From Prairie Dogs Beware
Judy Balfour woke up one morning in 1991 to find her husband, Gay, ranting about a crazy dream he'd had."What are you talking about?" Judy asked, her voice sleepy."I'm going to catch prairie dogs with a giant vacuum!" he announced.
Let's back up. After years of successfully navigating the business world, Gay lost just about everything on a marina deal that sank. Reduced to bagging groceries for a living, he pulled a George Bailey and prayed for a miracle. His "Clarence" came in the form of the dream that made Judy Balfour question her husband's sanity.
Cut to...2005. Gay, now 64, and a successful businessman once again, laughs at his wife's dumbfounded reaction. "I guess she thought I snapped my guitar string or something."
Maybe, but Gay insists that his dream is how his prairie dog extraction business, Dog Gone, got started.
Ask people out West and they'll tell you the ubiquitous prairie dogs are a nuisance. They and their burrows have wrecked farms, ranches, even airports. "I've seen [ranchers] close up shop and give it to 'em," says Gay.
That's his cue. He drives a retrofitted sanitation department vacuum truck to a "prairie dog town," where he shoves a hose down a burrow. A powerful blower kicks in, sucking up the prairie dog through the 30-foot-long tube at speeds that can reach 40 mph. The creature's trip ends inside a large, padded box at the back of the truck. Usually more confused than anything, the dogs are turned over to the government as part of a program to save black-footed ferrets, America's most endangered mammal. Prairie dogs are their favorite dish and a key to their survival.
Gay owes a lot to the prairie dog, and he knows it. He tends to the sick and wounded animals even though he's about to feed them to the ferrets.
"It's stewardship," he says.
Let's face it, when animals aren't being picture-postcard cute, they're usually doing something to annoy us. You may not have a prairie dog problem, but around two-thirds of all households had run-ins with wildlife in the past year, according to Dr. Mike Conover of the Jack H. Berryman Institute at Utah State University. They resulted in over $5 billion in damages. Those numbers plus the fear factor of sharing a home with a wild beast and it's no wonder that some 10,000 people make a nice living escorting animals off our property. We took a look around and found all sorts of animal removers removing all sorts of animals.
Whatta Croc
When the cops arrived at the house in Cleveland on the fifth of May this year, they already knew about the drug dealers, the dope and the guns. What they weren't expecting was the alligator guarding the place.It was "only" a three-and-a-half footer -- a baby -- that probably wasn't even able to do "much" harm, insisted John Baird, the man who hauled off the dino-wannabe. He removed it in the rubber tub in which he found it and brought it to an animal preserve.
Baird is a dog warden, and if he sounds blasé it's because he's seeing more and more rare species of animals, many kept by drug dealers whose newfound wealth has given them exotic tastes in everything from cars to pets. Although going nose-to-snout with a gator should have a deterrent effect, these animals are not generally used for guard duty. That role is reserved for another animal.
It's four in the morning, a few years back. Baird's inside a house that's been emptied of drug dealers. He and a cop are leaning into a bedroom door, praying that the six snarling, testosterone-oozing pit bulls on the other side don't break through. Even with 26 years on the job, the situation has John scared. If we open the door even a crack, he thinks, they'll overpower us.
The men arm themselves with the tools of the trade: a long pole with a loop on the end, which they'll use to lasso the dogs, and a can of Mace.
Baird signals he's ready. The cop slowly turns the doorknob, and instantly, the door pushes out as a collective 360 pounds of pure dog lunges for the men. The cop puts his weight against the door, buying time for John, who finagles the pole through the tangle of heaving bodies and slips the lasso around the neck of the lead dog. Like an expert angler, he yanks him up and out of the bedroom. The cop beats back the others with the Mace can and slams the door in their faces. Already worn out, they get to repeat this five more times. All in all, it will take five hours to remove the dogs.
The job isn't all heart-in-throat. Among the calls he's responded to was the one about a sand crane running around town after fleeing the zoo. And then there was the goat at the bus stop, waiting with the other commuters.
"It's never boring," he cackles.
Batman Begins!
You'd think people would take better care of a million dollar home in a tony suburb of New York City. Above the three-car garage, gaping holes lead into the attic."That's how the flying squirrels get in," says the large, friendly man. In his hand is the evidence.
Meet animal remover Don Schaus -- a bouncer at the gilded gates booting out any pest that's not on the guest list: raccoons, bats, rats, even coyotes. And business is booming, thanks in part to transplanted city folk whose visions of "Green Acres" have turned into "When Animals Attack." Occupational hazards include bites, clawings, disease...and ill-tempered bees.
Schaus got his introduction to the wrath of rousted bees the first time he was called in to remove honeybees from a house. "There were easily 40,000 of them," he says. After tearing away part of the roof to get at them, Schaus sucked out the bees using a bee vac, which he likens to a Dirt Devil attached to a storage box.
Now, experienced bee extractors go into battle sporting a full-body suit, a bee veil and hat that covers the upper body, and heavy-duty gloves that reach the elbows. Schaus showed up wearing garden gloves and a bee hat that barely covered his head. So the bee counterinsurgency found him unprepared. The first wave pulled a Pearl Harbor on his right wrist. A second circled his flank, getting him on the other wrist, while a third squadron opened a front up his pant legs.
Forty-odd stings later, Schaus retreated, wrapped any bare skin in duct tape and rags, and finished the job.
Schaus dismisses the bee attack as an annoyance, much the same way office workers feel about a jammed copier. For those of us who think wildlife is a dog that isn't paper-trained, this may seem surprising. But angry bees are all in a day's work for a man completely at ease with the whims and vagaries of wild animals. He even sees worth in the most reviled species.
"I like rats," Schaus says defensively. Huh? "They're smart. If they see you catch another rat in a trap, they won't fall for the same trap." Ah, that rarest of all humans -- the North American Rat-Liker.
"And bats can eat 1,500 mosquitoes an hour," he says, responding to a catty remark that bats are scary and they should all just go away. "Let them do their job."
Fangs for the Memories
"Asia has its tigers, Africa its lions," says Bruce Means, herpetologist and part-time snake remover. "We ought to champion the eastern diamondback as this glorious creature that's one of the major unique animals of the United States."Interesting words coming from someone who was nearly killed by said snake.
In 1993, Means was on a Florida barrier island when he stumbled upon a three-foot-long diamondback -- "a real beaut" -- which he tried picking up using a small stick and his hands.
Suddenly, a flash of movement. A sting on his right index finger. Means had been bitten. Almost immediately, his arms and hands tingle as the venom courses through his body.
"I just wanted to scream, holler, go ape," he says.
Screaming, hollering and going ape, however, have their drawbacks. Movement speeds the spread of venom through the body. But Means is alone on a deserted island, and being a herpetologist, he knows what to expect: If he doesn't get help soon, he's going to die. Means has to move.
The 2,400 feet back to his kayak feels like a convict's last mile. Means's legs are rubbery, and the tingling has spread to his forehead, mouth and temples. After struggling to get into the kayak, he paddles to the mainland. Most of his body is now numb and he's dehydrated.
Reaching the shore, Means can't move his legs to get out of the kayak. So he rolls the kayak and slips out. He drags himself 80 feet to his car and climbs in, pulling his legs in by hand. Manually placing a foot on the gas pedal, he pushes down on his knee with his right hand -- the only way he can put weight on the gas -- and then drives in first gear to his office, a mile away.
Upon arriving, he exits the car by falling out of it. His arms and legs are now completely shot. Unable even to slither, he rolls -- over curbs, sidewalk, vegetation, gravel paths -- until he reaches the door, where he's found and taken to a hospital.
Did Means's near-death experience change his opinion about this fascinating yet deadly animal? Not at all. It will have been worth it, he says, "if I can get one person not to run over the next snake he sees on the road."