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He Evicts The Critters That Bother Humans
DURHAM -- The raccoon seems to think that if it stays perfectly still, no one will see it. But of course, the animal is in plain sight - huddled in a trap lashed to the roof of an apartment building. Looking up from the ground, Bob Jankowski greets it like an old friend.
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| Bob Jankowski - Critter Control of Raleigh, NC |
"What're you doing up there, ya big dummy?!" he calls out, pulling on a pair of gloves and leaning a ladder against the side of the building. Up he scurries to retrieve the caged raccoon, leaving behind another trap (baited with peanut butter and marshmallows) for any other raccoons in the vicinity. After he's satisfied that all the raccoon invaders have been caught, he'll patch the hole they've been using to get inside.
Raccoons are ill-tempered, destructive pests that carry nasty diseases, and Jankowski is their adversary. As proprietor of the local Critter Control franchise (one of several animal-removal firms in the Triangle), he's a guy you call when some unwanted creature invades your attic.
Still, Jankowski can't help but admire the raccoon. It's a well-fed male, about 10 pounds, and it's pawing at the bars trying to figure out an escape route.
"Look at his hands, how dexterous they are," he marvels. "They really are incredible. Raccoons are tough. They never listen. The babies are so 'cute,' but there's no such thing as a friendly raccoon. They're mean. That's how they survive."
Jankowski, 53, has been in the animal-removal business since moving to North Carolina 13 years ago from the Chicago area. He left, he says, because he "got tired of shoveling snow."
Today is typical of a weekday he spends in the field (he has four employees doing the same thing every day). He'll deal mostly with raccoons, squirrels, beavers and bats.
"Yeah," he sighs, "we're just knee-deep in bats this year, for some reason."
You never know what's going to turn up when the phone rings. Jankowski gets plenty of calls about exotic creatures, including iguanas, ferrets, coyotes and even the occasional alligator. Then there was the time he got a call about an unusual bird situation.
"One day this woman called and said, 'There's a giant chicken out behind my house,'" he says, laughing at the memory. "It was an emu. At one time, emus were going to be the next big meat item. But the problem is an emu will eat 50 pounds of dog food a week, and people got tired of that. So they started just letting them go. They're mean, too; they've got claws and they'll spit at you. I had to get a horse trailer and four guys to herd it in."
Critter-catching season
As the Triangle has grown, subdivisions and shopping centers have swallowed the surrounding countryside - and the former residents have had to go somewhere. That puts them in conflict with human invaders, and animal-removal specialists like Jankowski are on the front lines.
Because of the threat of rabies and other diseases, it is advisable to call professionals for anything bigger than mice (although they handle those, too), or the domestic pets that animal-control authorities typically handle. Critter Control removed 2,400 animals from homes in the Triangle last year, charging anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each time.
"Bob and his people were like military pros coming in," says James Tally of Chapel Hill, who contracted Critter Control to get some squirrels out of his attic. "They were that good."
There's no such thing as a slow season for critter removal. Either the weather is cooling off and animals are coming in, or it's warming up and they're coming out.
"We've really been on the run the last few days," Jankowski says. "It's warming up and snakes are coming out, so the phone just rings off the hook. People are setting up for picnics; they see a snake and freak out. Because the last thing they want to see is grandma jumping on a chair. They call us instead."
After stowing the caged raccoon in the back of his truck, Jankowski heads for a Chapel Hill subdivision to check on a beaver situation. As nature's engineers, beavers are particularly problematic. The dams they build can cause floods and sewer backups, and they're devilishly hard to get rid of. When amateurs try to catch invading beavers, as often as not the only thing they accomplish is to educate their would-be prey.
"They're North America's biggest rat, so they're smart," Jankowski says. "Beavers very quickly learn to recognize traps and won't go near them. Beavers and raccoons are probably the smartest animals I deal with."
Fun, with a paycheck
Jankowski grew up in Valparaiso, Ind., and he passed his youth catching animals - snakes, frogs, ducks, anything. He still can't believe he gets paid for doing the same thing as an adult. It's fun, he says, to go to class reunions and tell people he chases squirrels for a living.
By now, Jankowski can just look at a building and tell with near-certainty whether it has a rogue animal situation. On the way to Chapel Hill, he points out an apartment complex that he guarantees has squirrels in the roof because there are trees too close to the buildings ("They'll be calling me someday," he predicts). He also hates seeing open trash bins, which attract raccoons.
Jankowski must keep track of a dizzying number of federal, state and local laws. Some animals are protected and have to be released into the wild; Jankowski owns some property north of Durham where he does that. But others have to be euthanized, especially raccoons (which can carry rabies).
"I hate doing raccoons because of that," he says. "People will call me because raccoons are getting into a bird feeder, and I won't do anything about that. I tell people they need to take down the bird feeder and see if the raccoons leave."
He pauses a moment.
"Truthfully," he says, "I like dealing with animals more than a lot of people. They have more integrity."
Handling the humans
There are no beavers in sight at the Chapel Hill subdivision, but they've left behind a couple of dams that have backed up streams into stagnant ponds. Jankowski scouts where to set up traps and hops back into the truck to head for the Governors Club subdivision, where a house has a squirrel infestation.
Animal removal involves plenty of psychology, about people as much as animals. Jankowski prefers dealing with wild animals to domestic ones because the wild kind are more predictable. You know where you stand with a wild animal, whereas a domestic animal will turn on you for no reason.
As for people, Jankowski has dealt with some doozies over the years. There was the dentist in Cary who was shooting at bats; the people who ask whether he's sure he caught "the right squirrel"; the woman who trapped raccoons herself and spray-painted them red before turning them loose.
And there was the elderly woman who called him out to get some squirrels. "She asked what I was going to do with them," Jankowski says. "Then she got this strange look on her face and said, 'I growed up eating wild stuff. I'd like to have me some squirrel.' I pictured her running around her kitchen with a meat cleaver, chasing a squirrel."
For the record, Jankowski didn't let her have the squirrels.
When Jankowski arrives at the Governors Club house, there is indeed a young male squirrel in his trap. This is the third one Jankowski has caught this go-round, and he explains to the homeowner that he thinks they've caught the lot (including the matriarch). But he'll leave a trap there for a few more days to make sure, before permanently capping the hole.
Job 1 is extricating the animals. Job 2 is plugging the holes they use, to keep them from returning. If those two get done right, then there is no Job 3.
"Yeah," Jankowski says, hoisting the caged squirrel into his truck, "everybody wants to live with nature. Just not with nature, and especially not in the house."
Credits: By David Menconi - & Newsobserver.com
