Tom Scollins pointed out one snake head, rising ever so slightly above the dense soup at the bottom of the swimming pool. Then he pointed out another. How many others were enjoying the decayed vegetation and tadpoles? How deep was that stuff? An investigatory poke with a tree branch suggested at least a foot deep, enough to be nasty.
The wildlife control specialist had not brought his waders to the abandoned swimming pool in Woodlawn; the woman requesting snake removal had assured him they wouldn't be necessary. She was putting in a new pool. What was left of the old one was dilapidated, crumbling and dry - except for that one spot in the former deep end teeming with God knows what.
The woman first realized she had a wildlife issue when she saw two snake heads shoot out of the water in pursuit of a low-flying bird. When she peered at the spot more closely, she noticed snakes everywhere.
"I could even see little baby snakes," she told Scollins. "I was so scared that I went inside, locked all the doors and started vacuuming."
Later, she started calling people: The Department of Natural Resources ("remarkably disappointing"), Patuxent Wildlife, a friend in the Audubon Society. Her search eventually led her to Scollins of TS Wildlife Control, a service providing "professional and humane wildlife removal and relocation" in Baltimore.
Now Scollins was staring at the mucky area, sizing up his options. He had six more appointments ahead of him, his waders were 30 minutes away, and he knew that any unprotected encounters with Northern water snakes would brand him with particularly heavy musk for the rest of the day. His colleague Holly, from the Maryland Herpetological Society, might be available for a possible snake rescue that afternoon, he told the lady, or he could return tomorrow with his waders. Or she could ask for help from the guys who had just arrived to knock through the rest of the pool. He decided to put this case on hold.
The 27-year-old zoologist climbed back into his Ford Ranger pickup. He faced another eight hours of bat calls, squirrel pick-ups and snake stops, a schedule that would take him to Howard and Carroll counties as well as Baltimore City. He would check traps for groundhogs, climb onto roofs and poke into the dark corners of basements and attics looking for tiny holes or cracks that critters could squeeze through. And he would listen for chirps, chitters and squeaks: It was the season of babies - birds, raccoons and bats. Humane treatment held that mothers not be separated from their offspring while they were still nursing.
It was challenging, unpredictable work. Sometimes it was possible to find and remove animals from people's homes, sometimes not. Scollins considered it his mission to convince at least one person each day that humans and wild animals could coexist respectfully. He liked to educate folks about the groundhogs and possums that occasionally wandered into their back yards, the bats that sought shelter in their homes. Not every snake was an unexploded bomb, not every raccoon was rabid.
Understanding animals better had become Scollins' lifelong pursuit. As a child in New York, he went to every educational summer camp at the Bronx Zoo, then worked as a volunteer when he was a teen-ager. Later, with an associate's degree in zoology, he worked in the reptile house of the Baltimore Zoo before starting his own wildlife control business in 1999.
One of the best parts of the job was rescuing creatures - especially babies - and turning them over to rehabilitators like Gerda Deterer. Founder and president of Wildlife Rescue Inc., Deterer is one of Maryland's best known animal advocates. She knew Scollins tried to persuade homeowners to give nursing mothers and babies a chance. She trusted his heart and respected his knowledge. If she didn't have time to look for a raccoon family in someone's attic, she would often call Tom.
All in a day's work
On his way to a noises-in-the-attic investigation, Scollins swerved to avoid a squirrel licking up salt in the middle of the road. Then he took an agitated call from a client he had visited the night before. The woman had found a baby bat clinging to the heat register in the ceiling of her Baltimore County apartment. Scollins had removed it and pronounced her apartment bat-free. Now he was telling her that she did not have rabies. The baby bat had probably crawled away from a colony somewhere within the walls of the complex and gotten stuck at the heat register, he told her. Because the bat could not fly and bite her, and because she had never touched the bat, he could assure her that she had not contracted rabies.
"Relax. Go have your hair done, have a cocktail or something," he suggested.
His client wasn't persuaded. No, she wanted that bat tested for rabies. That meant things looked bad for the little guy temporarily lodged in the Big Gulp cup behind Scollins' car seat. He planned to take the baby to Deterer to raise. But such animals as bats, raccoons and foxes, animals considered high risk for carrying and transmitting rabies, were also killed for testing purposes, even if the humans who saw them only feared they might have been exposed. The little bat would now become a "peace of mind" test.
After a few calls to county animal folks, Scollins added a bat drop-off to the schedule. But first, he needed to concentrate on a possible squirrel investigation. There were strange noises in the attic of an elderly lady's home in Northeast Baltimore. The noises didn't bother the 93-year-old homeowner, who never went upstairs anyway, but they were bugging her daughter big time.
Scollins squeezed his ladder into the spare bedroom's tiny closet. Wedged between flowered housecoats on crocheted hangers, he twisted his body up into the crawlspace, pointed his flashlight and ... bingo!
"Bird's nest. Probably house sparrows or starlings," he told the woman's daughter. "You can do what you want with starlings, sparrows and pigeons because they are considered invasive species." He also showed her the sagging fascia board on the roof where the birds had entered the house. Repairing it should solve their problem. In all, a satisfying stop.
It was time to deal with the baby bat. Scollins drove to the headquarters of the Baltimore County Health Department and phoned George Elder, the public health investigator who was expecting him.
"George, I'm here in the parking lot, and I'm going to bring you up the head. OK?"
Decapitation was accepted as a humane method of killing smaller vertebrates. Scollins took a plastic baggie and a pair of pruning shears from his tool chest. He removed the tiny, squeaking creature from its cup and clasped it gently in his gloved left hand. "Go with God, little buddy," he told the bat. Then he clipped off its head and sealed it in the bag.
Two days later, tests would come back negative for rabies.
'It's an emergency!'
Scollins doesn't like it when clients call him a "trapper."
"I'm not some guy with a big long beard out in the woods," he says. "I prefer to think of myself as a zoologist or a wildlife operator. This job puts you on the frontlines of conservation. It's one-on-one trying to educate people and helping the animals that need it."
Next to bats, snakes probably need his advocacy the most. A typical snake call to TS Wildlife Control might go like this:
There's a huge snake in the back yard!
OK, OK, Scollins replies. Calm down. Calm down. Snakes are supposed to be outside.
But there might be more snakes. You must come right now! It's an emergency!
Which is often when Scollins introduces his perspective: "My definition of an emergency," he says, "is that the animals are in the living area of the house."
Over the years, however, Scollins also has learned that such urgent calls often do qualify as life-and-death situations - for the snakes.
One time, he raced to save a black snake that a woman had quarantined in her basement. By the time he got there, however, it was more dead than alive. She had thrown a vacuum cleaner on it.
Why did you call me if you were going to kill it?
The snake started to move and it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Now the wildlife operator was headed toward another snake case in Howard County. The snake had departed, and Scollins' job was to make sure there weren't any more.
The client provided a brief history: On a recent afternoon, she had noticed one of her cats crouched in the stealth position in the breakfast nook. Figuring the animal had cornered a spider, she grabbed a paper towel to squish the insect and instead discovered a coiled black snake.
Panicked, she ran to get a neighbor, who managed to shoo the snake outside with a broom. Then, when the creature seemed inclined to escape, the two women hacked it in half with shovels.
Scollins shook his head at that part of the story and set off to find holes in the building where the snake might have entered. He showed the woman places in the siding near the garage and near the patio that needed plugging.
And as for the insides of the house?
A basement inspection turned up no evidence of snakes: No skins, no droppings.
"That snake really creeped me out!" the woman told him. "I'm one of those people who has that phobia. I just can't handle it! I'm the only person in the neighborhood who never has the doors or windows open and I'm the one that gets the snake!"
"You want to make sure that you don't have any woodpiles or piles of debris near your house," Scollins advised.
"I use cedar mulch because it's recommended by the termite people. Is that OK?"
He nodded.
"You don't think I have any more snakes running around?"
"I don't think you have a problem."
"But what about the cat? She's still tiptoeing more than usual. You think it's just residual stuff from that one episode?"
"Yeah, she's just being a silly cat."
Finishing up the rounds
Two bats had recently visited the home of an elderly woman in Carroll County. Scollins grinned as he pulled up to the impeccable property with its lawn ornaments and wishing well.
"It's a rancher," he sighed. "I love ranchers." One-story homes are easier to investigate.
His roof inspection found the chimney was fine. The most likely point of bat entry was through an old attic fan that needed a heavier gauge screen over it. Meanwhile, the attic disclosed no signs of a bat colony. If another bat did get in, Scollins told the woman, it could easily enter the living area of the house by slipping under the attic door or by going through a ceiling register.
"Once they get through the outside vents, there's a million different ways to get down to the first floor," he said. "And they're going to follow cooler air because they think that's the way outside."
"Can I fumigate for them? I'd gladly kill 'em that way, but when I called Terminix, he said they don't do that."
"Bats are a protected species. They eat mosquitoes and pests," Scollins told her. "Ever look up close at a bat? They're real cute."
"No, they're not. They're the ugliest things God ever made!"
The last house call of the day brought a heavy dose of deja vu. The week before, Scollins had been summoned to the wooded property in northern Baltimore County after the home buyer noticed a snake pop its head out a hole in the exterior wall. Scollins' subsequent inspection turned up snake droppings (which resemble bird droppings), and two translucent snake skins festooning a utility pipe.
At the time, he showed the real estate agent the holes where the snakes were most likely getting in. Anyone could easily plug up the holes with Great Stuff, a polyurethane foam available at hardware stores, he told her. He also mentioned that snakes considered woodpiles, like the one near the house, very attractive places to hide.
Now he had been summoned to the home buyer's final walk-through - and nothing had changed since his last visit. The snake droppings were exactly where they had been - so were the snake skins. Neither of the exterior holes he had pointed out were filled. The woodpile also appeared untouched.
People either did things - or they didn't. Who was he to wonder why? At the request of the buyer's agent, he filled the holes with Great Stuff. Then it was quitting time.
Back in the truck, he retrieved his most recent message: Snakes were dropping from the ceiling of an office building over in Essex.
This was not the living area of someone's home ... and it was now after-hours.
He could fit them in tomorrow.