From Aisles to Attics, Urban Trappers Stalk Critters From the Wild

Garon Fyffe, a hunter of sorts, spent two nights recently stalking wild prey from a hiding place made of cartons filled with rolls of paper towels and toilet paper.

“It was natural camouflage for a grocery store. We put it up in an aisle next to the bananas,” said Fyffe who, concealed behind the boxes “in the wilds of the produce department,” zeroed in on his taunting target--a sparrow.

The bird flew into the cavernous supermarket earlier in the week and was creating a nuisance, dropping embarrassing reminders of its presence on shoppers and on food displays. “I had to wait until it landed in a good spot and a time when there were no customers walking around,” said Fyffe, who generally stalks bigger game.

Fyffe is an urban trapper.

Armed with tranquilizer gun, giant nets, specially prepared bait and cages designed to capture animals without hurting them, he travels the densely populated metropolitan Chicago “wilderness” in a truck that reeks of skunk, answering calls from frantic homeowners who are unexpectedly sharing their living space with a creature of some sort.

Raccoons in the rafters, squirrels in the ceiling, birds in the beams are as much a sign that winter has finally ended in the Midwest and Northeast as are daffodils, ducks migrating north and April showers.

And as small animals, from skunks to opossums, celebrate the rites of spring by nesting and breeding in attics, chimneys and under porches, they provide work for a little-known species of urban professional, wildlife trappers and relocaters.

Squirrels Big Nuisance

Urban wildlife specialists differ from traditional trappers because they do not capture animals for their fur. Instead, they generally use cages to trap creatures without injury and then release them in wilderness areas. After removing wildlife, most trappers also animal-proof structures. Fees for the services range from $65 to $395.

“Prey” for urban trappers include muskrats, opossums, foxes and geese. The most common pests seem to be raccoons and squirrels, with skunks a close third. The Humane Society of the United States reports that squirrels account for 23% of nuisance wildlife problems experienced by urban and suburban residents in the Northeast, with pigeons ranking second among city dwellers and rabbits second among suburbanites.

“Raccoons are slightly more of a problem in cities than in the suburbs,” said Guy R. Hodge, director of data and information for the Humane Society. “Opossums are a source of substantial complaints in the Midwest, since they look so much like giant rats.”

William D. Fitzwater, secretary of the National Animal Damage Control Assn., said: “Animals look good on public television but when they come into the house, oh, do people get paranoid!”

Said biologist Bill Bridgeland, who specializes in excluding critters from homes and businesses in the Baltimore-Washington area: “It is an increasing problem. We are continuing to spread out into what was formerly wildlife habitat and develop it, displacing wildlife, and . . . some of these species have adapted to people. Some of them take advantage of structures and the food we provide for them.”

“Take the raccoon,” said Kevin Clark, who captures wildlife in metropolitan Detroit. “It is accustomed to living in a hollow tree. You take down all the trees and a chimney becomes a perfect man-made hollow tree to them. And if a raccoon is born in a chimney, that’s imprinted on him, that animal is going to go into a chimney just as quick as it is going to go into a hollow tree.”

Animals Drawn to Waterways

Although generally associated with life in the suburbs, a surprising variety of animals are urban survivors.

“It is a great surprise to many people how many animals live in cities,” said Louise Dove, a biologist with the National Institute for Urban Wildlife. “The big key is habitat. Wildlife has four needs, water, food, cover and a place to live, a place to build nests and breed. If most of those four conditions are present they (animals) will be there.”

Biologists also note that most major cities are built along rivers or at the edge of other waterways and that animals use both waterways and railroad rights of way as corridors for migration.

In Chicago, for example, rabbits hop in and out of the shrubbery of downtown apartment high-rise apartment buildings on the shore of Lake Michigan and not far from the Chicago River. Opossums have been caught along the Gold Coast, an area of expensive apartments and mansions also not far from water. In Detroit, there was recently a roundup of pheasants from railroad property at the edge of the downtown area along the Detroit River.

Fyffe, who often dresses as if he’s on a safari, once spent several nights tracking a raccoon--a nocturnal animal--in its adopted habitat, Chicago’s Rush Street night-life district. Eventually he caught the beast, which was terrorizing the resident of a nearby Gold Coast mansion.

Fyffe also captured five raccoons in a high-rise under construction in Chicago’s North Michigan Avenue, which boasts the most expensive retail and residential real estate in the city. Last spring he trapped a raccoon that took up residence in the American Indian section of the city’s busy Field Museum of Natural History, where most of the wildlife is either stuffed or reduced to bare bones.

“It was living up in the totem poles and eating from trash cans,” said a museum spokeswoman. “We asked our small mammals department to catch it but after three weeks we called a trapper.”

Although they are not yet as familiar to homeowners as plumbers and electricians, urban trapping businesses are opening up in metropolitan areas throughout the country as city and county governments, strapped for funds, phase out some of their animal control services. Clark’s Critter Control, a business founded only five years ago, is believed to be the country’s biggest urban trapping operation with 18 outlets in seven states from Missouri to New York and Ohio to Florida. Fyffe, with almost a dozen years of experience, is expanding his business, opening up branches into Northern California.

Urban trapping is already rich in lore. Clark once caught an albino peacock; Fyffe had to get a raccoon out of a grand piano where it was amusing itself pinging the strings.

And Dougherty remembers the woman who called to have him remove a dead animal from her bedroom.

“She was so scared she refused to go in with me,” he said. “Sure enough there was a foot sticking out from under her dresser. I pushed it aside and then asked the woman if she really wanted me to remove her mink stole.”