The Critter Hunter

I don’t know if it was the harsh winter that we had, but animal litters have been a little later this season. As of last week I am now just starting to get more squirrels calls. For a while they have been nonexistent.

The calls from customers start out, “we are hearing scurrying sounds in the attic”. Once I am at the customers house I do a thorough assessment. I will then set a couple of traps in strategically placed areas. Within a few hours I will usually have the female, that’s the easy part. They are always slaves to their stomachs. They absolutely cannot resist a grocery store by their front door. The babies on the other hand can be a little more difficult. Right now I am noticing the different sizes of the young. Some have been ranging from 4 inches up to 10 inches. Depending on the size of the litter it can take from 2-5 days to capture the babies because they are very cautious. They haven’t experienced the outside world as of this time; they depend on the mother for food.

Most recently I trapped a solid black gray squirrel that was living in a wall of a church. I set two traps very close to the hole which happened to be in a real bizarre place and involved a little ingenuity when it came to setting them up. The female mother squirrel was caught within about 2 hours. She was released on my property and for the next 4 days one squirrel per day came out and ventured into the trap where they were caught. Since they were separated from the mother and still too young to fend for themselves, they are currently being fed by hand and doing very well.  When they are old enough they will be released on my property where the mother was released.

Read more about Squirrels at All That’s Wildlife, Inc.

Stay tuned for more stories on Baby Squirrels.

Rick Wilberschied a/k/a The Critter Hunter

Flying Squirrel

When the phone rang I answered “All That’s Wildlife.”  A voice on the other end said “They are back again!” Just by that short sentence I recognized the voice. This was becoming an all too familiar customer. Three times in two years I’ve been back to this particular house. She had an exterminator come to her house prior to her first call to me. They told her she had rats in her attic. Per our phone conversation and my experience I knew better and just assumed gray squirrels right away.

When I arrived at the house she greeted me at the door and took me up stairs to the attic where she was hearing the noise. She told me she had been hearing scratching, scurrying and squealing noises everyday for the past 2 weeks. After a thorough inspection I determined that it was squirrels, but not just any squirrels, flying squirrels. “What? A Flying Squirrel,”  she exclaimed.  She was astonished. She had never heard of a flying squirrel. And to tell you the truth I was pretty surprised myself, I’ve only had one other flying squirrel job before.

I determined where they were getting in but it was difficult to get to that area to install an excluder (a device that allows the animal to leave and not get back in) to get rid of them. I decided to place a colony trap in the attic. I told her this shouldn’t take long at all and we should have something within the next two days. But to my surprise two weeks had gone by and still nothing. She hadn’t heard anything and the noise had ceased. It’s like they magically disappeared. I resigned myself to the fact that this was a one-time thing. I pulled my traps after a few weeks were up and left. I told her if she had anymore problems to call me back immediately.

It was almost one year later to the day that I got the call back again with the same problem. Again, I did the same thing, as soon as I set the traps the noises and everything else had abruptly ended. Again after about two weeks of not hearing any noises I decided to pull the traps again and patched up an area where I thought they were getting in.

Again, almost to the day another year later, she called me again with the same problem. We put the colony trap out again. After two days she called very excited to tell me we finally had success, something was in the trap. I didn’t know who was more excited me or her. I got to the house went up into the attic and there it was a beautiful female flying squirrel. If you have never seen one of these animals they are absolutely incredible. They are about 4 inches in length in the body with the softest lush fur you have ever seen. Gigantic brown eyes with opossum like paws which are almost human like in a lot of ways and a flattened bottle brushed tail that acts as a rudder when they are gliding from place to place; it’s basically their steering wheel.

I stood there in amazement looking at this little creature that very few people get a chance to see. They can be very common in a lot of areas but are so well camouflaged they can blend right in to a tree branch without even trying. You could be looking right at it and not even know it’s there.

She asked me what I would be doing with the animal and I told her I am taking a 10 mile ride to a release location that I had and assured her it would not be returning to her house. When I got to the release location the caretaker of the grounds met me at the gate. We talked briefly and I told him I’d be releasing a flying squirrel, he looked at me and said “a flying what”. He had never heard of a flying squirrel before. “There is no such thing’ he replied. You will see one in just a second, I replied. When I showed him he almost fell over, he was amazed. “I never knew those things existed”. He became very interested in assisting me in the release of this little critter. I opened the cage door at the base of an oak tree. She stood at the door of the trap for the longest time and didn’t’ want to leave the cage. With a little nudge she hopped on the tree. She looked around and like a lightning bolt she was gone. We were both walking around the base of the tree to see if we could get another glimpse of her but she had completely disappeared. All I can say is they are truly amazing little creatures and was glad to have had the privilege of seeing one up close.

Rick Wilberschied a/k/a The Critter Hunter