Masters Services offers Wildlife Removal services in a variety of locations – the Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Oklahoma City, and the greater Denver, CO area. We work with squirrels, rats, oppossums, raccoons, bats, snakes, armadillos and more! Please note that we do not service cat or dog calls.
A lot of people ask what our most common wildlife removal call is. It does vary by season. Squirrels in the attic calls are very common throughout the year. Rat calls pick up, especially in the Houston area, come spring time. We get armadillo calls all Spring and Summer long – especially people who are concerned for the state of their lawn and garden. Armadillos like to dig up garden beds and grass lawns. We tend to get bat calls more frequently come early spring, and the bat calls continue throughout the summer and early fall. In the Texas area, we get snake calls all year long. Yikes! So to answer that question, there really is no one particular most common wildlife call.
Common locations to find nuisance wildlife are:
Are there animals in your attic? We can give you a free estimate and consultation by one of our wildlife technician specialists. He will come to your home and determine how the animals have been getting in. He will also go over specific animal removal and trapping methods. He will also talk about our sanitization and deodorization methods that we use, once the animals have gone. This first consultation is a chance to ask any questions or concerns that you might have about animal removal.
Masters Services has over 16 years of experience, and is family owned and operated. Our technicians are not only experienced, but friendly too! They will arrive at your home in a clean, logo’d truck, in uniform ready to help. We do not contract out, we are proud to say each of our technicians is a trusted employee that is part of the big “masters services family”.
If you think you might have animals in your home, this is the best time of year to get them removed- because they like to have their babies in Spring. The sooner you call, the less likely you are to be dealing with baby animals on your hands too!! Call our office and one of customer service specialists will be happy to help you. Call us at any of our five locations: Dallas – (972) 877-4650, Fort Worth – (817) 205-5749, Denver – (303) 720-7096 and Houston – (713) 723-4854.
Animals Inside Your Walls
When you suspect that there may be animals inside your walls, the job can be tricky. That is why we suggest you leave it to the professionals to assess the location and species of what is in your walls. Situations can vary – sometimes there can be one large dead animal in the wall that is smelling up your home. Or, there can be live animals scratching in the walls, creating nuisance noise. Live animals in the walls also create safety hazards by nibbling on the wiring and insulation in your home, exposing you to the risks of electrical fires. Either way, one of our techs can come out and assess the situation. He may be able to remove the animal by getting in through a crawl space or attic, or he may have to cut into the wall. If he cuts in to the wall, he will repair and patch up anything that he has cut into in order to remove the animal.
Animals Inside Your Chimney
Many different types of animals can make a home in your chimney is the common grey squirrel. Unfortunately, they can come as one, or can come in pairs and nest with their babies all inside of your chimney. The nesting material they use is covered with their scent, fecal material and other stinky items like dried food! Yuck!
When a technician comes out to assess for animals inside your chimney, he will first check to see if you have a chimney cap. If you don’t have one, or your existing chimney cap is damaged, he will take some measurements and provide you with estimates as to how much it will cost to get a chimney cap. Our chimney caps keep out the wildlife, and have a limited lifetime warranty! Check out our website and find out more about our chimney caps. After assessing if you have a chimney cap, he will assess the animal in the chimney situation by looking from within the firebox and examining the chimney. Depending on the type of animal, and the situation, he will choose the appropriate trapping or removal method.
*Warning* Never try to handle a wild animal. Although they may look cute and harmless, they can easily lash out if they feel cornered. They become threatened easily and can bite or scratch your hand and body. Squirrels are notorious for carrying high levels of bacteria in their mouths, so squirrel bites can easily become infected. They can carry rabies, mites, worms, and other pathogens that can be spread to you and your pets. In certain regions, they can carry ticks and fleas that carry the harmful and very dangerous disease lyme disease.
It’s also important that it’s not just squirrels that can get into your chimney. We frequently get calls for bats in the chimney as well. Sometimes people have larger animals that get stuck in their chimney, such as an opossum or even a raccoon!
Nuisance Wildlife Animals on Your Property
Have you been smelling skunks under your screened in porch? Have you been spotting raccoons in your garage digging through your garbage creating a mess? Or, maybe there are armadillos digging up your garden bed. Even worse, maybe there is a poisonous snake on your property and you have NO interest in handling this creature on your own. These are all things we can help you with. One of our technicians can set traps for these nuisance wildlife animals on your property. We can also remove snakes from your property, with either a trap or a special removal tool if the snake is larger and in one place. Once the animals (skunks, oppossums, armadillos and their babies) have been caught, we will make sure to safely remove them to a protective wildlife area – causing them no harm, but getting them out of your property!
Nuisance Wildlife in your Shed or Garage
Nuisance wildlife can create just as much damage as they do in your home, in your shed or garage. Sometimes animals prefer to make a home in these locations because there is less household activity, and less noise. The problem with this is that most times, homeowners don’t notice that there is wildlife in their shed or garage until the infestation level has progressed. This is because homeowners don’t necessarily spend a lot of time in their garage or utility shed, so they don’t notice the normal signs of animal activity like they would in their own home.
No matter what location your nuisance wildlife may be located, it’s important to get the issue taken care of as soon as possible. Most importantly, these animals are wild and can be a health hazard. Second, they can create multiple types of damage to your home, in a very rapid amount of time. It’s important to recognize the signs that you might have wildlife in your home or yard – here are some key signs that you may have wildlife in your home:
1) Hearing scratching noises from the attic or ceilings
2) Noticing new holes chewed in the soffits and other parts of the roof
3) Seeing animal droppings inside your home
4) Seeing holes dug up in your yard
5) Noticing the garbage cans gotten into at night
6) A bad smell coming from the attic, walls, or other part of the house
7) Hearing animal noises
8) And lastly – and of course – SEEING the animals!!
Accounts of customers we’ve helped:
We recently got a call from a frightened customer who had a four foot water moccasin in their yard. She had three small children and a small dog. She called us terrified and wanted someone to come out as soon as possible. We were able to get a technician out the same day, to remove the deadly water moccasin without a problem!
Another customer of ours was experiencing a strong odor of skunk spray coming from under her porch. It had gone on for almost a month, and she was hoping it would go away on its own. After waiting for a month, the smell was just getting worse. When she had guests over she would embarrassingly try to steer guests away from the noxious odor. She decided to call Masters Services to assess the situation. We had a technician come out the next day, and look under the porch. There was an entire family of raccoons living underneath the porch. He set traps for her at that same appointment, and within 24 hours 2 skunks were caught. He came back to empty the traps, reset them, and another skunk was caught. The tech came out and reset the traps. The homeowner is happy to report that the skunks are now all gone, thanks to our trapping, and the embarrassing and nauseating skunk odor is completely gone.
We often get phone calls from our Houston customers who are experiencing a scratching noise coming from the attic. Normally they think it may be squirrels or mice. In Houston, 8 out of 10 times if you hear that scratching noise, it is Houston Roof Rats, which are larger than regular rats and more destructive. This species of rats like to live “high and dry”, that’s why they think your roof is a great please to live. Now here is the account – last spring we had a technician work at a location of a customer that had been dealing with a pest removal company to try and resolve their issue of roof rats in the attic. The company, for the past five years had been going into their attic and trapping the rats. The roof rats came back EVERY year – like clockwork, right around Spring time. The homeowners were very getting fed up, and felt like they were getting ripped off. They thought that there must be a more permanent solution. So this time around, they called us at Masters Services Houston. One of our experienced technicians was able to come out the next day, and provide a free initial assessment. After the homeowners approved this work, the tech came out, sealed up the holes, and set traps. After all the rats were trapped, he sanitized and deodorized everything and the attic was like new. He removed years of nesting and feces that had not been taken care of previously. The homeowners called us this year and are happy to say that the roof rats ARE NOT back!! We also provide a warranty with our work – if one of the holes we had sealed up is damaged or if the rats are back, the technicians will come out to assess this for you. The tech will reseal the hole at no cost if it was something we sealed up.
Also, just recently one of our technicians, Mike, removed a cute little squirrel from a resident’s chimney just the other day. Although the squirrel looked cute, it was making a loud racket because it was stuck in there and trying to get out on its own. He removed it humanely and without damaging the chimney.
Above are just a few accounts of the wildlife removal experiences we work on every single day. With years of experience in all different situations, our technicians have seen everything and know how to handle even the strangest of situations! Please keep in mind that we do not remove bees, wasps, cats or dogs from properties.
Why you don’t want to try to remove wildlife on your own
Many people ask us why they can’t just take care of it on their own. Well, wildlife can be unpredictable and dangerous, for starters. Second, we NEVER use poison. Many homeowners use poison in an attempt to take care of animals like rats in their attic. This ends up being very problematic – a) it exposes your family and pets to dangerous toxins and b) most likely, the rats will die and end up being stuck in your walls – stinking up your walls!! This is the worst. Removing dead animals from your walls is more time consuming and troublesome than trapping them live, in the attic.
Why else?
We will take care of all of the after services of wildlife removal. That means you don’t have to worry about the dirty job of sanitizing and deodorizing the location of where the wildlife was. We will remove nesting, feces, and other debris and use a special sanitization system so that you can rest assured that your home is free of dangerous viruses and bacteria that wild animals can harbor.
Who are we?
Masters Services is a tight knit group. We are family owned and operated, and have been open for over 16 years. The owner, Chad started out as a technician himself, so he knows everything from the bottom up. His wife Christa is co-owner, and she works in the office helping out. Chad’s mom Wanda is the office Manager. Megan is a close member of the team answering phones and is in charge of the social media. Fiona is Chad’s sister in law and answers phones here as well. Rory, Chad’s step-father is the parts manager and makes chimney caps. Outside of the office team, who is happy to answer any question about animal removal that you might have, is our wonderful team of technicians. They have all been personally trained here at Masters Services. We often get calls from satisfied customers raving about how courteous and great our technicians are on the job!
Now is the time to call. We are open Monday through Saturday, 8am-6pm. We can normally get someone out to your location ASAP. Spring has sprung and the wildlife is here! Who knew there could be so many different animals that could get into your home and damage your property. Opposums, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, rats, snakes, oh my!
