Are the sounds in your attic real or imaginary? Worldly or unworldly?
One surefire way to tell if your attic is occupied by ghosts or varmints is to get up there and look around.
If the insulation is ripped and fashioned into a three-bedroom nest, it’s varmints. If there’s a hole in the side of the exterior wall in the attic, it’s probably critters. Finally, if you see scat, aka poop, it’s beastly beasts. I have it from good authority that ghosts don’t leave droppings.
If you’re convinced your attic is spooked by spooks, well, darn it, go on and call the Ghostbusters. However, if your attic is possessed by a family of raccoons, you probably want to call Lee Willie of Livingston Parish.
Lee Willie is a licensed Nuisance Wildlife Control Operator (NWCO). Willie and his NWCO brethren number patrol the state for nuisance animals. About a hundred are permitted by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) to deal with wascally wabbits and such.
Willie can’t speak for the rest of the NWCOs, but he can say that he will trap your nuisance animal humanely if at all possible.
“Folks ask me what I am going to do with the trapped animal,” Willie said. “I tell them I’m going to release them back into the wild.”
Then he’ll release the pest into the wild on his 270-acre pine forest near the Killian community. That’s out yonder east of the Lake Maurepas wetlands.
As example, I give you the strange and wonderful tale of Quank Quank.
Quank Quank is a mallard duck that lives in a pond behind Willie’s house, a pond Quank Quank is quite willing to share with Willie and wife Vicki, a bloodhound named Bear, six all-terrain vehicles and six boats.
Quank Quank was a bad egg. It seems he was living over in the Lake Sherwood area, but fancied himself wiser than the other ducks. He chose to search for food in a grande dame’s flowerbed.
Messing in a Southern lady’s flowerbed is usually an offense punishable by death, no matter what species you are. However, cooler heads prevailed and Willie was summoned. The gardener identified the trespasser and Willie threw a casting net over the unrepentant waterfowl. Six years later, the rehabilitated Quank Quank lives in his pond and is pretty much content to munch on the catfish feed Willie broadcasts into the water.
How does Willie determine if a newly-captured-and-released animal is doing all right in its new habitat?
“I release them from the cage but I’ll leave a can of cat food out for them,” he explained. “I’ll go back for the next few days to see if the can is empty. When I see that the food hasn’t been eaten, then I figure the animal has adjusted to the new place and finding food on its own.”
Willie has always loved to trap animals and he’s pretty much become the expert on trapping squirrels, raccoons and possums. Those are common animals that, while clever and sweet to look at in Disney movies, can be not so amusing in your attic, and aren’t that difficult to catch.
It’s no surprise that wildlife can become a nuisance if you live in Louisiana. Most houses in the Baton Rouge area are only a few miles from the wilds of the Mississippi River, a lake, pond, creek, slough or coulee.
Sometimes animals are not the nuisances at all. Sometimes man is the problem.
Take the case of the Red Fox at the State Capitol.
There are several lakes around the State Capitol. The Mississippi River is less than a half–mile away and any number of critters live in the lushness. It can be an animal paradise—no hunting, plenty of water—but there are cars. Lethal cars.
“Someone called me from the State Capitol and told me there was a momma fox that got hit by a car,” Willie said. “There was a little fox pup left behind in a den.”
Willie didn’t have to trap the little fox, the pup pretty much came to him of its own accord. The fox is too young to release, so Willie has applied to the LDWF for a permit to keep it as a pet. The pup is cute as the proverbial button. Willie will have the little guy fixed and the “glands” removed if he's allowed to keep it, but the state generally likes for wild animals to stay wild. (Thanks to the glands, foxes don’t smell nice, to humans at least—Willie’s little fox, christened Meaux, is no exception.)
Willie will even catch the occasional serpent.
“It’s springtime and folks are outside and the snakes are warming up,” Willie said. “People will leave a door open and sometimes a snake can slither in.”
But don’t worry. Willie knows all the ways to catch a snake. He’s even caught a large boa constrictor in the crawl space of a north Baton Rouge home. It seems as though the snake had dispatched the family Chihuahua.
So when the cat’s food has been eaten and there’s no cat around, who ya’ gonna call? Lee Willie, NWCO.
Sam Irwin is a freelance photojournalist who is a “hail fellow well met” kind of guy. His Art in Agriculture photo exhibit opens May 18 at NuNu’s Deux Bayou Gallery is Arnaudville. Follow his blog at LANote.org.
Details. Details. Details.
Lee Willie can be reached at (225) 698-6605.
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has a list of NWCOs at wlf.louisiana.gov/wildlife/nwco.
More on resolving wildlife conflicts at wlf.louisiana.gov/wildlife/nuisance-wildlife.
