Basic Fee Information
Local work, regular scheduled appointment: $150 to $200 will cover most initial appointments. This includes setting up traps to catch animals like groundhogs and skunks, snake inspections, basic deceased animal removal, and more.
Local charge to remove animals from our traps: $75 to $100 per trip, regardless of how many animals we pick up. If you are a current customer with our traps set on your property, you are encouraged to contact us right away if any animals are caught in our traps, regardless of weekend or holidays. Animal pick-ups for current trapping jobs are not considered an emergency service.
Emergency service charge cost (for doing work on weekends, after hours, or dropping everything and coming directly to you) is $500 to $1000. We require a $100 non-refundable deposit paid by credit card before we leave. The Critter Guy will come to your house ASAP, usually within 1 to 2 hours for most areas.
Out-of-Area Work
If you are outside of the area shown in our service area map, we encourage you to call us for a quote. Set-up and inspection fees for out-of-area calls are usually $250 and up.
Payment Terms
For jobs costing $1000 and over, we require a deposit and a signed contract in order to begin work. The deposit is 35% if there are equipment rental costs involved, but drops to 15% if we don't need to rent special equipment, such as lifts, to complete the job. This is the standard for construction-type services. Our contract precisely specifies when our work will begin and be completed, so you are not left wondering when your job will be done. It's best to avoid companies requiring full payment up front and giving you start ranges that go months into the future. And in the unlucky event that your bill is a bit too big for you to pay off immediately, we will work with you on very flexible payment plan options if you need more time. We know nuisance wildlife issues are oftentimes unexpected!
What We Do for Free
We offer a few things free-of-charge:
- Rebaiting or repositioning of our traps, when we think it's needed
- If an animal we weren't trying to trap (also called a "non-target animal") gets caught in one of our traps, we will release it for free the first time it happens.
- We can provide COI (certificate of insurance) and W-9 forms for corporate and governmental jobs, usually within 24 hours of request.
- Certain wildlife needs to be submitted to the Virginia Department of Health for rabies testing. We do this for free.
- If you contact The Critter Guy, we will gladly provide some advice on wildlife conflict resolution.
Free Inspections
Customers often ask if we give free inspections. While we don't give free inspections, we will waive your inspection fee if you choose to contract with us. If you choose not to contract with us, the inspection fee is due within thirty days of the bid's expiration.
Most routine trapping jobs like groundhogs, raccoons, and skunks do not require an inspection, and we just come out and set traps. An inspection would be necessary for things like bats, honey bees, flying squirrels, or certain other animals. These jobs tend to vary greatly in cost, due to their unpredictable nature. Our $150 local inspection fee gets you a comprehensive full inspection with a multi-page written bid. This bid includes photos and a full outline of the work we will need to do to complete your job, and any products we might need as well. We are also happy to perform a comprehensive full inspection and bid if you are out of area. Contact us for more detailed pricing information.
Payment
We take cash, checks, all major credit and debit cards, and a few digital payment services, some of which are linked here.
Venmo
Square
Why Should You Hire The Critter Guy?
The Critter Guy:
- Has had preventative rabies shots.
- Has extensive experience handing wildlife.
- Uses industry-specific protective equipment.
- Uses professional-grade equipment, including (but not limited to) professional traps and lures.
- Offers a written and signed five-year transferable warranty against wildlife re-entry via areas we excluded.
- Is very well-versed in the constantly-changing wildlife regulations, and we always follow them.
- Knows how to handle skunks without making them spray, and in the unlikely event that they do spray, we have professional-grade deodorizing spray.
Wildlife is often very unpredictable, and many customer attempts at remedying their problems only make the wildlife destroy another area nearby. In addition, certain attempts are extremely inhumane. We see things like this all the time, so don't make things worse by trying to fix a problem you aren't prepared for. Fixing these kinds of problems is our job and we're really good at it, so you should contact The Critter Guy instead and we can provide a service that will be more affordable and take less of your time in the long run.