Biology of Gray Squirrels (Sciuris carolinensis) by Stephen M. Vantassel

Stephen M. Vantassel, CWCP, ACE

Lewistown, MT 59457

WildlifeControlConsultant.com

https://kingsdivinity.academia.edu/StephenMVantassel

402-489-1042 Mtn Time

Helping people responsibly and effectively resolve wildlife conflicts by teaching, writing, research & consultation

Control methods for thirteen-lined ground squirrels in a residential area by Stephen M. Vantassel

Stephen M. Vantassel, CWCP, ACE

Lewistown, MT 59457

WildlifeControlConsultant.com

https://kingsdivinity.academia.edu/StephenMVantassel

402-489-1042 Mtn Time

Helping people responsibly and effectively resolve wildlife conflicts by teaching, writing, research & consultation

Biology of Thirteen-lined Ground squirrels, their behavior, diet and reproduction by Stephen M. Vantassel. 

Stephen M. Vantassel, CWCP, ACELewistown, MT 59457

WildlifeControlConsultant.com

https://kingsdivinity.academia.edu/StephenMVantassel

402-489-1042 Mtn Time

Helping people responsibly and effectively resolve wildlife conflicts by teaching, writing, research & consultation

Plague, Yersinia pestis, signs, symptoms, vectors, and its prevalence in the United States by Stephen M. Vantassel. 

Stephen M. Vantassel, CWCP, ACELewistown, MT 59457WildlifeControlConsultant.comhttps://kingsdivinity.academia.edu/StephenMVantassel402-489-1042 Mtn TimeHelping people responsibly and effectively resolve wildlife conflicts by teaching, writing, research & consultation

You can’t depend on the published wildlife information alone when it comes to wildlife control, why you need to create your wildlife calendar that comes from your own personal research and experience in your area especially in microclimates within your own state.

Stephen M. Vantassel, CWCP, ACE

Wildlife Control Consultant, LLC

http://wildlifecontrolconsultant.com

http://kingsdivinity.academia.edu/StephenMVantassel

Helping people resolve conflicts with wildlife through teaching, training, writing, and research

Stephen Vantassel here, wildlife control consultant, giving

you another episode of Living the Wildlife.

Wanted to talk today about some relatively new devices on

the market when I mean relatively new, I mean, they’re not like new as of

yesterday, but they’ve only been in the history of wildlife control.

They’re relatively recent. We don’t have a lot of dramatic

changes within the wildlife control field. You guys over in the pest management

professional side with your pesticides certainly undergo a lot more changes.

In a shorter period of time than those of us in the wildlife

control area. But it’s all relative, of course. I want to talk today a little

bit about carbon monoxide devices. Yeah, you’ve heard that right. Carbon

monoxide, not dioxide, this is C O carbon with one oxygen, carbon monoxide

devices, as you should know.

Carbon monoxide is a highly toxic gas.

It is extraordinarily toxic. So if your hemoglobin. That’s

the part of your blood that captures oxygen to bring oxygen to the various

parts of your body. If your hemoglobin has a choice between bonding with carbon

monoxide, in bonding with oxygen, It’ll choose carbon monoxide.

The chemical affinity between hemoglobin and carbon monoxide

is significantly higher. I mean, orders of magnitude higher than the hemoglobin

is attract the attraction to oxygen.

And so there’s chemical and I’m sure electrical reasons for

why your hemoglobin is more interested in bonding with carbon monoxide than it

is with oxygen.

So this is why we have to be careful when you’re running

that automobile inside of a garage or when you’re having a gas powered heater

inside of a garage because that combustion is burning off. Is burning up your

oxygen on one level, but it’s also producing a very toxic gas. When things are

not being burned completely, it creates carbon monoxide gas.

So you you have heard me speak about carbon dioxide, which

is used at C O two to oxygen’s combining with the carbon carbon dioxide used as

a euthanasia euthanizing agent when we want to put down a particular animal.

But carbon monoxide is not only used as a euthanizing agent, which it is,

although there’s some concerns with it, but it’s also used as a control method.

You may have heard about, you know, grandpa or relative or

maybe you try to yourself who get angry at a particular random one, a burrow,

they’re like nothing works. And then they hook up a hose to the back. The old

Cadillac or the tractor and on the exhaust and then pump turn the engine on and

pump that gas into the burrow. And they would tell you how it works. And the

family laughs and whatever you.

So this is the idea behind these devices. So there are a lot

more sophisticated than your old grandpa’s Cadillac or the family tractor or

whatever those devices might be. These are devices with that are much more

efficient, much more user friendly than pulling out the old automobile. So we

have to remember with modern automobiles, catalytic converters, they burn more

efficiently. They’re you know, they’re still putting out toxic gas, to be sure.

But it’s not the same as your 1975 Chevy. So don’t use your modern vehicles.

All right. So don’t do that. Use one of these devices. But let’s take a few

minutes and talk about these particular products.

Hey, welcome back. Welcome back to another edition of the Pest Geek Podcast. I am your host, Frank Hernandez. Hey, we’re gonna be discussing proper selection of exterior tier one, tamper resistant rodent bait stations. And we’re going to be tackling the law and some myth and facts on this podcast. So this is one of those that is a thorn in the side of a lot of people, both in the professional pest control industry and also those of us who are looking out for our customers, looking out for the environment, looking out to do what is right. And the things that are going on in our industry are unprecedented, like any other time in history of the amount of problems that we have to encounter as professionals and a lot of it that is caused not by us, that we have nothing to do with lot of regulation coming out of California, that they’re wanting to get rid of the use of second generation rodenticides. And a lot of it has to do with the misuse and misapplication of a lot of these products. It has nothing really to do with a lot of professionals. Yes, there are professionals that we’re encountering that are doing things that are wrong, that are doing things that aren’t legal. There aren’t kosher, there aren’t ethical. They aren’t moral because they’re trying to cut costs or they’re trying to cheat. But that is not the majority of the industry. That is just a couple of people.

Top

3 Myths About Exterior Rodent Stations

Myth

#1 Exterior Bait Stations Must Contain A Weight!

Fact

No,

Myth

#2 it must be of a certain weight like 8 lb

Fact,

No

Myth

#3 There are standards for testing Tamper Resistant Station

Fact,

No

The biggest problems I have with rodenticides

has to do that. They’re being sold over the counter to

individuals, homeowners. You know, managers, anybody who wants to get a rodenticide

get it without having to comply with the federal requirements and the label. I

mean, I’ve seen this in apartment buildings where apartment managers are giving

their staff rodenticides to go put out and put out rodent station and put out

bait packs and throw them in homes, in storage units, storage facilities where

managers are going out and putting bait packs out in the open.

And the corners of storage facility, storage rooms, with no regard to what the fact that that label says that it must be kept out of reach of children. My biggest scare is the use of and a non anticoagulant, which is actually a neurotoxin being used and being available too non-professional when there is no antidote for this product, and you can easily buy it, you can’t buy it in stores, but you can buy it online. And that is a major concern.

One of the biggest myths that I’ve challenged people on this week and all groups I’ve been out there and I said, you know, what is the weight requirement for a tier one station outside? So that a child can not get into it.

And the reality is there’s mixing answers. Nobody has the

real answer, but the answer is actually in the EPA, its own Web site. Here’s

the myth, number one. An exterior bait station must contain a wait. No, it

doesn’t. There is nothing on the law that says it must contain a weight. I

can’t find it. I’ve asked people who are professionals that deal their

distributors in manufacturers. This question. Nobody has the answer. There

isn’t any.

Stephen Vantassel here, wildlife control consultant, bringing you another episode of Living the Wild Life for All You Pest Geek Fans out there. So thanks so much for listening. Hey, today I wanted to talk a little bit about trail cameras, trail cameras, now that they’re now that the prices dropped on a lot of them, as well as the size of the cameras and the quality has certainly gone up and certainly undergone a technological revolution. It’s certainly something that you may want to consider when you’re doing your work with pest control, particularly in my field of wildlife control that you may want to add to your arsenal. Trail cameras can do a lot for use.

Advantages of using tail cameras in Wildlife Control

Let’s talk a little about some of the advantages that they can do. Wonder taken cameras, they can pictures for you when you can’t be there. One of the things that’s so true about dealing with wildlife or pests in general is that they’re never doing what you want them to do when you’re all prepared for them doing. Who has time to be sitting in the blind all day waiting for an animal to do certain things? So in that regard, there are some advantages with using trail cameras because they can take pictures during the day and take pictures at night in their motion activated in some of the quality of the photograph. Photos can be quite good. If you want to spend the money for that level of quality in, you have good placement where there’s good action. But even on a lower level, they can be very helpful to identify. Problems that those small number of cases where you’re just

not sure what the heck is going on with that particular site.

One of the challenges we have with wildlife control and I’m

sure with pest control to look to a lesser extent is that customers lie. I

mean, let’s be honest about it. They just lie in sometimes. You were hired by

one person, let’s say the manager of a company, and he wants Animal X removed,

but the workers underneath him or her don’t because they’re treating it like a

corporate pet. This is certainly the case when it comes to things like cats.

And so this is a dilemma that we can have where there may be free range cats or

feral cats inside of inside of a facility and the manager doesn’t want them

there. No one owns them or they brought him from home or you know how these

things are. No one really wants take responsibility, but no one wants to get

rid of them either. Manager wants them gone. Year hires your company to remove

them. You’re setting up cage traps to remove the cats and someone’s and you

just can’t seem to catch one. And you know, the baits gone or the traps close,

the trap gets moved in and no one really at no one knows who’s doing it. And so

what you can do is set up some trail cameras and find that individual or

individuals who are messin with your traps because most states have laws

against the disturbance of traps.

Now, when it comes to feral cats, as you may remember, a

podcast I did earlier about this. You may want to go back to it, but I’m just

using that as an illustration of when you have people manipulating your

travels. This could be raccoons could have the same problem with raccoons where

people are feeding the animals and aren’t wanting you to remove them. If you’re

doing with apartment area and the owner landlord wants the raccoons removed,

but the residents don’t know where some of the residences don’t. And all of a

sudden, your traps are being destroyed, they’re being moved, they’re being