that you haven’t been aware of all season like mice that have been bringing seeds and food stores in through the course of the summer. Now, they’re going to be in your house for the whole time. Whereas in the fall and winter months, you’ll hear the squirrels. You won’t hear the bats as much because now they are hibernating either in your walls or they’ve gone back to caves in New York for one, or sometimes here in New Hampshire.
Jennifer: Yeah, my husband actually grew up in New York State. He lived in a really old home and so I would be the kind of person who totally would call you right away if I discovered any kind of bat issue in my house. Clearly, that is why we have not met until today. But he had so many bats in his house growing up that they moved the pool skimmer inside to his house because they would just collect the bats inside with the pool skimmer and then just plop them out the window. I was like, “Are you kidding me?” There’s no way I could survive with outside things inside my house!
Mike: Everybody’s level of “norm” can be different. It’s odd that way. Bats, the types we have around here or the types that we have in New England, there are several different varieties and they’re considered micro-bats. They can live anywhere from 25-30 years and they will always come back to the same place.
Jennifer: Oh, no thank you! I’ll pass on that!
Mike: Yeah, yeah.
Jennifer: All right so, this is kind of a lot of information because there are multiple animals and then multiple seasons that they can be around. Let me sort of organize us in terms of being proactive instead of going animal by animal or something. Let’s say you wanted to go sell your house. What steps would you take before you listed your home to deal with any animal issues you have at your house before you sell? Because that would kind of cover general animal issues if you were going to sell. That would get us kind of started off that way.
Mike: All of these animals, mammals, critters I guess we’ll call them, over time leave signs. Whether it be droppings, or staining or different things. Noises that we know we’ve heard all along.
Sometimes as a seller, there’s two trains of thought I guess, you kind of leave it alone or you want to be proactive. I say proactive because myself, I know as a buyer if I was coming to look at a house, I’d rather be told, “Yes, we did that.” Or, “we did notice mouse activity but we wanted to take care of that, so we had a company come in. Here’s some documentation that says what they found or what they didn’t,” and how that was handled. As opposed to slowing the process down by me being interested in the house, going through the process, having a home inspector or some sort of inspector come in and then find out that there’s an issue.
Sometimes, some people are done. Some people won’t be interested in that house, some people don’t have the time to wait and move on to another property. It’s really up to the seller at that point, but there are telltale signs that you will be able to find. It’s up to you to contact a professional and have them come in. I know for us, we do inspections and they’re free, so it gives you an opportunity to have an idea of what’s going on and address it ahead of time so that the selling process can be a lot quicker.
Jennifer: Yeah, in the second podcast, I talked to a builder and the idea was really, what does he see when he walks through a house? For him, the idea was, “Is this a home that’s been taken care of?” So I think to your point, have you been proactive about what’s going on in your building? That’s what’s really going to set your building apart to buyers. If you say, “Yeah, we noticed this, we took care of this, this is what we did and we can show you some kind of information for it,” it really, sets your property in a different light and it shows that you’ve taken care of it.
Mike: Yeah, it definitely can scare. If you think about it, if you come in and you notice this or you have an inspection done and the inspector says, “Yeah, they’ve got a fairly large mouse problem or they’ve had a lot of bats in their attic.” As a buyer, you’re like, “Ok, they had to have heard this, they had to have known this was going on. What else am I not seeing that is wrong with this house?” It depends, I guess, on the individual, but it can certainly raise flags that don’t need to be raised if you wanted to be proactive.
Jennifer: Gotcha! Now, so here’s my second question with that. Let’s say I’m going to sell my house, I have you in to look at things. We discovered I have some sort of animal issue and you go ahead and take care of that. I guess if I were the buyer I’d be like, “Great!” But nobody’s really giving the mice or bats a memo saying, “by the way, you no longer can come around.” What kind of protection does the new owner have that whatever animal isn’t just going to come back after you’ve gotten rid of it? I would assume, I’m just learning about this, they’re wild animals. What kind of protection does the new person owning the house have after someone like you has come in to do that kind of work?
Mike: Well when we come in when we look at a property, the first thing we’re going to do is address what it is and what’s making the noises, what’s leaving the signs, the droppings, or the staining. Then we need to figure out how they are getting in, where these access points are and address them accordingly. Either seal them up if they are open but not being used or by installing a one-way door that would allow things out but not back in. It’s important for us to make sure everything is sealed so that once everything is out they can’t get back in. Then the buyer or new homeowner has a warranty that is transferrable so they can rest assured that if they do hear a noise if there is an issue, there’s someone they can call 24/7.
Jennifer: Oh! Ok, so if the mice came back for the new owner, the new owner has some piece of paper from you from the prior owner saying, “We did address the mice problem but if something happens, we have this warranty with your company.” So, that’s something people can get!
Mike: Oh yeah, of course! You’re put into our database. As soon as an inspection is done, the property is put into the database and at that point, you move forward with whatever needs to be done and the new homeowner is the person who lives at that address, then that address is covered under a warranty so they can call us any time and we’ll come out. Accidents happen, things happen. Here in New England, houses shift, move, and pop and things can reopen. Or it can be something as simple as a door that got left open or something happened that allowed something in. But that’s our job to come back and find out what’s going on.
Jennifer: Oh, I gotcha! I never even thought about a warranty for something like animals. I just assumed that they’re crazy wild things and we’re just at their mercy, so that’s really good to learn. That was something new for me. All right, so if I’m looking at a building, I’m trying to evaluate, and maybe I’m going to buy, what kind of red flags would I be looking at? Or even if I’m looking at my own house, what would I be noticing for rodents or animals or pests, that kind of stuff? What are the red flags that I would want to be noticing on my own?
Mike: It’s very hard, to some degree, for a homeowner to know all of these access points or know all of these areas and we don’t expect them to. Let’s say as a buyer when you’re looking at the house if you’re just simply looking at the exterior of the building, is there any of the trim missing? Are there any parts that are falling off? Are there holes where there shouldn’t be holes, chew holes? Staining sometimes is a telltale sign for flying squirrels. We’ll look up in the soffit box and you’ll see the area where the roof is supposed to breathe and it looks like there’s something dripping out of there or rusting and there’s nothing in there that’s going to rust. It’s wooden, it’s plastic and that can be usually a telltale sign that we’ve got flying squirrels that around in the air and that’s a latrine area, unfortunately.
Jennifer: Eew.
Mike: Yeah, I know.
Jennifer: I have to say I’m really happy, the listeners are getting to know me so they’re learning that there are certain things that I will dive right into and I’ll give it a try. Your area of expertise, I file under, “No.” I will not try. I am chicken when it comes to wild animals. I look at them from afar and enjoy them, but when you say that they’re using, you know a soffit box? What is a soffit box?
Mike: It’s tough. That’s another thing. There’s a lot of language or a lot of building terms that some people understand or don’t understand. Just like any trade or business. I don’t understand much about podcasts so I’m kind of going on a whim here.
When you look at a house, there are a lot of different parts I guess. We’ve got a checklist actually that will help you I guess is the best way to put it. If you go onto our website, you can actually download a checklist that will show you the things that you should be looking for and eventually what we’re going to do is we’re going to add photos to that.
So if you come on to something like what we’re talking about now, a soffit box, or a gable vent or a ridge cap, and you’re like, “Well, what exactly is he talking about?” Well you’re actually going to be able to see a photograph of what we’re talking about so you can say, “Yeah ok, that’s the gable vent and yeah, it’s all chewed up and looks like an elephant went through there.” So things like that are going to be able to help the buyer or the seller know what they’re looking for and know the things that they should be looking for.
What does mouse staining look like? What do you mean when you say droppings? What are droppings? I just thought it was dirt all over the floor. Or when you’re actually in the attic and you’re looking down at droppings and it’s because the bats are above you looking down on you. A lot of the terminology we use, to us is basic and something we use every day but it is foreign to other people.
Jennifer: Gotcha. So there really is a bit of a vocabulary. So some of that we can find on your website so we could see some pictures so we could say, “Oh that looks like what I’ve got going on” and then have a conversation about what to do about it. But each building is so different, one house might have you said a gable box? There were three…they’re roof things, right?
Mike: Yeah
Jennifer: Because of a flying squirrel. I want to learn these three things. This is good. My new thing. I’m learning about things up high that a flying squirrel might get into. Gable box you said?
Mike: Yeah. So, if you step back and you look at your house, you’ve got your house, you’ve got your windows, you’ve got your roof. If you stand and look at your roof, a lot of it depends on the style of the house.
Let’s just pick a simple colonial for instance. Your roof goes up to a peak at the top and at the top of that, there are two different ways that your house can vent. It’s important that your house breathes, it’s important that your roof vents properly for ice dams and for all sorts of reasons.
Down on the bottom, at the widest point, there’s an overhang there. That’s typically a soffit box where the air is going to enter into that area and it’s going to flow upward because heat rises and it pulls up.
Once you get to the peak, two things can be there. Either on the ends of the house, there can be gable vents, which are typically a rectangular vent area with slats which will allow all of the hot air and air to come out so it continually creates a cycle. The other thing that you could have if you don’t have those is a ridge gap or a ridge vent. So at the point, at the top of the triangle, when the contractors designed the house, they don’t put the plywood all the way up so they leave a small gap there. Then it gets capped with either cobra vent or cor vent or some sort of a ridge vent material which, again, allows that air to continue to flow.
For us, we know, and over the years we have found that with the gable vents on the end, they have an internal window screen which either rots over time or squirrels will chew holes through it and the same goes with the ridge vent. Depending on the type of material, they cannot conform properly to the roof, which allows gaps under that, or the end caps won’t be on. That creates a hole anywhere from a half inch to six inches wide where these animals can come in.
Flying squirrels, for instance, are more of an arboreal type of squirrel, so they like to start from the highest point. They’ll come off of a tree and they can glide up to 160 feet, land on your roof and they’ll climb in these little holes. The same with bats. They’ll come and go. I’ve had customers call me and say, “I’m outside with a glass of wine and I just watched 60-plus bats come out of my roof! What is going on?”
To help you with the gable vent thing or gable box, that’s what creates that roof area that’s a concern. That’s one of so many areas that we have to address because these animals, like bats, can use an area roughly one-quarter of an inch by one inch.
Jennifer: I think this is a great point, because of everything you’re discussing right now. I brought you in to tell us about how we start to address all these wild animals and all these ways they can get into our home and how we’re going to address it.
But really, we took this tiny little side road and it’s about flying squirrels and how they get into our rooves and how bats get into our rooves. We learned about three different technical terms that maybe, if I weren’t in construction or building or in your line of work, I wouldn’t know about those things.
In fact, how the whole thing works like how the building has to breathe in and then air has to exit. That’s a very normal thing. In fact, for the house that’s really healthy. But for keeping animals out, that super doesn’t work. You have to figure out a way to keep the air going in and out without the animals going in and out.
So, we have overlapping systems and overlapping people. So we might see a roofer to patch holes in the roof, we might see you to come in and tell us how to not let bats in and out of our roof. For a homeowner who is just trying to do right by their building, it can be really complicated. I’m really happy that people are getting to hear this conversation, because I think what happens to people is they are like, “I have this one problem. Let me get this one problem fixed.” What’s missed is, what the big picture is.
Mike: We run into that a lot. A customer will call us and say, “I’m hearing noises right over here in this dormer and I see the hole and I know what’s going on.” That’s great, good. You’ve found one of the spots. Well, if you go home today and you need to get into your house. You go in through your garage door like you normally do but if that’s locked; you’re going to try the front door. You’re going to try the side door, you’re going to try a window if you have to because it’s your home and you need to be inside.
The animals that are coming and going, it’s not the first time they are there and they are not the only one. If you saw one, it’s not the only one. They are going to find another way in. That’s why it’s so important, not only to find the primary area, but you have to find those secondary areas. There are lots of spots on our houses that animals can get in, but they’re not. We’ll look at them. It might be a gap, it might be open, but it might be full of cobwebs, it might have pine needles in it so we know it’s not active. But those other areas like the customer might have seen one. Yeah ok, there’s staining or there’s a hole chewed or it’s evident that there’s something going on there so we have to address that in a different way.
All of this has to be done in such a way that you don’t see our work. We don’t want to detract from the way your house looks. We don’t want all this, we call it homeowner foam, and we don’t want a bunch of yellow foam in a spot or something that is going to take away from the value. We do a lot of historical buildings too.
Jennifer: Sure, around here.
Mike: Just like for that, it’s just as important on any level of the house that we make sure that you don’t see what we’re doing.
Jennifer: To your point, it’s great, I’m on a budget like the next person so my first instinct is to fix this one problem I have. But really to your point, if I fix the one problem, they’re just going to the next place. So, I might as well figure out how the whole thing works which is animals are programmed to go in. They’re going into your house however they can find a way in. So it’s great to take care of the place they are now, but you’ve got to find the backup place too because they are going there, that’s what animals do. Take care of it now or you’re going to be taking care of it later. That is what the problem is. It’s almost like doing half of a plumbing job. You have to fix the thing.
Mike: Not only does it have to be done completely, it has to be done right. We’ll go to houses and someone has said, “Well I’d already fixed that spot,” or “I fixed it and they’re back in.” You’ll go and you’ll see that a grey squirrel had chewed a hole through a 5/8 inch pine board, and they’ve filled the hole with foam. He just chewed through a pine board; he can get through the foam. You have to make sure the right materials are used and the right process is taken to alleviate that situation or it’s going to continue to happen and create more damage.
Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely.
Mike: That can be a really big issue that we find. Some of these things are huge chewers so then not only are they damaging the exterior of the house but they’ll get inside and chew water lines, electrical lines and wires.
In some instances, depending on what the animal is, a lot of insurance policies don’t cover rodent damage. Every policy is different and I’m not putting a blanket statement out there but you want to be careful that you don’t have a squirrel get down in the wall and chew your dishwasher line. Then find out that you were gone for the weekend and playroom is flooded and once they deem it rodent damage, which is what a squirrel is, it’s not covered so it’s 100% out of pocket.
Jennifer: That is a very important tip. Unfortunately, I have a friend who had a raccoon problem in her attic, in an 1800’s house. Quite an expensive project to fix. Just the damage alone was $30,000 of repairs.
Mike: Yeah I can believe it.
Jennifer: Again, check your policy to find out what’s covered and what’s not because animals can provide a surprise. My friend was not prepared for that.
Mike: Our website has a lot of photos of that. One particular home, like what you’re talking about, the raccoon chewed three holes through the roof. Through the shingles, through the sheathing and into the house. The first two times it hit joists so it couldn’t make it all the way through, the third time it was actually able to find a spot. So three holes the size of a basketball through the roof to get into that house.
Jennifer: Wow. It’s hard because they are just animals, but on the other hand, you just want to keep your house nice, functioning, healthy, and clean so they’re making it a little bit hard. You know what I’m finding on my personal Facebook page, people are just putting up that they are noticing more mice than usual, and I’m noticing that we do have a lot of new construction particularly in Dover. So it’s my guess that mice are moving because where they used to live they can’t live because we just dug it up.
You’re a Dover guy, am I wrong, am I right? You have a huge grin your face right now.
Mike: Mice are always there. They don’t migrate, per se.
Jennifer: So that was a pipedream of mine. They’re not moving because they just built a new house in my back yard or something.
Mike: No, they’re just there. Depending on the structure, depending on, you know, some houses have lots of beautiful flowers and bushes and such around the foundation which looks great but it provides a lot of security for these animals to spend time around your home, which allows them more time to find an access point.
Mice can breed four to six times a year and have upwards of a half dozen every time. So, you can have a large mouse problem and not really know. Typically, we tell customers, if you are seeing mice in your house, it’s already a huge problem.
Jennifer: Gotcha. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to put a link to your site up so people can start looking at actual pictures of the evidence that they’ve got because obviously, we could make a lot of shows. I want to have you back on because there are a lot of animal issues we can talk about so listeners, we’ll make this a multi-part so that we can talk about some of the different animals specifically and talk through some bigger issues. But if you’re starting to wonder, in hearing us talk, I’ll post up his website which has links to pictures of some of the evidence in the red flags in your own house you could be looking to and the stereotypical telltale signs, so check that out. I’ll put that up for you.
If we’re going to go buy a house, are you part of the home inspection process? Do you work with a specific home inspector? Are you called in as what many people would call and add-on? Everybody does a home inspection but not every home inspector inspects for all the same things. Then, when you’re on the water, there are other requirements people do. How does your role play a part in home inspection for a buyer? Before closing, have you been involved in that kind of a thing?
Mike: We work closely with a lot of home inspectors, real estate agencies and realtors that will call us from time to time if they’ve noticed something in the process. We’re usually involved long before closing because something is noticed or a homebuyer is proactive and says, “Geez, I kind of saw something, would you guys mind coming out?” We all look at different things and handle it in a different way. We’ll come in and all of our inspections are free so we’re glad to come out and help anybody. We’ll take a look at what’s going on and give you a detailed report at that point as to what we have or haven’t found and recommendations.
Sometimes a customer wants us to take pictures. We get in these small crazy areas in attics and other places. I swear sometimes we need to do yoga to get into some of the spots that we get into. They can’t get up there, but they want to know what’s going on so, “Could you take a video, could you take a picture of what you’re seeing or what you’re not seeing so we have an idea?” We’ll supply all of that based on whatever the customer’s needs are.
We’ve been called in by home inspectors before. Not so much by the home inspector themselves, but the home inspector finds some signs of some droppings or some things that they are questioning and at that point, either the seller or the buyer’s realtor will reach out to us. At that point, we get involved. Usually, the process is handled, once we’ve looked at it, both the realtors, the buyer, the seller have a plan as what we feel we would recommend and it’s handled between the two of them or we call them and we get it taken care of prior to closing. When that buyer goes to that closing they have some documentation saying it was addressed, we all knew it was there, it’s been taken care of and you, as the new buyer have this warranty. So, they’re covered that way.
Jennifer: So, you could actually get up in there with a little camera so the owner or buyer can see what’s actually up there without being up there themselves.
Mike: Oh sure, most definitely.
Jennifer: That’s really neat. What I like about that is that I think there’s a lot of mistrust on the part of homeowners and buyers. Sometimes they don’t trust one another and I think that when you’re a homeowner, it’s hard to know that who you’re paying and what you’re getting (unless you’ve used that person or service before) is a really great job. It’s hard to know that. With wild animals they are, pun I guess intended, the wild card. They could come back.
You could be the best wildlife guy in the entire United States, but if you have, like the old school cartoons, and you’ve got one of those wacky wild animals that are just foiling the guy, you’re human and it’s a wild animal and you’re battling each other. So how is the homeowner to know this actually is the best stuff, this is just the nature of this wild animal.
I think having things like a video where they can see, “This is what I actually saw up there and look at this, and here’s this chew mark.” Obviously a basketball-sized hole in the roof, three of them, that’s very obvious to a homeowner that there’s a heck of a problem. When you’re hearing big scratching in the wall, that enough for a lot of homeowners to be on board. But some of the more subtle stuff that really does need fixing, it’s hard to know how far to go with it and how much to trust somebody with that.
Mike: It’s very hard.
Jennifer: I like this camera thing because people can actually see it.
Mike: Oh yeah. There are times, and there are pictures on our website and on our Facebook page of some of these things. I’ll stand back and I’ll take a picture of a house.
One comes to mind. I was working on the Seacoast area and it was a very large home, probably about 5,000 square feet with multiple floors. They were hearing noises and they couldn’t figure out why. They had an idea where it was, and a lot of times when they tell us, “We’re hearing noises,” well if we have a conversation with them and they start to say, “I’m hearing it between the first and the second floor.”
Ok so, just with general construction ideas, or knowing the general make up of a house I can rule a lot of things out because larger animals can’t get in certain areas so that helps. You know, it took me a long time but once I get up on the roof where the chimney flashing was, I could see some droppings. I pulled the chimney flashing back and some mice had actually chewed the corner of the board out and were going through it. There was staining all through there. It was leading right in that area.
If you’re looking at the pictures I put up and you’re looking at this 5,000 square foot house and I had to find a hole that was hidden under lead flashing the size of the end of my index finger to understand what was going on and where it was
I took the homeowner out, and obviously didn’t carry him up on the ladder with me, but pointed out what I saw, where it was and then showed him some photos (which is the same thing we’ll do on an inspection). I don’t expect a homeowner or the buyer to go everywhere with me, but by walking around the exterior, I can point, “that is a soffit,” “that is a gable vent,” “that is a dormer and if you look here to the right of the dormer, that’s gapped,” or “you can see where there’s a half-moon chew mark.” Then I can show them what I’m seeing either with my binoculars or it’s close enough where sometimes we’re on our back, laying under a deck and there will be a corner board that’s chewed up. It’s the same thing; mice are going up through there.
There are a lot of different spots that you have to find. And you do have to trust the company you’re working with. It’s important that they try to explain as much as possible through the whole process from beginning to end.
Jennifer: Excellent. When you go in for that inspection, what are you looking for?
Mike: I’m looking for all of these little spots that aren’t obvious. Over time, 13 years worth of doing these things, I’d like to say we’ve seen everything, but you’ll never see everything with animals. The only consistency with wildlife is there’s no consistency, but they do have common areas. They have areas that we’ve learned over the years that are going to be open due to the building process, which is no fault of the builder, but just the way some materials have to come together that sometimes gaps have to be there.
We’re going to look for staining. We’re going to look for areas where, let’s say we’re in the basement and we look at the top of your wires. Typically, your wires are white or yellow and if you look at them and there’s some brown staining on those, we know mice are traveling back and forth; that’s a scent trail they leave which tells them how to get from A to B. We immediately know, ok we have some activity here so it allows us to look in different areas. Along the concrete, they’ll leave staining or there will be droppings on the sill.
When we climb up into an attic, does the insulation look like it has tunneling, does it look like someone took a broom handle through and made little holes everywhere? This is a little harder for customers to see but if you can picture your insulation like the bottom of a lake and you drained all the water out there’d be runs, little divots where things just continued to travel. It’s just like little dry riverbeds everywhere or fingerlings, so we’ll know things are traveling that way. We’ll pull back insulation and look at droppings left on top of the sheetrock.
Then there’s the obvious stuff, the basketball hole in the roof or the gable vents that are chewed or the corners of your soffits will be open. These are just avenues for animals to get in. Old houses, new houses, it really doesn’t matter, they all, to some degree have the same basic openings.
Different areas, if you have a dormer on an older house and the dormers are made out of wood. The wood is going to be short, it’s not going to touch the shingles and be a tight fit because what happens is if it starts to rain, or you get snow, that wood wicks all that moisture up and it rots the wood, so you have to have a gap. But a bat that needs a quarter of an inch by one inch is going to slip right under there with no problem. Those are areas that need to be addressed.
Jennifer: Yeah, I was surprised. Way back when, when I took my real estate course, they actually tell you that if you were to construct a home and not do anything with it from start to finish, the home goes from usable to completely unusable in 60 years. So I think that’s a good frame of reference for just how much, a) your building is going to change all on its own just from temperature and age, things settling, and b) how much stuff you are going to have to do to your building to keep it functioning.
You were just mentioning that windowsill, it’s wooden, and my house was built in 1945, so I’m hitting the 70-year mark. I’m past the 70-year mark with my building. So that one piece of wood that was tight forever, now I’m looking at maybe a little critter.
Mike: Oh sure!
Jennifer: And it never used to be a problem. Maybe the first four people that owned my house never had an issue with it, and now, one day I’m calling you up because it’s the middle of the night and I hear something. I first think it’s a ghost. And listeners, I don’t know where I am with ghosts, so I guess you can Facebook me on that one if you have theories.
So I wake up, and you know you’re never quite with it in the middle of the night, unless you’re a parent. My kids are a little bit older now so I don’t wake up quite like I used to when they were little and I’d be all the way awake and ready to fight the universe.
You wake up, you hear the scratches, and you determine it is definitely not paranormal. Do I call you? Do I take notes? Do I have to put a towel under all the doors so they don’t get me?
Mike: [Laughing]
Jennifer: What’s a girl to do in the middle of the night?
Mike: I’ve had customers do all of the above. I’ve had people play recordings for me off their phone. I’ve had people call me in full-blown panics where they’re screaming and it takes me a while to figure out what’s going on because they’re all in the middle of the lawn because a bat flying around in the house.
You can call us we do emergency service work. Our phone number is with all of the police departments in local areas. A lot of times if you call them in the middle of the night with a situation, they’ll give you multiple phone numbers and say, “these are the people that you should contact.” So, we’ll come out 24/7. I’ll kick the PJs off and I come running with my flashlight and whatever material I need.
I’ve had calls for everything from a customer’s pet python in the wall that I had to come remove, to bats flying in bedrooms, to flying squirrels running across the wife’s forehead in the middle of the night. I’ve heard it all
Jennifer: Oh. My. Oh my.
Mike: I will say, sorry guys but it’s true, 90% of the time when I go to a bat call, if there’s a bat flying around the house? I almost never meet the husband because he’s locked in a room, he’s in a bathroom, or wherever he’s going to be and he’s not coming out until that bat is taken care of. I meet the kids, I meet the wife, I meet the dog, but I do not meet the husband.
Jennifer: [Laughing] I don’t know, I’ve got to say, that theory works for you but my husband’s house growing up, it was an equal opportunity pool skimmer situation.
Mike: [Laughing]
Jennifer: For me growing up, the only time anything ever happened was when my dad happened to be out of town. I think my dad went on maybe three business trips a year and that’s when the little garter snake off the screened porch would come in.
Mike: Of course!
Jennifer: My mom would be there with the oven mitts trying to catch the thing.
Mike: Yeah, I’ve seen that. He was definitely not the norm.
Jennifer: What truly constitutes a situation where an owner really should call you in the middle of the night? There has to be certain animal situations where either time is of the essence or there might be something dangerous or harmful. I would imagine there are probably not a lot, but we probably feel like everything feels like right now this raccoon is going to kill us, but what are the dangerous ones that we really need to call you and now it’s 2am?
Mike: The most dangerous one is when a flying squirrel runs across your wife’s head. Because if you don’t call someone right away, you’re probably going to get bludgeoned to death by your wife.
Jennifer: [Laughing]
Mike: I would say our most frequent and our most urgent calls probably for nighttime emergency stuff, would definitely be bats flying in the house. Bats can be dangerous. I never use scare tactics, obviously when dealing with customers, because that’s not how we want to get our work, but bats do carry diseases and that is an issue. Less than half of one percent, I think at last test carry rabies but it can happen.
If you wake with a bat flying around in your room, you don’t know if it landed on you, you don’t know if it scratched you, you don’t know if its saliva got on you. This isn’t Dracula. There’s not going to be two fang marks on your throat so it’s very important.
First, you try to localize that bat. Get out of the room if you can, shut the door behind you and yes, put a blanket down along the bottom of the door because they will crawl under the door. So try to localize the situation and then call us immediately or call someone immediately and get that bat found, get that bat caught and then make a decision as to whether or not you’re going to have bat sent to the state and tested, because you want to know that. Rabies is nothing to fool with. It’s not something you want to be told you have after the fact.
That’s definitely, I would say, number one on our list. If you hear scratching in the ceiling, save your money, call us in the morning, and let us know what’s going on so we can address it accordingly.
Any wildlife that’s running around in the house, if a squirrel is running around, all kidding aside, you should get that taken care of. It’s a lot easier for us as a company obviously, to be proactive and get there as soon as it’s been seen because once you wait or you give it any time, your house is full of stuff and it could be anywhere.
We’ve found flying squirrels everywhere. You figure that if you wait until morning, it’s time for them to go to bed. They’re nocturnal so they’re awake when we’re asleep and vice versa. If you wait until morning, I have to come to find this thing that’s hidden and sleeping. We find them everywhere. They’re small.
I remember taking pictures of one that I found in a child’s stuffed animal basket.
Jennifer: Oh boy!
Mike: And it looked like a cute little-stuffed animal. It just happened to have a breath.
Jennifer: Wow! As a parent, that’s really scary!
Mike: Sure, yeah. You want to handle that stuff as quickly as possible. Being proactive about things like that is good. Call no matter what. If you hear the noises call us and we’ll tell you, “You should be fine. If you’d like us to come out, we’ll come out. If not, let’s schedule this for tomorrow or we can prioritize this and meet in the daylight and figure out what’s going on.” It doesn’t cost you a dime to call us.
Jennifer: Ok, great.
Mike: And we like the stories!
Jennifer: [Laughing] That’s true! I do have a couple of questions for you from some Facebook listeners. From Kristen: she says, “What’s your recommendation for encouraging chipmunks nesting under a non-accessible deck area to go elsewhere?”
Mike: [Laughing] Yeah, encouraging. I have been doing this a long time and this one of probably two years I can remember that chipmunks have been absolutely crazy. First off, thank you for your question Kristen. I will actually answer as best as I can.
A non-accessible deck area typically, we like to do some trench work. We like to go around the deck and we’ll install some quarter inch by quarter inch galvanized hardware cloth to the deck. We’ll bury it and we bury it and fold it out in such a way that once we’ve finished and it’s all reburied and it’s underground if they try to dig, they can’t get under it. It’s very important, the way you install it. If you just put something right against the ground, or straight down into the ground, these animals tunnel so they’ll just tunnel and they’ll tunnel until they go under.
But if you install it in such a way that you bend it at a right angle away from that material after, when they dig down through the dirt that you’ve replaced, they’re going to hit that metal underground. Animals don’t understand back up. They don’t understand what’s going on, they just know they can’t get there. They might continue to dig side to side until they get frustrated and starve.
The best course of action for something like that would be to screen it around that bottom deck and use the right materials. It’s pretty immediate. Once that’s done, we’ll always put a one-way door on to make sure that we do have an avenue for them to get out. We don’t want to have any animals stuck under the deck and expire for a multitude of reasons. But we’ll install a one-way door so they can leave and then come back after we feel that it’s been long enough and remove the one-way door and finish that one section so that it’s complete and finished.
In a lot of cases, you don’t even see what we’ve done. Either we’ll put lattice over what we’ve got or it just blends in with the natural flora over time. That’s how we’d fix that.
Jennifer: Awesome! I’m imagining the old school cartoon with the two little chipmunks (I can’t remember what their names were) they were really cute.
Mike: Chip and Dale!
Jennifer: There you go! Chip and Dale! So what if Chip and Dale decide to take the other route out. So they already live under the deck that you can’t get to anyway and they go in the house.
Mike: Ah yeah, well.
Jennifer: Right? Because that’s the other option. So let’s say you put in your deck and it’s a deck that’s not accessible, the best option is what you’ve described. If it happens to be something where the deck was already there and you still can’t get to the spots because it’s not an accessible place, the chipmunks might go, like you said, they’ll just keep going until they go someplace.
The other place they could go is actually to the house that’s attached if there’s some hole. Which of course, now that you’re not accessible, you can’t get to whatever little hole that you don’t know you have under the deck.
Mike: Oh yeah.
Jennifer: I’m imagining here. What do you do for that?
Mike: Well then you’d have to probably get into the basement area and look along the sills to make sure there’s no rot or there again, depending on how big the deck is, it’s funny you say that. A lot of times customers when we pull in the yard, they’re going to look at us and go, “This is what’s going on, how are you going to fix it?” I’ll be honest with them, “I have no clue!” They’ll be like, “What do you mean?” Every instance is different in a lot of situations. That’s why our truck has everything from pool skimmer poles, to wire, to tape, to everything! Because we don’t know and we’ll make our own tools a lot.
In a case like that, I might take that pool skimmer out, or a telescoping rod. I might duct tape my camera to it and I might run it in and just kind of run my camera along the foundation, bring it back, pull the SD card, pop my laptop out and look at what I just saw under there.
Jennifer: Yeah, and is there a hole?
Mike: Yeah.
Jennifer: Are they going in? Where are they going in?
Mike: Yep
Jennifer: Gotcha! So you’re really a detective.
Mike: You have to be. You have to think outside the box and awful lot because these animals don’t understand that there’s a parameter so you really can’t think that way either. A lot of times it’s easy. I mean, our job for the most part, can be pretty boring. Other times, not so much. When you’re reaching your arm up in a fireplace to pull raccoons that you can’t see out with a glove.
Jennifer: Oh boy.
Mike: Yeah, it can get kind of hairy.
Jennifer: Yeah, I’m just going to say it again. Yours is a job I could not do.
Mike: [Laughing]
Jennifer: All right, question from Kate. She would love suggestions on discouraging deer from eating fruit trees other than fencing. Wind chimes and pinwheels on the branches, she’s wondering. She doesn’t want to use an ultrasonic wave thing because she doesn’t want to push away all the animals. So she’s obviously, she’s a lover!
Mike: Sure! They’re fun to look at. Kate, the good news is, those ultrasonic things don’t work, so don’t waste your money on those.
There are some remedies that are old school that really just plain work. Putting dryer sheets in your lawn mower to keep mice out, works. Hanging bars of soap, like Irish Spring from a string in your fruit trees, works. It really does.
I’d love to tell people that there’s an avenue for every situation that I can charge you money for, but I’ll be the first guy to give you tips where you don’t need to spend; where you don’t need us. If we can help people handle the situation on their own, we’re all far better off because you learned something and you took care of it.
The bars of soap really do work. My father’s friend has an orchard, he swears by it, and it really does work. The hair from the hair salon that you put around the trees can work. It’s kind of weird and messy, so put some soap out there and they can wash up while they’re out there.
Jennifer: [Laughing] That’s hilarious. All right, from Nicole. “We have squirrels sharpening their teeth on a couple of cedar shingles near the base of our front door. We’ve tried a few things and haven’t had too much luck. Suggestions or tips would be wonderful.”
Mike: Male squirrels, generally like to mark their territory sometimes like that. It’s different. Some people will try different oils, pepper oils and things to discourage that. The problem with that is it never works for long and it can just move them further down. So sometimes relocation with some of these animals is what’s required.
There are thousands of animals that walk by our house on a daily basis that don’t bother us, that don’t get involved, that don’t want to come in. Then there are those that just have this thing that just want to be there. Relocate them. There are lots of avenues you can take them someplace, bring them to a park, move them on to stop.
That would be my recommendation or something like that. They haven’t gotten into the house yet, which is a good thing. So yeah, that’s probably the route I would take for something like that.
Jennifer: Excellent. The last one. So Janet says, “What can you do if you don’t want to put poison everywhere?” She had a rental house with hordes of mice.
Mike: Every situation is different. So what we’ll do is we’ll basically approach the customer and say, “This is what you’ve got going on. These are the avenues.” There are several different options that we can use to take of a situation. We always leave it up to the homeowner. It can be something as simple as a small board that’s rotted so it’s not a big thing. Let’s just close this spot up and relocate these animals or stop them from coming in.
Poisons? We don’t use any poisons. We’ve never used poisons in the company at all for any avenue, because there are multitudes of problems. If you start to put these poisons out there, these animals can expire in your wall, which creates a whole other problem; the smell is such that it will drive you to a hotel. Let’s say these animals make it outside and one of the neighbors’ cats or a dog ingests that animal that’s got poison in it, well you’ve continued that circle. Same with hawks or owls. That’s just never ever a good option.
It’s better to be proactive, try to get them relocated, or try to get them out of the house. A lot of times, through prevention it does discourage them enough so that you don’t have to worry about that. At that point, being under warranty, if they continue to come around, or other things pop up, then it can be addressed. That’s the nice thing about it.
As a company, we do the best we can. No company should ever say they’re the end all be all and it’s a one and done every time. It’s perfect. These are animals and sometimes it’s a battle. Sometimes you have to match wits or whatever. I tell my customers the same thing, “I can’t guarantee every time that it’s going to work the first time, but I can guarantee that I’m going to continue to try to figure it out. We don’t quit.” You can’t quit. You have to continue to minimize that.
I have friends that are in this industry and I was having a conversation last night. Sometimes you look at something the same way over and over because you’ve done it. You’ve fixed it. You did this work. You continually go back to look at the same spots to find out why it’s not working, whereas if you bring a second set of eyes in, one of our techs.
I might bring one of my techs and say, “They’re still hearing noises.” That tech will walk around and he might figure it out in two minutes because he doesn’t know what I’ve done, he doesn’t know what I’ve looked at so he’s probably looking at other areas, which is what needs to be done. So, that fresh set of eyes, in a lot of cases, we’ll catch that and boom! We’ve rectified it, we’ve fixed it and it’s another success story.
Jennifer: Fantastic, fantastic. So, in general, you’re not giving a lot of poison because it messes up the whole animal ecosystem. So for Janet, she didn’t want to poison everywhere. Her rental house had hordes of mice, so clearly the issue was that the landlord didn’t take care of the mice issue in terms of where they were getting into the building, sealing up those places.
Mike: You can have a lot of mice and only one hole. You really can. When you have that many mice, a lot of times, finding the access point can be a little bit easier because the staining is going to be so great from years running back and forth. They don’t have a bladder, so they are just constantly doing their business and it leaves dark staining and it leaves a trail so they know how to get from A to B.
I say that, but if you have a 1700’s farmhouse with a stone foundation with a lot of the mortar missing and an 8×8 wooden beam that used to be a tree running along the top as a foundation piece, yeah, it can be an unfixable situation to some degree.
Jennifer: That’s something that homeowners need to hear. There are some buildings for whom the mice population really is just built-in to a degree to the building. Classic example. That 1700’s farmhouse. The way the stone and the wood is put together, you can only go so far with the mouse problem.
Mike: Correct.
Jennifer: That is as fixed as it can get in that building.
Mike: Yeah, you can fix everything that you can see visibly but when things go below grade if there’s tunneling involved and they get in between stones that they follow these pathways. We’ll be there. We’ll be the first to tell you if it’s not fixable. I have no interest in taking money without some sort of reasonable solution. It makes no sense to me. You’re not doing anybody any favors at that point.
Jennifer: Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that there are sometimes some things that you can’t fix.
Mike: Oh yeah.
Jennifer: I don’t think everybody has the wherewithal to say that.
Mike: Some people have sheds that the mice are just going to be in there. They’re going to get in their camping gear, they’re going to run through their stuff and you just have to make sure these things are in Tupperware, make sure your seed is kept in a steel barrel. Try to minimize the reason they’re in there. Take away the reason they’re there and hope for the best sometimes.
Jennifer: Is there a success story that you’d like to share?
Mike: [Laughing]
Jennifer: I know, I heard python in the wall, I’ve heard…
Mike: We’ve had some crazy stuff like that. We had this one customer that had us come out. They had a bat situation and we did give them a proposal and there was another company that went out and gave them a proposal. We always encourage people to get multiple. It’s a good thing. You should be an informed consumer. Look at the numbers, look at the reason, look at the process and check their warranties and stuff. That all helps a customer make a smart consumer decision.
This particular company went in and did some bad work and through either an accident or a new tech or whatever, the one-way doors for the bats were installed backward.
Jennifer: Oh God!
Mike: So it wouldn’t open and the bats weren’t able to get out. They wanted to go someplace so they came through the crawl space into the living area. We got a phone call that night from the husband and you could hear the wife screaming in the background. When we go there, we picked up 38 bats on the inside of the house!
Jennifer: What a nightmare!
Mike: Yeah, they were crawling across the floor. They were on the curtains.
Jennifer: A nightmare!
Mike: They were everywhere.
Jennifer: I’m a tough cookie but I would’ve run out the door.
Mike: Oh yeah.
Jennifer: With my cell phone.
Mike: Yeah, well.
Jennifer: But I would…no…that…awful.
Mike: Yeah. We had a situation recently in the Portsmouth area here where a customer had been hearing noises in their chimney for a while and was getting tired of the noises. So he figured they would solve the problem by starting a fire. Called me, just as he had done that because he said, “I don’t know what else to do.” I said, “Well, this is the time of year where a squirrel can fall down in that chimney and can’t get out. That’s why you’re still hearing the noises, so a fire isn’t going to help. At all.”
Because that happened once before with a customer that started a fire like that thinking it would work. There was a flying squirrel in there. The flying squirrel jumped down into the fireplace, his tail was singed, ran across the living room floor and went under the couch and there was smoke and soot everywhere because he had nowhere to go.
Jennifer: Oh my God.
Mike: We were able to catch that squirrel and fix that.
But this particular gentleman, I said, “You could have raccoons in there and the mother could leave but the young can’t leave right now. You need to get that fire out and get it out now. I’m on my way.”
Jennifer: Sure. Oh my gosh.
Mike: Well he called me back and said, “I got the fire out, and sure enough I ran outside because I heard noise and I watched a female raccoon run up out of the roof.” I said, “All right, I’ll be there.” Well, I don’t fit in fireplaces very well, they’re kind of small.
Jennifer: You’re not Santa.
Mike: I’m no Santa. I managed to get in there. I had to pull the damper apart to reach up in there because the way it’s designed your arms just don’t bend that way. I put some mirrors up in there and sure enough, there was a nest of young raccoons. There were three young raccoons in there.
Fortunately, we got the fire out in time, I was able to reach up and bring them out, and we set a live trap with some fruit and stuff in there that night for the female raccoon by the chimney because I knew she’d come back. We were able to catch her and we were able to relocate all three young and the female raccoon together, happily. Unsinged, unburned.
Jennifer: Yay.
Mike: But that guy got a fairly good scolding from his wife that evening for that little trick.
Jennifer: Oh boy.
Mike: So we put some chimney caps on the chimneys so it couldn’t happen again, put the damper back together and everybody was happy.
Jennifer: Fantastic. I love that. There are some pictures. I saw one and I didn’t know that was the baby raccoon, but I just saw it now that it is the baby raccoon.
Mike: Yeah, I’m covered in soot in that picture.
Jennifer: Covered in soot baby raccoon. We’ll share that one as well. If people want to get in touch with you, I know I’m going to post up your website and everything. What’s the best way to get in touch with you guys?
Mike: We’re on all kinds of different social media. We’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram, we’ve got a LinkedIn, Twitter. I guess you would go right to Critter Getter official and that would link you to all of our different spots. www.advancedwildlife.com is a great site for a lot of information. Obviously, like I said, that homebuyer’s checklist is on there and you can use that. You don’t have to be selling or buying a house. If you’re kind of curious after listening to this, “Geez, do I have any of those problems?” Go grab the checklist. Pull it out, look at it and go through it. Any questions you have about any of this stuff, just contact us. Opening a dialogue about this stuff is great. I’ll sit and talk to people about this all day. I have no problem with that. That’s kind of fun to me.
Jennifer: Yeah, it was fun for me too and I definitely want to have Mike back on because as he mentioned, these animals are all seasonal and different things at different times. You mentioned it’s crazy, chipmunks and bats right now, so we’re going to set up some other times to have him on the show so you can hear some more tactics, more tips and tricks and some more Seacoast season-specific stuff. There’s just too many kinds of things to prevent and I want to make sure you get all the info you need from him.
I’ll hook you up with everything you need also on our Facebook and Instagram, so thanks for listening guys!
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