As always, I receive my work at the office in the morning for that day. I get the usual: couple animal pickups, raccoon setup and a bee estimate in Manhattan Beach.

After I pickup the animals that I caught the night before and knock out the raccoon setup, I mentally prepare myself for the bee job. I don’t particularly care for bees. I’m not allergic, but every time I’ve gotten stung in my life, it’s been in the head. So you can see why I don’t care for them.

The work order I received from the office for this job did not specify that this nest is on the third story of the house. I’m not very fond of heights either but luckily for me it was on a part of the chimney facing the house and not the edge of the roof. I have my bee suit on and all the tools I need to get the job done. I come back down to explain the situation to the customer. I let them know what was needed to solve the job and what the cost for that service was. They agreed and back on the roof I go.

I like honey...mmmm

I eliminated the queen (very important). After that, the worker bees are all over me. This is natural, the worker bees have a job to do besides pollinating and that is to protect the queen and the hive. After about a half-hour the worker bees are gone. All I have to do now is remove all parts of the hive. If you don’t complete this step, other bees will just inhabit the abandoned hive. I remove all parts of the hive, honey and honeycomb and head down the ladder to safety. I let the customer know the work that I’ve done and she was extremely happy as she said she has little ones who play outside a lot and she was fearful that they would get stung. I knew for sure that they wouldn’t because I just removed them. Another happy customer…

Until next time folks!!

Trapper Vic
p.s. Check out this beehive removal job we did about a month ago!

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In this week of the stories of Trapper Vic, Animal Trapper we find him in a tight crawl space looking for something that MAY or MAY NOT be there at all!

I don’t normally work alone. I definitely prefer to work with someone. Not only because of the company on a long, hot day but also to have each others back when possibly wrangling with a raccoon in a crawl space. However, when I received a call from the office who had a dead animal in the attic job for me I didn’t think twice and accepted the job.

My first impression was what could this animal be? It is a beautiful home with virtually no entry points. Usually this tells me it is a dead rat. So I suit up, grab a flashlight, bleach, ammonia and a couple heavy duty trash bags and proceed into the attic. I wish someone would have told me that this crawl space was particularly tight.

I may have not obliged. I am 6′ and 2 bucks and some change in weight. Oh well, I’m here now and sweating all over this attic. I don’t see any hairs or droppings. The smell is very faint as well. So I spend a total of 45 minutes in this attic with no luck. I get back in the house and the customer tells me “I can’t understand why you can’t smell it.” She thinks that since I’ve been doing this for so long I’ve lost my sense of smell or something like that. I figure if she thinks an animal is dead up there, there has to be an entry point. I go into the crawl space which by the way is the cleanest crawl space I’ve ever been in and there’s nothing.

now what?

I decided to grab the ladder and hit the roof and right when I get up there I see 2 cats completely torn apart. I have no clue what could’ve done this. My only thought is a giant bird. I’ve seen coyote leftovers and they never have any meat on them, plus it’s on the roof. One of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. This roof is 2 stories too which lead me to believe that they were in fact victim of a large bird. I still don’t know. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them…

You Want Some Of This?

I get a call from a desperate customer in Sherman Oaks (cue in scary suspenseful music!). He explains to me that he has a pool party today and that a dead animal carcass is in the pool.

I get the address, give him a window of time that I should be arriving and I’m on my way. I told him from where I was coming, it would take at least an hour. He called me every minute after that hour until I arrived. Dealing with traffic I rushed there as soon as I possibly could. I arrived to a group of cheers. I guessed that some party goers might have arrived a little early. I also was asked frequently if it is safe to go into a pool where a dead animal was. Not knowing the situation totally, I give the pool a good look. The animal was in the deepest end of the pool at the bottom.

I didn’t have an instrument long enough to snare it, so I put on the board shorts and take off my shirt. I jump in and didn’t want to leave the pool. It was definitely in the high 90′s that day. I go under and get a good look and as I get closer, I see that this dead skunk is a sweater. Great, I came out here to remove a drowned sweater. I dry off and hand them the sweater.  They embarrassingly apologize and thank me at the same time. “No problem, guys. It happens all the time.” They kept trying to give me money and I just couldn’t take it. If I did, I would’ve thought about it all week and felt worse. I told them “I should pay you for letting me jump in the pool.” Everything worked out fine. Removed whatever was in the pool, the party went on and I got to jump in a pool on a long, hot day. All in all, it wasn’t a bad day. They were happy so I was happy and even if it was a sweater, I got it. The worst part of the job was that I had to take my shirt off!

Until next time folks!

Trapper Vic

Let's Get This Party Started!