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01-16-08--5:30 P.M.
When the average person goes onto
the internet
to find a pest control company to solve their bird or bat problems,
what they will find is that every pest control company with a website
is the best, the largest, the most experienced and all of the rest
of the industry is hugging their coat-tails trying to catch up.
Bologna! After all, their can only be one pest control company that
is the best, the largest and the most experienced, and that company
just so happens to be my company, Town Lake Construction. O.K.,
you see what I am driving at?
We specialize in high-rise pest control, via bird and bat proofing
of buildings, so we gain a tremendous amount of experience in these
specific fields. We do not kill ants, trap rats or spray lawns.
Day-in and day-out we service high-rise building, municipal buildings
and commercial facilities. The same men that the other companies
send to your job may have been trapping possums at 10 A.M., spraying
for bugs at 2 P.M. and be ready to tackle your bird problem at 4
P.M. I shudder to think about it. Even with the constant exposure
to our specific line of pest control, we go through many learning
curves daily. When you hire a pest control company to set up a bird-control
system 300 feet in the air, the last thing a business owner needs
are technicians on their building, that have little, or no experience,
which is very common in this industry. We don't spray to kill bugs,
etc. even though we are licensed to do these things. If we are called
to do it, we refer them to a pest control company that we like,
which may I tell you is few and far between. You may ask why we
don't take on this extra work, after all, everyone else that is
the biggest, the largest and the best does it. The answer is, if
we don't have the experience, the “know how”, and the
capacity to be the best at it, or pretty close to the best, we don't
want any part of it at all.
--Tom Regner
12-13-07--4:30
P.M.
Let's talk about Austin, Texas
as it relates to the protection and care of wildlife species. I
have always heard that Austin, Texas is a certified “bird
sanctuary” city. Not hardly. Although it has set aside thousands
of acres to help preserve various animal habitats, i.e. warblers
and salamanders, it greatly lacks in terms of offering help to injured
animals once they are outside of those “protected” environments
and sitting injured in your back yard or street. One would think
there would be hundreds of resources in this city to help are befriended
creatures. After all, we are the “Bat Capital of The World.”
Our companies’ name, Town Lake Construction gets mixed up
in the phone book directory with Town Lake Animal Shelter. We receive
a lot of phone calls daily, because of this, from well meaning people
trying to get rid of a bat/bird or to get help for an injured or
displaced animal. I always listen politely to their story, before
I tell them I can't help and to call Wildlife Rescue. If you are
not familiar with this organization, they are a voluntary group
of certified wildlife rehabilitators who tend to these injured animals.
However, with their limited staff and budget, there is only so much
Wildlife Rescue can do. Can you believe that Wildlife Rescue Service
is just about the only place in Austin where you can get help for
an injured bat, bird, etc? It's time for the City of Austin to do
more for injured wildlife. How ‘bout we get rid of a few of
the city-supported Condo projects and fund more groups, like Wildlife
Rescue.
Here are a few helpful phone numbers and agencies
I have found in preparing for this article:
~ Call 3-1-1 to report: Stray
pets (cats excluded), animal bites (9-1-1 for emergency), animal
cruelty (9-1-1 for emergency), injured wildlife, or to report the
findings of a dead blue jay, crow, or hawk.
~ Call (512) 389-4848 (Texas Parks
& Wildlife Game Warden) to report an injured deer.
~ Call (512) 472-WILD (Wildlife
Rescue) to report other injured wildlife.
~ Call (512) 854-9613 (Animal
Damage & Control) to report problem coyotes.
~ The North Austin Emergency veterinarian clinic
is located at 12034 Research Blvd. in Austin; (512) 331-6121
~ The South Austin Emergency veterinarian clinic
is located at 4434 Frontier Trail in Austin; (512) 899-0955
~ For information on Texas animal cruelty laws,
visit www.animallaw.info/topics/spustexascruelty.htm
~ For information about West Nile Virus, contact
the Health Department at 1-888-883-9997
11.08.07
-- 3:39PM
The hardest part of anything
for me is at the beginning. Ideas
come easy. Making something solid and useful from my ideas is something
entirely different. You know, creating something from what’s
between your ears. It sounded like a good idea; “yeah, let’s
have a Blog on the new website”. Now sitting in front of my
computer, I am at one of those moments…In the beginning, forming
this Blog out of thin air and transforming it into what you see
before you. Bear with me for a few more sentences while I try to
transform some idea to write about. O.K., I’ve got one, let’s
try to second guess what goes on in the mind of a, domesticated
from the wild, bird. Not ready for it, me neither. Some other time
perhaps, when I have had my next encounter with Albert Einstein
disguised as a Grackle. Maybe I could talk about when I first starting
excluding bats from buildings. I could theoretically do this but
and in reality, the events which led up to my first “bat encounter”
are much too entertaining and in depth for me to go into at this
hour. Now I am at the moment of truth, what do I say now? “I
like this industry!” Where can you go repelling off buildings
and get paid for it? Some of the places I have had access to, range
from the infamous book depository building in Dealey Plaza, The
George Bush Governors Mansions, Darrel Royal Stadiums to movie sets
and chance encounters with movie stars. I can’t remember how
many times I have been interviewed for T.V. and the newspapers.
You get the idea; we work in pretty cool places and meet a lot of
interesting people. I never thought of the prestige we would gain
when I first came up with this concept, way back in”93”.
Another thing I really like about my business is the “specialist”
aspect of our company. Most of my customers, have tried many ordinary
pest control companies, to help them with their (insert animal)
problem before I get the first call to do my “thing”.
Desperation leads to some pretty accommodating circumstances for
my Company, Town Lake Construction, which is now an LLC, formed
to protect me from loosing my house. But I digress… so, the
desperate conditions we come in to make us look like saviors on
chariots, chariots in the form of pick up trucks with ladder racks.
The scenario usually plays out like this: Bats are trapped in a
building and are now swooping down on the accounting department,
which incidentally really likes me now and will pay me in record
time for our heroics, after we are finished, of course. After all,
they are accountants. I like being “that guy’ who is
a true specialist. Re-inventing the wheel and building a better
mouse trap is an everyday occurrence for us. At least once an hour,
I come up with some sort of contraption or new idea that will revolutionize
the industry.
These are the topics which I can write about. So let me tell you
about them one at a time…
-- Tom Regner
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