Ticks
The tick behind the red meat allergy. The female carries a single white dot, and it moves toward a host.
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Rodents
Not a mouse and not a house pest. A stocky short-tailed grass eater that lives its whole life at ground level.
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Mosquitoes
Three of the four life stages happen in water. Tipping out standing water is the cheapest control there is.
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Furbearers
A semi-aquatic rodent built for water: oily coat, part-webbed hind feet, and a flattened tail it sculls with.
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Birds
A large brown woodpecker that feeds on the ground. It reaches pest control for hammering on the house.
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Snakes - Non-Venomous
The most widespread watersnake in North America, killed in places where cottonmouths have never lived.
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Rodents
It digs at ground level. Burrows along foundations and holes in the yard separate it from the roof rat.
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Ants
Crush one and smell it. That is the whole identification, though the smell is not really coconut.
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Rodents
Pack rat and woodrat are the same animal, and neither name means one species. It hauls objects back to a stick nest.
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Rodents
The vole you almost never see, and that is the whole problem. It works below ground instead of in surface runways.
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Amphibians/Reptiles
The turtle on the log. If you have a pond, a canal or a water hazard, this is what is lined up along it.
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Snakes - Venomous
The smallest rattlesnake in the United States, and almost everything that follows from that, people get backward.
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Furbearers
Most calls start the same way: scratching in the attic or chimney in spring, and it is almost always a female with young.
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Furbearers
One of four terrestrial rabies reservoirs in the United States. Never handle one, and never attempt a home capture.
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Birds
The bird most people stop seeing. On the ledge, on the sign, on the parking deck, and leaving droppings on all three.
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Rodents
It rarely burrows. It climbs a tree, crosses a branch to the roof, and moves in above your ceiling.
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Rodents
Flying squirrels do not fly. They glide on a membrane from wrist to ankle, about 30 feet at a time.
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Occasional Invaders
It does not live in your house, it hides there. It flew in last autumn and eats nothing all winter.
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Furbearers
Almost every call starts with a smell or a hole. The holes are small cone-shaped divots punched in the lawn.
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Ticks
Arachnids, not insects. Tick season is not summer, and most people protect themselves for the wrong half of the year.
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Snakes - Venomous
A forest and rock-outcrop snake, not a yard-and-basement one. Its legal status matters before anything else.
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Birds
A roost on your roof or tower is a federal wildlife matter, not a homeowner project. It is protected.
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Furbearers
The only marsupial native to the United States and Canada, which makes it the odd animal out among backyard wildlife.
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Stinging Insects
"Wasp" is not one insect. The name covers paper wasps, yellowjackets, the bald-faced hornet, the European hornet and mud daubers, and they nest, sting and behave differently enough that getting the identification right decides what you should do next. One of them builds a colony that can reach 15,000 and turns defensive in late summer. Another is a solitary spider hunter whose venom lacks the compounds that make a sting hurt.
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