Limpkin Rescued on Christmas Day
Dusty Showers catches a Limpkin with a broken wing after a two hour chase. He was in the swamp looking for Christmas day snakes…no snakes but he noticed the bird and it’s wing was hanging. The Limpkin put up quite a chase, at times he ran after it, then it would duck under the scrub. After 4 or 5 times as he was ready to give up, then the Limpkin would show up again. Finally, he decided to give up and got in his truck and started to head down the dirt road…and there he was. When he was chasing it, he knew his only hope was to stalk it enough until it got itself into a corner. As he was leaving, the Limpkin ducked into thick brush over the water. Dusty was finally able to get him as he got caught up with it…while a gator was watching 20 yards away in the same water!
Burmese Python Removal on Bay News 9!
Dusty Showers of Creepy Creatures Pest and Wildlife Busters removing a 12 foot Burmese python of the front porch of a Tampa Bay Home live on Bay News 9.
Bats In Your Belfry
What really perplexes me is WHY bats get such a bad rap? There are probably more untrue myths about bats than any other animal. As one of my favorite animals, bats are not only cute…but they are also beneficial. While there are many, many different types of bats they all share the trait of being the only mammal that can truly fly. Other things you may not know about bats are:
- They ARE NOT rodents or “flying rats.” Bats are more closely related to dolphins than rodents.
- They are not blind at all although they primarily rely on ecolocation to navigate through the darkness.
- Most bats DO NOT carry rabies. Less than 1/2 or 1% of bats have rabies & when they do, they normally die within 2-3 days.
- Only the vampire bat feeds off blood…they are in Northern South America and Central America, not Florida.
- They DO NOT get tangled in hair.
- There are NO registered bat repellents.
- In Florida, it is illegal to remove bats from a building mid-April through mid-August. Doing so, may kill baby bats in the house and cause many more problems that follow…
- They ARE cuter than all get-up. : )
If you think you have a bat “situation” please call Creepy Creatures to find out how to best deal with them.
To find out more about bats please visit my friends George and Cyndi Marks at www.FloridaBats.org
What’s the Buzz on Bees?
While the visions of honeybee swarms moving in and stinging everything in sight is a scary thought, reality is far different than the thought of it. When a honey bee nest gets to a certain size…new queens take off in search of a new place to begin their hive. The size of this is impressive, hundreds and hundreds of bees moving through the air in a loosely formed group…quite scary…but quite harmless.
At Creepy Creatures, we get many phone calls from concerned homeowners that watch as a swarm of bees quickly move in and take up residence on the side of their home. They are always surprised when I advise them to give the situation a day to see if it resolves it’s self. More times than not, it was just the swarm settling down for the night only to leave the next morning in search of a new home.
There are plenty of “professionals” that will describe many of the bees they encounter as “Killer Bees” or more accurately “Africanized honey bees.” The truth is that it can be difficult to accurately determine what kind of bees unless you are a highly trained bee specialist…and most of us are not. Africanized honey bees are known for being more aggressive and give longer chase than domestic species. Their venom is also no more potent, but they do tend to deliver more stings as a colony.
The best thing you can do when you find a swarm of bees on your property is to let it sit overnight, then determine if it needs to be removed. Simply having bees on your property does not mean they need to be removed. If they are 30 feet in a tree, they are most likely more beneficial then harmless : )
