The fact is,  coyotes are here to stay in Virginia. Their impact on you will be determined by a host of factors. If you are a suburban homeowner, you will notice little impact, unless a breeding pair sets up a core area in your neighborhood. Maybe some missing pets or frequent sightings, but only in rare circumstances.

If you are more rural and have livestock, coyote impact could be more significant. Livestock depredation is a very common side-effect of living with coyotes. Also, if you have rural land that is being managed for wildlife habitat, coyotes can make negative impacts. Little can be done in these instances to control coyotes to the point of eliminating conflict altogether; however, when specific coyotes are removed from the population, their impact can be reduced. The older and stronger the family unit, the more damage it can do. This comes from the animal's ability to exploit their habitat to the fullest.

January and February are good times to reduce your local problem coyotes, because their territorial instincts kick into higher gear at this time of year. This helps to catch the older "alpha" animals, which are the ones that breed and know where all of the easy meals live.

While The Critter Guy can come out and trap your coyotes, this can become a costly proposition in some situations. For the cost conscious do-it-yourselfer, something to keep in mind is that for a nominal fee, The Critter Guy can give guidance to your coyote control program.  Whether familiarizing you with materials, techniques, and equipment, finding the best locations on your property, or setting traps for you to tend, The Critter Guy can help you out. We feel no need to keep coyote control methods a trade secret. Bottom line is that it is a lot of hard work to successfully control coyotes but we can help you make that hard work pay off with results.

So whether you want turn-key coyote control, or you need some "coyote schooling", we will be glad to help out.

Across this beautiful Virginia landscape, you will find the rural areas dotted with horse barns and pastures. Many people are involved with the various equestrian pursuits, and some just like keeping a few horses around. Some undoubtably find horses a link to a bygone era, or a diversion from todays fast-paced society.

Today's horses won't find many hardships compared to their forebearers, many are actually quite pampered. Gone are the days of young colts becoming dinner for a panther or a pack of hungry wolves. The closest thing they will see now is a coyote who is generally afraid of most equines.

But, thanks to their pampered lifestyle, there is an animal threat coming from an unlikely source. Find a horse or two and a barn won't be far away, and usually this barn has some hay stacked inside. This makes ideal habitat for the opossum. Yes, the cute, "harmless", grin-and-pass-out possum can actually be a threat to your faithful steed. While not common, an increasing occurrence of Equine protozoal myeloencephalitis, could be potentially deadly to horses. This protozoa comes almost exclusively from 'possum feces, and believe me, they are not real particular about where they do their business. This means stored hay or watering devices could transmit this debilitating disease.

The next time you see "cute" possum tracks in the snow next to your horse barn, you might want to give the Critter Guy a call. We can take care of your 'possum problem, and clean up whatever unmentionables they leave behind. Don't clean up opossum feces yourself without adequate protection, they also carry salmonella, tuberculosis, yellow fever, leptospirosis, tularemia, Chagas' disease, and typhus, just to name a few.

They do play an important role as scavengers, but do you really need scavengers in your barn?

 Most modern homes have modern HVAC systems, and modern critters are quite familiar with their designs, and design flaws. Some of the factory vents and screens, are more for looks than anything. While some are insect proof, few are animal proof. Even if they succeed in keeping wildlife out of your home, nesting materials can plug air passages, reducing the efficiency of your system, or worse yet, creating a potential fire hazard. In some cases, animal nests can block exhaust from gas appliances, leading to potentially deadly situations for occupants.

  Removing the nest material is immediately neccesary, but what if the bird or animal is still home? What if it retreats farther into your ductwork? What if young are present? What about wildlife diseases and parasites present in nesting material?

  The Critter Guy is ready for all of these what ifs. Plus, knowing what it takes to keep wildlife out of your HVAC system permanently, and without interfering with your systems function.

We are now proud to announce that we are licensed in pesticide application. This will come in handy for the customer that has bug issues that need to be addressed, as well as those needing large scale burrowing rodent control.

As far as stinging insect control, we will now be able to use pesticides in those hard-to-reach places. We will still be offering our "green" environmentally-friendly, chemical-free stinging insect removal, which is popular with those folks with fruit trees that don't want insecticide contamination on their fruit.

We consider this just one more tool to bring to you, the customer, as we understand that many pest/nuisance situations involve four and six legged pests, sometimes at the same time.

Please be careful out there, it seems that our abnormally mild winter has set us up for high populations of wasps and hornets, and our hot weather is making them rather foul tempered.

Deep below our manicured lawns and landscapes, an invader dwells, ready to raise unsightly mounds to stub toes, dull mower blades, and become a nuisance to homeowners who work hard to maintain a nice lawn. I'm not talking about the things from the movie 'Tremors' (although I've got traps to handle those, just in case).

I'm talking about our blind, subterranean friend: The mole. The mole is not a rodent, but is an insectivore that spends almost all of its life underground.  Moles don't hibernate, they simply tunnel deeper following their prey during periods of cold.  If you see visible holes, these are most likely mole tunnels that have been taken over by voles. Voles are rodents, often chewing the roots and bark off of and subsequently destroying ornamentals.

If you look closely, you will notice the mole has enlarged "hands" for digging, and no visible eyes - no need for them underground. And don't worry, there is nothing wrong with your mole's gene pool, all moles have extra thumbs.

There are a lot of mole control products out there, and their effectiveness is hard to prove. Often the moles themselves reject the "poison worms", pushing them back to the surface. Perhaps the most effective chemicals are the ones that control white grubs, but this only eliminates half of the moles food source. The other half of their menu is made up of earthworms, which you wouldn't want to kill because of their beneficial soil-enhancing properties. The various mole "repellents", including the old wives' tale of various brands of chewing gum scattered throughout the yard, don't really have much scientific evidence to back up their claims.  There's nothing wrong with trying them out, but it might be a waste of money.

Trapping remains the most effective means of mole control at our disposal, with results you can see (if you want to see results). Best of all, it's chemical free. The Critter Guy is an accomplished mole trapper, with traps a lot more advanced than the ones you can buy at your local home improvement store. Give us a call, we can make your molehills disappear!

Honeybees are sometimes viewed by the homeowner as a pest.  Like many critters that are considered pests, they have a very important ecological role as pollinators.  I think they are the ultimate indicator species, letting us know when something is wrong with our shared environment.

If there are bees in your house, there is a chance they came from a wild colony, and there is something genetically unique about their colony which has helped them to adapt to an increasingly non-honeybee friendly environment.  Although it is not always possible, it would be nice to give these escaped bees a chance to live and prosper, just not in your house or other structure. 

Chemical removal may work fine on other insect pests, but other insect pests don't leave hundreds of pounds of honey and wax inside of your walls.  The natural world has many scavengers that will be drawn to this hidden bonanza, leaving you with a very sticky and hard to clean up mess.

The good news is in some situations that you might not want deconstruction of your property to remove this sticky mess, the Critter Guy can actually use bees themselves to quickly and efficiently rob the honey from within your walls.

This is just one example of the expertise and professional services the Critter Guy has to offer. The Critter Guy is well versed in several honey bee removal, relocation, and exclusion tactics. On a personal level, the Critter Guy is a beekeeper, and any bees removed from your business will live happily ever after in a beehive.

Armadillos On The Way!

Armadillos could become common in Southwest Virginia sooner than you may realize, considering that they have already made it to Tennessee. Pretty impressive for an animal that, mere hundreds of years ago, wasn't even on the North American continent.

Once considered a southern animal, this unique “possum on the half shell” is on a constant march northward. Biologists predict that the armadillos northernmost range will extend to southern New York. Being an insectivore with a fairly high metabolism, extended periods of cold weather are their main limiting factor. While the Allegheny Highlands or the higher peaks of the Blue Ridge might not be suitable habitat, they would certainly make it in the balmy Roanoke Valley.

While not as potentially damaging as some nuisance animals, the armadillo is a major yard pest.  Even though it is only eating harmful insects, the burrows it digs to get to them can be very unsightly. It also digs tunnels to live in. Oddly enough, armadillos can be a major road hazard due to their asphalt-like coloration and habit of running straight away from their attacker and jumping straight up in the air right before impact. This can put them about grill level on most vehicles, but sometimes windshields can be impacted. They are carriers of leprosy, but if you follow the rule of never touching a wild animal, you won't have anything to worry about.

Never fear, The Critter Guy is ready and waiting for this latest horde of marauding vermin.

Now that March's skunk love is slowly fading from the air, April's featured creature is none other than the groundhog, as it is referred to locally. A little farther north and they are called woodchucks, and down south, whistle pig is their nickname (named for their alarm whistle). Western relatives are marmots, both yellow bellied and hoary, themselves often nicknamed “rockchucks”.

No matter what they are called, this hibernator will begin making its presence known when it begins emerging with the spring grass that it feeds on. Its burrows provide denning sites for foxes, opossums, skunks, and rabbits but they don't do farm equipment any favors. Groundhog dens don't look so good in a lawn, and don't help building foundations one bit. Garden vegetables are in danger from this hungry member of the squirrel family as well, especially peas and beans. Another potential danger to the homeowner is the fact that ground hogs are rodents, which means their teeth are constantly growing, so they have to gnaw on things to keep them worn down enough to function. Hopefully they will not use parts of your buildings, plumbing, or wiring for their dental care.

Right now they are having babies, so if you have seen one, be prepared because you might see more. Adult males are usually solitary, but females and their litter will share a communal system of burrows. Their link to these burrows is their main defense against predators. Sharp eyed and wary, they can spot danger from far away, but often seem unable to focus at close distances. Their above-ground trails, appearing as small tunnels through vegetation, are marked by a series of glandular secretions - olfactory road markings for all groundhogs. The Critter Guy can take advantage of this trait by utilizing special lures that make traps very species specific, virtually eliminating non-target catches. 

Just heard from an acquaintance who was upset by an email circulating of a supposedly trail cam generated image of a mountain lion stalking a deer. This one was supposedly in Bedford, emailed from a buddy of a buddy's cousin and posted on the bulletin board of his wife's uncles garage.

As I have a long history both in wildlife management and wildlife damage control, mainly nuisance predators, many people have showed me and told me about this picture over the last 5 years. Sometimes the cat is facing east, sometimes it is facing west, always the same cougar stalking the same deer, sometimes in Franklin County, sometimes in Botetourt, and in Allegheny a lot. I've seen the same cat on trail cam pictures from Giles and Montgomery too. Sorry folks, it looks, as they say, “Photoshopped”. It has been randomly emailed throughout the Eastern United States, and has become the subject of an ongoing joke among wildlife professionals. “Where will the cougar stalk deer this week?”

But are there really mountain lions in Virginia? I know for a fact that you can buy one from a black-market exotic pet dealer for a few thousand bucks. There are plenty of people that have pitbulls, poisonous snakes, and other equally bad pet choices (any pet is a bad choice for an irresponsible pet owner). So there could conceivably be mountain lions in Virginia. What could be a better place for a bad pet owner to release a “wild” pet that has outgrown its home than “the wild”?

In its truly wild state, it may take an experienced pack of hounds a week to find this cat, so this may explain why some of the sightings of this animal happen so close to human habitations. Often these sightings happen frequently over a short period of time, not normal for an elusive alpha predator, but maybe perfectly logical for an animal habituated to human coexistence. Captive raised mountain lions would naturally hang around humans waiting for food, and maybe never make the transition to wild prey.

So if you tell me you saw a mountain lion, I might believe you, just not if you show me a trail cam picture of one stalking deer!

Exciting things are coming for The Critter Guy!  We've got a new updated website and we're adding lots of great features like this blog where we'll talk about some of the clients we help with their nuisance animal problems and wildlife facts that we want to share with you.  We have lots of other plans for the future as well so stay tuned and contact us for all your nuisance animal needs!