Check out the Illinois Extension Wildlife Website to learn more about these encounters.
Questions? We'd love to hear from you!
Abigail Garofalo aeg9@illinois.edu, Erin Garrett emedvecz@illinois.edu, Amy Lefringhouse heberlei@illinois.edu
Welcome to the first episode of season three of the Everyday Environment podcast where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Abigail Garofalo.
Darci: 00:19And I'm your cohost, Darci Webber. And today, we are here
Abigail: 00:23with Joy O'Keefe, associate professor and extension wildlife specialist with University of Illinois Extension . Welcome, Joy.
Joy: 00:32Hi, Abigail. Hi, Darci.
Abigail: 00:34Well, thank you so much for joining us. It is our inaugural episode of season three where we're focusing on all things wildlife and just really kind of diving deep. And so you're kinda here to tell us a little bit more like generally about some wildlife, some encounters, things like that, some awesome resources on wildlife. But first, what the heck does an Extension wildlife specialist do?
Abigail: 00:58I'm the first one. in Illinois, although there are numerous extension wildlife specialists across the country. And a lot of folks around The US that have my job focused primarily on human wildlife conflicts and interactions with wildlife that are considered pests and maybe ways to try to resolve those issues to reduce conflict between humans and wildlife. And I do a little bit of that, but when I got into this position, I sort of set out to not only try to address conflicts as people communicate with me about them, but also to try to promote more positive interactions between humans and the wildlife around them. And specifically by humans, I mean people that live in Illinois because I'm an Illinois wildlife Extension specialist.
Joy: 01:46And then I also wanted to encourage more people to get out into nature. And so the types of programs that I've been doing and the types of materials that we've been producing, such as our new Illinois Extension wildlife web page, have kind of tried to encourage more folks to engage with our natural resources in Illinois, and then also to quell any fears or concerns about some of the conflicts that people have and and then to give people the information to go out and have their own positive encounters.
Abigail: 02:20Yeah. So not just looking at, like, here here's some things that happen. It's like, here's why they happen. Let's try and understand them a little deeper so that way, you know, we can think about this, like, holistically as opposed to, like, single prevention. Right?
Abigail: 02:34Like, prescriptive prevention as opposed to prescription of, like, the problem.
Joy: 02:39Yeah. Yeah. We're we're with the web page and with the information that I give to the public, I'm always trying to invoke some curiosity in people, get them thinking about why things are happening, get them interested in going out to do explorations on their own. I'm a bat biologist by my primary trade. Right?
Joy: 02:58That's what I've always done my research on. And so I love to lead bat walks for the public and show them how with just a simple device in your hand, you can hear the echolocation calls of bats. And it's really exciting when you take a group of people out and have that experience because they realize that there's a whole world happening around them at night that they were unaware of. So I really like this kind of opening the door, the window to these new opportunities and experiences with wildlife.
Darci: 03:28I also really like how you commented the emphasis on positive interactions with wildlife because a lot of times people are afraid or they don't even like bugs or anything outdoors wildlife related. And so really emphasizing that positivity that comes along with wildlife and just living in collaboration with the wildlife around us.
Joy: 03:47Absolutely. Yeah. We fear what we don't understand. And so, you know, people don't necessarily get a a wildlife biology class going through grade school, so you're not necessarily going to be exposed to that. And even if you go on to college, it's very unlikely you would, you know, have a class that would teach you about wildlife biology unless you were actually in a wildlife biology program.
Joy: 04:08And it's too bad because, right, we're sharing the world with all of these different species, and it would be nice if we knew more about our neighbors that are living in our yards, that are living on our street, in our parks, sometimes in our buildings with us. You know, they're they're just trying to get along just like we are, and it it would be nice if we had a better understanding of them so we could kind of figure out, you know, why did this animal get into this situation and either how can I help it or is it actually a really a concern for me? You know, what can we do? So it's nice to get out there and teach people about nature and about wildlife in particular because by doing so, I feel like I'm enabling people to have more of those positive interactions.
Abigail: 04:49And even just, like, know what they're seeing. Like you said, people aren't taking those classes. And so if their interactions could just be like wildlife's over there or behind a fence or in my way. Right? My partner my favorite story to share about, like, wildlife and my partner is we went on a hike one day and it was in Champaign, actually. Urbana, excuse me. And we came across a deer and, like, it was a terrifying experience for him because he'd never seen an animal that large not behind a fence. Because he grew up in, like, Northeastern Illinois. And so he was like, oh my gosh. Like, it's so big.
Abigail: 05:23Like, is it gonna jump at us? Like, what's it gonna do? And I'm like, I mean, you know, deer versus you depending on the type of deer, like, or, like, the age of the deer. Like, yeah, maybe you're loose, but, like, it's not interested in you. And, honestly, like, the fact that we saw it at that closeness was not common.
Abigail: 05:40When we we think about, like, our experiences with wildlife, oftentimes, it is, like, a nuisance thing or, like, something our parents said don't touch that or don't do that. There's not this understanding holistic view of their ecology, their homes, and all of these different pieces in between that help us really understand the why.
Darci: 05:59So, Joy, we need some advice on wildlife. So we're gonna go ahead and ask you some common questions that we get about wildlife. We're gonna give you a scenario, and then you're gonna tell us a little bit about why the animal did that and what we should do. So first up, we have there are these shield shaped bugs in my house.
Joy: 06:18Yeah. The I get those shield shaped bugs in my house too. I think we're talking about the stink bug or brown marmorated stink bug, which is actually a non native invasive species that has done very well in at least the Eastern United States. And I'm not super familiar with these bugs, but I know that they are a true bug. True bugs have a piercing mouth part that they will pierce usually leaves and suck the juices out, but sometimes other insects, they will also prey upon.
Joy: 06:51But shield bugs are not harmful to us. In most cases, they're not gonna be crawling on you. They'll be crawling around your windows. They are usually found around cracks and crevices. And I think that when you find them in your house, that that's a good indication that there may be some cracks or crevices you might wanna seal up.
Joy: 07:07Right? They could be coming in through gaps in the windowsills or gaps in the doors, or there could be holes in the screen. So if you don't want them in the house and you see them, then it's a good idea to look for how they might be getting in, and they they will sometimes accumulate around those those doorways. They are seasonal, so you won't see them all year. You'll just see them for a portion of the year.
Joy: 07:30And I would say that encouraging spiders is a good way to kind of generally keep bugs out of your house, but I know very few people who want to share their houses with spiders. I don't tend to mind spiders, but spiders will kill some of the smaller insects that get into your house, but brown marmorated stink bugs are a pretty big insect for any spider to take. You'd have to have kind of a monster spider in your house to get them. So your best bet is to remove them. You can sweep them up.
Joy: 07:57You can vacuum them up. It's not a great fate for the stink bug, but it's a way to get them out of the way. Or you can scooch them outside just as you might other insects. Like I said, they're not gonna be harmful to you. You don't have to worry about one trying to bite you.
Joy: 08:13It probably wouldn't happen. If you crush them, there is a smell, so you might not want to, you know, crush them up. But other than that, I don't think that they're really a problem, but it it is an indicator that, yeah, there might be some some gaps in your fortress.
Abigail: 08:30Yeah. Those, you said that that, like, piercing mouth part and, like, that's usually, like, for, like, plants. Right? Like, that's not they're not piercing your skin. That's not what they're doing.
Joy: 08:40No. No. So there are some bugs that will bite people if they get in a tight situation. I had a a friend, a former professor, actually, who told me he had a big a a big bug, a water bug get into his waders when he was out sampling in the water, and it got caught in a tight place there, and it actually bit him, you know, in his leg, and it was painful because it was a a pretty big bug, much bigger than these these shield bugs. But these shield bugs are actually plant predators and are considered a nuisance to some of our crops, including, I believe, they will eat grape plants.
Joy: 09:19And I have a friend who did a study on them in the Northeast. She works in New Jersey, and she actually used bats to figure out where the stink bugs were because bats were eating them. And you could detect the the DNA of the stink bug and the bat poop and then figure out kind of where you had an infestation of these bugs. And the bats were able to pick them up before regular insect traps were able to pick them up. So that was a kind of a cool method.
Joy: 09:46She called it chiro surveillance. But, anyways, yeah, they're they're they're a problem for plants, but they're not a problem for us.
Abigail: 09:54That is so cool. I'm, like, over here, like, wait a minute. So the research methods are, like, crazy to me. Like, I'm actually, like sometimes I'm, like, more interested in how they did it than, like, what they found. I'm, how did you use And they were like, oh, no.
Abigail: 10:12We looked at the DNA and the poop.
Joy: 10:14Yeah. Yeah. We just we take the we take the guano or poop. They're little pellets that kind of are shaped like a Tic Tac. We grind them up.
Joy: 10:22We pull the DNA out with using some different solutions that come in a kit. We send a little DNA sample, which is just a tiny clear vial of liquid over to the sequencing center on campus, and they send us back a spreadsheet with, like, a gazillion data points in it. It's all the sequences that that literally, letters t c g a, which are the barcodes for DNA, just arranged in different formats, and we try to compare those. It's like a game of concentration. You compare that to the data that's uploaded to the barcode of life database.
Joy: 10:59So anybody who has sequenced an insect, if they've put their information there, then we can compare what the bats were eating and kind of find the matches. And then if we have a lot of matches, then we feel pretty confident that, yes, this bat was eating that. And when we do these types of diet analyses for bats, we find that they're eating all sorts of insect pests, A lot of the nonnative pests, not necessarily enough to control their populations, but certainly it cannot hurt to have some bats around to eat those bugs.
Abigail: 11:28Yeah. I also love that your answer was like ecology. Like, you were like, maybe bats, maybe spiders, like predators, which is also commonly my answer for people who have, like, like, they're like, I have a rabbit problem. They're eating all my new plants coming in, and I'm like, get a hawk, man. Like, that's the best way.
Abigail: 11:52Yeah. In your yard. I don't know if the hawk's gonna, like, eat the rabbit, but it's definitely gonna put some fear in that animal. Right. It's too funny.
Darci: 12:03Alright. Let's look at our next one. Let's talk
Abigail: 12:05about mammals. Squirrels. Some people love them, some hate them. I famously love them, but they're digging in my garden and I don't like it because they're digging up all the things I want.
Joy: 12:18Well, first off, there's two kinds of squirrels that you're typically gonna see digging in your yard in Illinois, and it interestingly depends on where you are on which kind of squirrel you're gonna encounter. So in some places, it's a fox squirrel, which has kind of orangish tint to some of the fur, and it's a bigger squirrel. And then we also have the gray squirrel. So those are two different species, and different cities have the more dominant population. And it can relate to the characteristics of the city, but also it's or some kind of weird spatial configuration.
Joy: 12:49So here in Champaign Urbana, we have gray squirrels buy and large, but I used to live an hour and a half southeast of here in Terre Haute, Indiana, and we had fox squirrels. So the squirrels are gonna do what squirrels are gonna do. They are very curious. They tend to be numerous in urban environments. They do quite well in our urban spaces, and they're also often very hungry.
Joy: 13:15So they're going to dig in gardens, you're gonna have to be mindful of that in whenever you're doing any planting. One thing to know is that squirrels really key in on, like, fresh soil. They see that as an opportunity to leave a mark and maybe let the other squirrels know this is my territory. This I've buried something here. You leave it alone.
Joy: 13:36And so if you plant fresh plants, new plants, or seedlings, squirrels may go and dig in your pot. An easy way to deal with that is to use chicken wire to cover anything that's brand new. You may need to leave chicken wire on certain types of plants longer because squirrels may go after them, you know, perpetually. But for other plants, just having chicken wire at the start can keep the squirrels away from the plants. You could also put sharp things in the pot to kinda keep the squirrels out.
Joy: 14:08I noticed someone had put you know how we we get handed, like, a million and one plastic forks at various events, and you're like, what do I do with these? I don't know. I have a drawer full of them. You could put them upside down in your pot so that the sharps' hearts are sticking up, and that will actually keep squirrels from, you know, digging in the pot because there's too much sharp stuff. So but there are certain things that you can plant that squirrels don't like.
Joy: 14:35So you might look for a list of, you know, like, instead of big tomatoes, plant cherry tomatoes. You're not gonna lose as much by squirrels eating them. They also don't like pepper, so you can spray things with pepper. In the fall, if you put pumpkins on your porch for Halloween time, a lot of people have problems with squirrels chewing at their pumpkins. You can coat the pumpkin with, like, a just as a watery paste made with cayenne pepper and water, and that'll help keep the squirrels from chewing on it because when they taste that, they won't like it, and then they'll they'll leave it alone.
Joy: 15:08I do wanna say, even though I mentioned chicken wire, you really wanna avoid plastic mesh. Plastic mesh is a common prescription for, like, keeping wildlife off of your plants, but it has some detrimental effects on wildlife. So snakes and birds will get caught in plastic mesh and can die there because they can't get themselves out. It's just not rigid enough in the way that, like, chicken wire is, so you you don't have the same problems with chicken wire. So I would say keeping plastic mesh out of your garden is a really good idea, but there are some other things you can do to keep the squirrels, you know, elsewhere.
Abigail: 15:49I actually always let the pump like, the squirrels eat my pumpkins because I'm like, well, you know, they're just gonna go in the trash. It's actually any and I just go, you know, somebody ate them. Somebody enjoyed them.
Joy: 16:01Right. Right. And you're boosting the squirrel population too. Oh, yeah. You know, the the cayenne pepper will wash off.
Joy: 16:08So if you wanna have, like, a week of, you know, nice beautiful pumpkin and then let it sit in the rain, the the pepper paste will wash off, and then the squirrels can can have at it.
Abigail: 16:17That's a great solution too. Because oftentimes I hear people, like, wanting to do, like, you know, like synthetic things, like the or not, like, I don't know, bleach that counts as a bill. Like, bleach the outside of the pumpkin or, like, you know, cover it with some kind of, like I don't even know how to say like, resin isn't the right word, but, you know, like, some kind of, like, coating sealant, and I'm like, yeah. But then, like, nothing could use. Right? It's done. That pumpkin is Yeah. Yeah. We all have a little pepper in the cupboard that we're not using. Right? So you could make a paste with that from the chili you made last year and then, you know, cover that up.
Abigail: 16:53Correct me if I'm wrong. The, like, birds in particular can't taste like that spice. Right? So that has an effect, like, if you because I've heard that is like a squirrel repellent for, like, bird feeders is like pepper.
Joy: 17:07Yeah. You say they use pepper or there's sometimes you can buy bags of seeds that they have pepper on the seeds already if you wanna keep squirrels off. The birds don't taste it, but the squirrels do, so they'll leave it alone.
Abigail: 17:20Yeah. Okay. Here's, like, a small question, like, about squirrels because we're still on the topic. My neighbors like to throw, like, bread and stuff out, and I feel like the squirrels eat it. And I wanna know what's, like, what's going on with the squirrels.
Abigail: 17:35Because the squirrels in my neighborhood feel really fat. I just, like
Joy: 17:40Yeah. Squirrels are adapted to eat seeds and nuts and sometimes plants. They're not adapted to eat bread. And in general, feeding bread to wildlife is a bad idea because what you're doing is you're giving it a non or, like, a novel food that's different than what it's adapted to eat. We know that by giving wildlife these weird foods, we are potentially changing their gut microbiome, changing the bacteria that live in their gut that help them to digest the food that they normally eat, and we're making them acclimated to human foods.
Joy: 18:16It's basically junk food, a lot of sugar in bread, things that squirrels are just not adapted to handle, and so you potentially could be creating, like, a diabetic squirrel. You know? Not a good idea to feed them things that they're they're not really adapted to eat. So I would I would discourage that. Now squirrels eating bird seed, yeah, they they're not adapted to eat specifically the seeds from that we feed.
Joy: 18:42You know, maybe maybe your squirrel has never seen millet until you put it out, but it is a seed. It has very similar characteristics to seeds from other plants that they're accustomed to eating. And so that's fine. But when we start deviating and giving squirrels bags of chips and, you know, loaves of bread, then we've we're doing them a disservice.
Abigail: 19:02Good to know.
Darci: 19:04So I know most snakes in the state are not harmful. They're fine. We like having snakes around to care for those rodent issues. But if I come across a big black snake in my backyard or basement and I really don't want it, what do
Joy: 19:17I do with it? Yeah. That is there.
Abigail: 19:20Oh, why is it there? Well, I would say that,
Joy: 19:22you know, anytime you find a snake in your basement, you have to wonder if you do have a rodent problem because most of our snakes are adapted to eating mice and squirrels and rats. So they'll come around where those are. Know, the the snake might be trying to do you a favor. However, for two reasons, you're gonna wanna get it out of the basement. One, it may not be able to get out on its own.
Joy: 19:47Two, you may not want it in your basement. So you wanna help that snake along, try to get them outside. Now as you mentioned, Darcy, like, most of our snakes in Illinois are not venomous, and of the snakes that are likely to get into your basement, venomous snakes are pretty unlikely. But you're most likely to find a black rat snake in your basement. This is a snake that has done very well with humans.
Joy: 20:12It's kind of a generalist and can thrive in a lot of environments, and they will go after mice and rats. These snakes, unfortunately, can get to be pretty big, four to five feet long. And as they get older, they get darker. So when they're young, they actually have a pretty nice pattern on them. And I found a juvenile black rat snake in my basement about four years ago.
Joy: 20:35We had just had the basement covered in the plastic barrier to keep the water out. And where they had taped two pieces together, there was a little bit of tape that was sticking up, I guess, and the snake got stuck on the tape. My husband alerted me to it. I actually used oil, like, vegetable oil to get the snake off. The snake was probably about a foot long, really so small that its bite would be completely like, it would have a hard time penetrating my skin, so I'm not scared of snakes, so I was easily able to, you know, dislodge the snake and take him outside and let him go.
Joy: 21:07I do wonder if he was coming in the house because he smelled mice. We definitely have mice that get in our basement. But a bigger snake, you know, four or five feet long, it's gonna it's definitely gonna try to bite you if you pick it up. They can be kind of scary, and I would say most people aren't gonna wanna try that. So what I would recommend is doing something like what you might do if you find a spider that you also don't want to pick up, but you want to get out of the house safely, is try to encourage the snake to get into some sort of a container.
Joy: 21:36So I'm thinking like a a rubber tote, like a Rubbermaid tote. Put it on its side. Use the broom to kind of push the snake towards it. The snake will go into this dark confined space more readily, and you could put the lid on it. And then you'll be able to carry it outside, dump the snake out.
Joy: 21:52Right? You can use a cardboard box, but trying to close the lid of a cardboard box might be challenging if you're worried about being bitten. The snake is gonna move around inside a box, and it's gonna try to find its way out as soon as it realizes that it's trapped. Be aware of that. But when you're approaching a snake that's in your house in the basement, or if it's upstairs, you might be able to just sweep it out the door or kind of push it towards the door with a broom.
Joy: 22:17But if it's in the basement, you may need to approach it slowly and try not to scare it because it's either, a, gonna try to get away, which might end up going into a place where you can't reach it, or it might get aggressive. Sometimes even a black rat snake will rear up. It'll do it, like, kind of a serpentine shape bob back and forth like a cobra, which is terrifying for the average person. Right? Like, I think it's really cool because I'm like, you're just bluffing.
Joy: 22:43This is stupid. You're not venomous.
Abigail: 22:45But through Over here is like, oh, yeah. Like, look at you trying to show off. I know you.
Joy: 22:50Exactly. But, Sheila, you got us, you know, like terrifying. I know. The snake is trying to be as scary as it can be, and they will actually even rattle their tails. They don't have a rattle, but they'll rattle their tail and really try to make you think that they are dangerous.
Joy: 23:04So that can all be scary. So if you can approach the snake slowly, carefully, kind of calmly, you know, give it something to go into and then just kinda nudge it over with a broom, it should work its way towards a an opening like that. You could also try a bucket and then take it outside.
Abigail: 23:23Yeah. No. That's a good option. My first thought was, like, wear closed toe shoes. That was when I heard that.
Abigail: 23:28I was, like, with the broom and closed toe shoes. Like, I Well, it's very unlikely
Joy: 23:32to bite you unless you grab it. So it's not gonna come over and bite your feet. It is not gonna do that. It's just not. But if you grab a snake, it will try to bite you.
Joy: 23:42I've been bitten by many, many snakes. I used to do environmental education and use big snakes, so I'm very comfortable around those big black rat snakes. But I would still think carefully about how I was going to approach it, and where I was going to grab it before I did so that I didn't get bitten. And if you do get bitten by a big snake, you run the risk of getting an infection from bacteria, so you've to clean that out. So just I'm sure most people would want to avoid it.
Joy: 24:05A lot of people have seen probably kind of a Steve Irwin style, like, something across the back of the head and press down really hard and then grab the snake behind the head, and you can do that, but you're putting a lot of stress and pressure on that snake, and it could be harmful. So I wouldn't recommend it, and most people are not Steve Irwin, so not a not a great strategy.
Abigail: 24:27So broom and box, and now we know when we go over to Joy's house, and she has, like, a little Rubbermaid tote in her corner. We're like she's like, that's my snake tote. That's
Abigail: 24:36Oh, I
Joy: 24:36would just grab him. But I'm a wildlife biologist.
Abigail: 24:43So so my first thought too was, like, when you saw that, you asked the question of why is that animal there in the first place. Right? Which I think is, like, a really, really great thing to think about. In college, I had to do, like, an insect collection, and my friend gave me this wasp was like, because he knew I was collecting insects for my my class. And I brought it to the, like, the professor and he was like, did you find this in your house?
Abigail: 25:07And I was like, no. My friend did. And he goes, you should call him this, like, is a wasp that I can't remember the species, but it, like, primarily hunts cockroaches. And so, like, if you have this wasp in your house, you probably have cockroaches, which, like, just maybe know. And so, like, when you see these animals around and they're, like, understanding their behavior and their place in the ecology and in ecosystem is really valuable because you're like, oh, this is an indicator of a a bigger problem.
Abigail: 25:35I could get rid of the snake, but the snake's just gonna come back if I keep having
Abigail: 25:39Mice and things it likes to eat, and same thing with all of those other insects. Right?
Joy: 25:43Right. Exactly.
Abigail: 25:45Well, speaking of mice in our house, there is a mouse in my house. What do I do? I had mice recently in my house, and it's been really stressful.
Joy: 25:52Oh, no. What did you do?
Abigail: 25:54But what did I do? I for a while, like, trapped because I remember your posts about, like, sticky traps and how they're not good. And then I was like, there's a bigger problem here and I understand. Using my naturalist brain, the psychology brain, I, like, looked into a company that would help me manage IPM wise prevention. And so then they told me that I needed to seal my house, which would cost me $6,000.
Abigail: 26:20So we are not doing that because I don't have that kind of money at the moment, but we are currently trying to find prevention methods and trying to prevent my neighbor from putting up their bird feeder, honestly, because that's Also
Joy: 26:34Mhmm. Yeah. Bird feeders will definitely I used to get mice in my apartment in Terre Haute, and I had birdseeds scattered all over the patio for the birds, and the the mice would come at night and grab the birdseeds. So it was no wonder that I had mice get in my apartment. Yeah.
Joy: 26:50It's a trade off. Right? If you can keep your bird feeder away from the house, that would be good. We also have a big fat cat named Rooster that likes to chase mice and terrorize them, so that helps to keep the mice down within our house. But Rooster lives inside only, but he does stake out the places where mice get in.
Joy: 27:08One thing to think about when you see mice in your house is why are they there? What are they after? So if you have food out on the counter, like finding places to store bread and things like that so that there's not good things for them to eat. You also do want to really clean up carefully after mice, because with their urine and with their hoop, they can be potentially a vector for diseases, particularly viruses like hantavirus, so you wanna be real mindful of that and and clean up carefully. And it can be pretty smelly.
Joy: 27:38We just had mice in our car, and we're trying to, you know, change the cabin filter for the car and trying to get rid of all the things that were bringing the smell into the car. But as I probably told you, snap traps are actually a fairly humane and effective way to deal with mice in your house. You may not want to kill things, and I think a lot of people don't want to deal with carcasses of animals. And so for some reason, people gravitate towards glue traps. Maybe they don't seem quite as grizzly, but they're actually it's actually the complete opposite.
Joy: 28:14Goo glue traps are horrible. Lots of things can be stuck on them, and if you're using glue traps to control rodents, you are subjecting that rodent to a long and painful death. Right? Being stuck on a glue trap until you die and starve. Whereas if you use a snap trap, it's instantaneous.
Joy: 28:34So I bake snap traps with little peanut butter, sprinkle a little oats on there. I make them in plastic and wooden varieties. You can buy them at hardware stores. You'd have to be careful about them, especially if you have kids or pets. They're kind of tricky to set, but put them along runways where you expect mice to be traveling, like, up against the underside of your kitchen cupboards, and the mice will encounter them as they're moving along.
Joy: 28:58And you can actually use rubber gloves or latex gloves, you know, to get the mouse out of the trap. Double bag it. If you have a lot of property, you could just throw it somewhere outside. But if you don't and you're living in the city, double bag it and put it in the trash can. Obviously, take the trash out so it doesn't stink.
Joy: 29:15And then think about where these mice are getting in. So in our house around the dryer duct coming from the basement, they'll crawl up that. They also crawl around pipes, So go into your bathroom, your kitchen, and use the foam spray foam stuff to put around the pipes to make sure they're not coming in. Sometimes where, like, your dishwasher pipe comes in, there'll be openings to the outside of your house that are, you know, accessible for these mice. So being sure that that stuff is sealed up.
Joy: 29:45And then remove any kind of potential nesting material. In our basement we had just kind of random pieces of insulation sitting on the top of the basement wall And we found that every one of those had been used by mice as a nest. And so taking those, you know, bagging them up and throwing them out kind of removed places that mice could hang out in our basement, which then reduces our mouse population in the house.
Darci: 30:10I lived out in the country for a bit and any old farmhouse, you know, you're gonna have mice. Like that just comes with the territory. And so we use the snap traps and we'd get like three a year probably. You you know that they're there. But then we did have dogs outside to help with rodents, and then we had snakes, and we had hawks.
Darci: 30:28So do you have recommendations on a way to help that circle of life to get those larger predators to come take care of the issues?
Joy: 30:35Well, I mean, even like you said, you're always gonna have a few that get into the house, especially during the winter or when, you know, there's a harvesting going on nearby, then the rodent populations will kinda get pushed out of their habitat. So you can kind of expect it. If you can encourage predators around your house, particularly snakes, then you may help reduce the the risk of mice coming into your house, but I would say never say that you're gonna, you know, completely exclude them. So, you know, just just like that don't necessarily control mosquito population even though they eat a lot of mosquitoes, snakes aren't necessarily going to eliminate your rodents, but having snakes around will certainly help keep the rodent population down, and even the smell of snakes in the yard, and snakes do have sense that they lay down as they're crawling around, is gonna help, you know, deter rodents from approaching your house.
Abigail: 31:28My parents' house, there's a, like, a farm field behind their house, so she's at like, they always have I always grow up, like, with my stories growing. And my mom is, like, notorious for being, like, if it came in a cardboard box, like, you know, like pasta comes in a cardboard box or, like, you keep flour, right, or, like, in a bag or whatever, like, must go in, like, a hard container. It has like, it is not allowed to stand in my pantry without being in an actual container, and she says that's really helped her mouse population because they don't have anything to eat.
Joy: 31:59Absolutely. Yeah. Keeping the food down, keeping the availability of food down. So keeping a clean house is important too.
Darci: 32:05So finishing up our wildlife questions. A lot of our people like to do stewardship work outside and just be outdoors in tall grasses or just out at parks. So what do we do if we find a tick on us?
Joy: 32:19Yeah. So if you're a person who goes outdoors on a regular basis here in the Midwest, you're going to find ticks on you. Right? That that happens to all of us, and in some places, it's pretty bad. In Southern Illinois, I spend a lot of time out in the woods there, and you come back in and you'll be covered.
Joy: 32:38We actually even sometimes take our clothes off of the back door and just leave them outside because of the ticks. But one thing that we do to try to prevent that is to spray permethrin on pants and shirts that you wear outside. You can actually get those soaked if you work outside all the time. You can pay to have them soaked by a company, and then that gives you, like, 75 washes or something ridiculous. And it actually really, really helps when the ticks land on the fabric or get on crawl on the fabric, they actually die.
Joy: 33:07And I found dead ticks on my pants that I had coated with permethrin. I'm kind of a anti bug spray in general, but noting all the issues with ticks, I've been a little bit more cautious. So ticks are vectors for a number of diseases. You've probably heard about Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. There's even a disease called alpha gal syndrome where you can develop an allergy to red meat, and this is and that's potentially deadly.
Joy: 33:36All of these diseases can be really crippling to people, causing lifelong issues if not treated, and so it's best to avoid being bitten. A tick has to be latched onto you for a fair period of time, usually around twenty four to thirty six hours before you start to have that transmission of the bacteria from the tick to you. But if you don't notice a tick right away, then you know? And some people may not notice. For me, it always feels itchy where a tick has latched on, so I notice it usually pretty soon after it happens.
Joy: 34:10But the best strategy if you find a tick is then gonna be to remove it very carefully, and we do have some information about how to do this on the wildlife web page, using a forceps, and then keep the tick if you think that there might be a risk of disease. So if it's been on you for a while in particular, that would be a a good one. You know, if it's it's got a blood meal, the tick is kind of swollen, then I would definitely keep that tick. You can put it in a Ziploc bag, write the date on the bag, and stick it in the freezer. It's unlikely, but it's possible that a health care professional might ask you, do you have a tick that bit you if you present with symptoms.
Joy: 34:50You're always gonna wash your hands and wash the wound if you do get bitten. Even if you just pick a tick off of you that's crawling on your shirt, you should wash your hands because the tick has bacteria that you don't want, you know, to get into your body. And then if you are bitten, monitor that wound site for a rash developing. Pay attention to weird symptoms like lethargia, fever, you know, that are some potentially symptoms of some of the tick borne diseases, And go to the doctor right away if you suspect anything. Usually, doctors will prescribe antibiotics if they see evidence that you've had a tick latched onto you.
Joy: 35:28It's kinda better to be safe than sorry in those cases.
Abigail: 35:31Yep. And there's a lot of, really good resources from University of Illinois, the wildlife website, the medical entomology lab as well has, like, a really good resource on ticks.
Joy: 35:41Absolutely. They have a whole page on the distribution of ticks in Illinois, so you can find out where ticks are. Of course, in some places, we have all the ticks, but they have tick ID guides. They have a video on how to remove a tick, and they talk about tick borne diseases, and they talk about how to report ticks that you've seen. So there is one that we're still kinda looking out for, the longhorn tick that's a a new species for Illinois.
Joy: 36:06It's only been found in, I think, a couple counties so far. So if you if you know your ticks and you see one that looks weird, you might take a picture of it and check out that Illinois Natural History Survey webpage.
Abigail: 36:20Yeah. And just so we're kinda clear, like, can you find a tick maybe, like, only in, like, natural areas or, like, parks, or would could I find one, like, in my backyard?
Joy: 36:30You could definitely find one in your backyard. It depends on where you are and what types of animals are also moving through your yard. So in particular, deer and rodents are known to be kind of carriers of ticks. They'll move them around. And so in places, even in very urban places like in New York City, there are spots where you can go and you can be walking on a trail and get into ticks.
Joy: 36:54And then, of course, if your dog goes off trail and then, which it shouldn't because you should have it on a leash, but if your dog goes off trail and then brings things back to you, it might also bring you back some ticks. So it could really happen anywhere. I don't see as many ticks or very many ticks in my backyard in Urbana, but my backyard is fenced. I don't have deer in it, and I doubt there's too many rats moving through my backyard, though. I don't know. Maybe there are.
Abigail: 37:22Well, this, wildlife website that we were mentioning is so helpful. Could you tell me, like, a little bit more about what we can find in it? I feel like we've been talking a lot about negative encounters, and I just feel like I wanna kind of explore the other ones and also just talk about this website cause it is really, really cool. So tell me a little bit about the website and then we can kind of explore some other things that we can find on it.
Joy: 37:43Sure. Absolutely. So I developed this website in coordination with Brodie Dunn, who's another educator with Extension, and then also the help of some graduate students who did a lot of the kind of industrious research to help build the page. And what we did is we set up a learn section of the web page where you can actually find range maps for some interesting wildlife, including birds, plants, amphibians, reptiles, mammals across Illinois. So that's kind of a cool feature because you can look at the range maps.
Joy: 38:16We don't have the tick maps, but we have some of the other species. And then and we're gonna eventually add a nature's calendar, which would be another way to learn so you can kind of figure out what species are found where in a given year. We also have this encounters page, and we did talk about some kind of negative encounters, but we also have everyday encounters. And the way we broke our encounters up is into things that might happen on a regular basis, like finding a turtle on the road and what do you do, But then also kind of going through the spectrum of potentially negative interactions and characterizing some of those as just really simply annoying. Right?
Joy: 38:54Like something digging in your yard. It's not necessarily negative. It's just annoying. And then more risky and even some dangerous encounters because rightly so, people should be mindful of, you know, potential conflicts with things like a nest of bees or wasps or a venomous snake. A lot of folks in Illinois really wanna be good stewards of nature, so we developed a stewardship page that has resources on how you can help at home, how you can create natural habitat for wildlife, also a little bit about providing artificial habitat and then keeping pets safe and keeping wildlife safe from pets.
Joy: 39:32And then we have a engage section of the wildlife page, And I use this page a lot, actually, even when talking to undergraduate students here at the University of Illinois to talk about educational opportunities, internship programs, jobs. We have a section on careers where you can learn about different careers that you could have that would allow you to engage with wildlife. We also have a section on community science so you can learn more about community science programs, and then we have a section on observe that gives you hints on places to go in Illinois for hiking, birding, fishing, and even botanical gardens, nature photography, that kind of thing. So Brodie has launched a whole separate really awesome project called Voice of the Wild, and there's a podcast associated with that. So if you hear the sounds of nature on a daily basis, which I guarantee you do, then you might be interested in checking that Voice of the Wild podcast out so that you can kinda figure out what it is that you're hearing.
Abigail: 40:32Yeah. We have Brodie on the podcast season one on climate, and I like, we got I don't think I was one of the hosts that day, I was like, I listened to it later after it got published, and I go, Brodie, what do you even talk about your podcast? And he was like, I didn't even think to mention it. And I was like, Brodie, no. Like, this is your time.
Abigail: 40:51So, yeah, definitely check out that podcast. It's really cool. It's great to just kinda hear. I have a I get to interview master naturalists for when they wanna become take the training and stuff like that. And one person was telling me, was kinda chatting with her, asking her about her interest in nature, she was like, so I've made it my goal to learn, like, two birds a year.
Abigail: 41:10And I'm like, two birds a year? Like, that doesn't seem like a lot. She goes, like, no. Like, I'm knowing the birds. Like, I'm getting to know their sound.
Abigail: 41:18I'm getting to know, like, their interactions, what they eat, different morphs of it, things like that. And she's like, and it just it's like a really attainable goal that also just, like, gets me the chance to, like, really explore it. And I like his podcast because it's like, this is the thing we're focusing on this time, and you get to,
Joy: 41:34like, learn it. Just this one species. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's great when you hang out with a birder.
Joy: 41:40Sometimes they just know all these and, you know, like, I asked my husband the other day, where where does the Kirtland's warbler, which is found in Michigan in the summer, where does it go in the winter? And he said Bahamas. Like, how do you know that? He just go. Because bird people just get into these cool, obscure facts like that.
Joy: 41:57But it's kinda cool, like, knowing, you know, where something goes for part of the year and then where it is the other part of the year, what does it eat, What exact types of trees does it like to be around? Those are the nitpicky details that you can really get into. And it's really cool because every wildlife taxon, every species has its own story. And so your volunteer is right that, you know, you can really immerse yourself and learn a lot about this species. And sometimes by doing that, you end up becoming one of the authorities on the species.
Joy: 42:27You might have to be careful that it doesn't take you on a on a long and winding path because a lot of times there's not a lot known. I think when people go down those rabbit holes, they sometimes figure out what we don't know and then start trying to figure it out themselves.
Abigail: 42:40Just like that opportunity to learn, like, almost like you said, the story of that species, I think, is so much more connecting than just being able to know the name and its ID. Right? Like, it's it takes you a little deeper. It also helps you remember those things. Like, I feel like when I teach ID classes, I'm always and, like, and here's kind of the cultural connection, or here's, like, an interesting thing about that plant that you might not know about, why it likes to live here and what it does or how we used to use it historically.
Abigail: 43:06And that connects so much more with people than just being able to say, yes. And this is a red tailed hawk. When you're So we were talking about, like, a lot of encounters and sometimes, like, these just, like, negative encounters. And I what I was kind of hearing as a theme too is, like, a lot of these animals are, like, coming into what we call our spaces because their spaces are no longer suitable. What can we do to kind of, like, I guess, like, support them or give them that space and kind of just, like, help, like, lessen these conflicts in some way?
Joy: 43:40Well, one thing to do is to to be mindful of what wildlife need in terms of space and in terms of food. And as much as you can, providing natural areas for them will help to keep them away from the areas that maybe you consider your spaces. So, you know, sometimes we might provide artificial habitat in our backyards like birdhouses or bat houses, which is another story altogether, but that can provide spaces that, you know, those animals can exist that are separate from our own houses. You can't
Abigail: 44:14Wait. Wait, Joy. Tell me that story. What's the deal?
Joy: 44:17So we have a section on the web page about artificial habitat, and what I will say is that, you know, it's not always a good idea to give wildlife these things that that you know, they all come with costs. Like like when you feed the birds, now you need to clean the bird feeders because otherwise you could be spreading disease. When you provide birdhouses, you need to be mindful that non native invasive species like house sparrows or starlings might take up residence because they're more likely to use your birdhouse, and then if you're trying to attract this native species to this unnatural structure that's not actually what they're adapted to use, which is a tree caviar crevice, that now you might be predisposing them to a risk of, you know, having to deal with these invasive species who might kill their chicks or or evict them from the house.
Joy: 45:07So you might actually be increasing the costs for that animal. With bat houses, bat houses are supposed to be a surrogate for large dead trees, and suffice it to say that taking, you know, wood from the hardware store and building a small box does not actually mimic a dead tree in a lot of ways. They tend to overheat during the day, especially on warm, sunny days. They get too cool at night. They don't retain enough heat for the pups to exist while mom is out foraging, So they're not actually a great surrogate.
Joy: 45:40We're working on building better bat houses, but, you know, just putting those artificial structures up isn't enough. It's not a, you know, one and done. We've we've solved this problem. We have to think more deliberately about what these animals really need, and that's where the intersection between science and conservation is so important. But I think in lieu of doing those things, you can still provide areas with trees.
Joy: 46:05You can provide some native plant species. You could let an area of your yard go weedy, right, and let the grass grow up, and then you will have a safe haven for the rabbits or for the birds to forage in that'll keep them happy and hopefully keep them away from your house.
Darci: 46:21Well, Joy, you have so much knowledge and like you mentioned the website, and it's been great having you answer all our questions today. But what do we do if we don't have you on speed dial? If we can't just hit you up and have you answer all of our questions for us.
Joy: 46:35Great. Well, I'm happy to answer questions as as they come to folks, and I do occasionally have people reach out. But in the moment, I would say check out our web page. We have a lot of good information there. You can also Google any problem and put extension at the end of your problem, "snake in the yard extension".
Joy: 46:58And even if it doesn't take you to Illinois extension, I guarantee that you are gonna get a well researched answer from an extension agent, a wildlife extension agent somewhere in the country, and that it's gonna help you to solve that problem because you're an extension, we think about, you know, what is the science behind the answer that we're giving and also try to kinda cover all our bases and give you the best answer possible. It won't always be the the right answer for you, but if you look around, poke around on the Internet, and look for some reliable resources, you should find a good solution. And I would say go with your gut in terms of trying to help the wildlife, you know, whatever it is that that you might be having an issue with, help them as much as you're helping yourself. So if you read a solution and it sounds like it might be painful or harmful, then that might not be the best solution. Go with something that that feels good and that you're gonna feel good about having done once you've done it.
Abigail: 47:57Yeah. And thinking about that ecology aspect too of, like, why is this animal here
Joy: 48:02Mhmm. As well. I always tell my students to to think about the proximate cause of a problem. You know, what is the initial thing that's making this happen? But then what's the ultimate cause?
Joy: 48:13It might be that there's loss of habitat that years ago, I was staying at a friend's house in Boston, they said the rats are all coming into our houses now, and it's because they're digging out the subway and trying to put a new train line in. And so even though rats are a non native invasive species, you know, like, kinda recognizing, like, why are the rats in the house? It's because they're doing this. You know? So so thinking about the why, what's causing or, oh, they're harvesting in the fields that might be causing the mice to come, you know, inwards, or why are urban coyotes doing so well?
Abigail: 48:50And maybe the you know, that doesn't lead you to a solution, but maybe it tells you things like with the farm field, like, oh, this is temporary. Right?
Joy: 48:57Right.
Abigail: 48:58Or, like, when to expect to have this problem.
Joy: 49:02Sure. Things might subside. Yeah. Always in the fall or the spring, people will me, like, I have a bat in my house, and it's often because they left a window open with the nice weather that we have in the fall and spring. Bats flying through.
Joy: 49:14It's actually migrating. It's unfamiliar with where it is, and it sees that crevice and just comes inside. And then, you know, now we have this conflict, but it's really driven by the the proximate issue of the window being open and the ultimate issue of bats migrating through urban areas.
Abigail: 49:29Well, Joy, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge about wildlife encounters and all the ways that we can learn more about wildlife and just shift our perspective on these encounters. We are going to finish today's episode with everyday observations where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that is actually really interesting. So, Darci, I'm gonna call on you to go first.
Darci: 49:50Yeah. I love the spring season because, like, the spring wildflowers are starting to bloom, all the ephemerals. And so earlier in the month, this isn't wildlife related, but I guess it's habitat.
Abigail: 50:00It doesn't have to be. It's your everyday observation. Heads up for the audience though, we we are recording the the fall season in May, so Darci's observation is very spring relevant, which is totally fine. I just wanna make sure we note that for our audience.
Darci: 50:15Very true. Very true. So spring ephemerals are happening now. And so earlier in the month, was out at Cricket Woods Nature Preserve with some seventh graders and we had all the bluebells and just it was really fun to see all of those that were starting to bloom. And then I got to go back again this past week and we were seeing, like, the prairie trilium and some others that were blooming as well.
Darci: 50:36And so it was just really fun to be out there with the people, encouraging them to look at what they're saying and identify what they're saying. And just the excitement of these are so pretty and they don't last very long. So it's it's a neat season of time to be outside with nature as it blooms.
Abigail: 50:52Yeah. Those transition seasons to me are, like, so beautiful because you see some species really take up some really unique niches. Right? Like, of things are either not blooming or not, like, leafing out yet or they've are like, they've died back. So some things are kinda taking advantage of that light opportunity.
Abigail: 51:09In the spring, we get these ephemerals. In the fall, I feel like fall bloomers have, like, this really special block within them as well. So, like, yeah, just being able to see those changes that we see in the transition seasons are just, I don't know, really special. Alright. Joy.
Joy: 51:25Yeah. I'm also thinking about a springtime observation. Yesterday, when I was walking to school, I heard a black and white warbler, which sounds like a squeaky wheel when it calls. And this is the time when the migrating birds like warblers are coming back from the South. Some of them go to Mexico.
Joy: 51:42Some of them go all the way to South America, and they're moving back through and and popping by my neighborhood in Urbana, which is amazing. In the fall, they're gonna go back in the other direction. So by the time folks are listening to this podcast, there will be birds moving south back to their wintering areas, but they won't be as noisy. So much less likely to hear them call because right now they're thinking about setting up territories and attracting mates. And so they they kind of have, you know, love is in the air in the spring, and and so they're they're thinking about breeding, and so they make a lot of noise.
Joy: 52:17But in the fall, they're really kind of inconspicuous travelers that move through our our areas, and you really have to keep an eye out to actually detect that they're there.
Abigail: 52:27Yeah. My mom always says, like, the spring is the time for, like, it's the Twitter paiting. The Twitter paiting is happening. I don't know if that's, like, from a Disney movie or something, but she like, we're always joking that the spring is, the Twitter paiting season. Yep.
Abigail: 52:40Funny. Alright. Well, I will go my everyday observation, I've just been thinking a lot about my garden and my landscape a lot. And, you know, spring oftentimes people are thinking of planting. I actually do prefer, like, a fall planting, just because I have to water less.
Abigail: 52:56And I've just been thinking about about a lot, like, watching how things grow now and through the season so I can plan for the fall because I do some people call it, like, not gorilla gardening isn't the term because that's a different term, but, like, somebody said, like, wow. The way you plan for your garden is really metal because, for example, I have like, my neighbor has rose of Sharon, which is like I don't think it's quite classified as invasive, but it, like, it really likes to reseed on me and it's not native. And so and it's created this big shady space. And so I decided to plant ostrich fern underneath of it, which is also like, a native but a little aggressive. It's actually on our, like, do not plant list.
Abigail: 53:37So if you're in Cook County and in your home landscape because it's just, like, not best suited. But I was, if I can get something to compete with it, maybe that'll outdo it a little bit. And so I've just kind of been thinking about, like, how I can use ecology to my advantage to shade out the things I don't want and just compete a little better than the other things. And so Right. Yeah.
Abigail: 54:01Just kinda really thinking about observing my landscape for the stuff that's aggressive, but how can I use it to my advantage a little bit? So so, yeah, that's that's where I'm at.
Joy: 54:10Cool.
Abigail: 54:11Well, thank you again everybody for hanging out, talking wildlife. I think it's gonna be a great season. We're gonna learn a lot about so many different things. I'm excited about the topics. We do some species dives.
Abigail: 54:23We do some systematic looks at, like, how we study wildlife, and I think this has been a really great start to just give us an understanding and basis to our audience of what wildlife are we expecting to see in the place. So thank you.
Joy: 54:36Hopefully, all of it.
Abigail: 54:38Yeah. This has been another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Curt Sinclair about outdoor fish and wildlife recreation, where we talk about hunting and fishing licenses and just different ways to interact with wildlife.
Abigail: 54:57This podcast is a University of Illinois Extension production hosted and edited by Abigail Garfoalo, Erin Garrett, Amy Lefringhouse, Karla Griesbaum, and Darci Webber. Marketing and communications are by Emily Steele.