April 2003 - Riddance Island Critter Getters Banish Uninvited Guests - by Betsy Ray When you work at Critter Management on Hilton Head Island, a typical day is anything by typical. Usually it involves a face-full of nest,” laughs Billy Karijanian, general manager of Critter Management, a private for-profit critter control business located at 10 Dunnagan’s Alley. “If it isn’t capturing small animals and keeping them from re-entering a home, it’s fishing a gator out of someone’s yard,” Karijanian said.

Critter Management began seven years ago as a venture between Hilton Head homebuilder Joe Maffo and his friend Tommy Lin, who then worked as a wildlife officer at Sea Pines Plantation. Combining Maffo’s experience in critterproofing homes and Lin’s animal-trapping expertise, the two constructed what is now a growing mainstay in Lowcountry critter control. Originally from Buffalo, Karijanian said Maffo was one of the first people he met as an island newcomer. He joined the Critter Management team two months after the business started in 1995 to take over operation and day-to-day management tasks. “It was the three of us for the first six months,” Karijanian said. “We had no idea we would employ more than us three.” Now, Critter Management has 12 to 16 full-time employees during its busiest season, which used to be late spring and summer. “This winter has been busier than our busiest season,” Karijanian said. “Rats have been rampant.” Before coming to Hilton Head Island, Karijanian worked for a family owned steel construction business. His was the job of hiring, firing and sales. “I had no animal training,” Karijanian said. Karijanian had no idea what was in store for him. But Critter Management has evolved into a close-knit business. “This is really a family-oriented business. The people who work for us have been here for a long time,” he said, naming Paul Grove, crew leader and Critter Management’s first full-time hire, who came to the business with five years of pest control experience. It’s difficult to pin down just one hilarious antic encountered by the folks at Critter Management, Karijanian said. Still, one memory stands out in his mind. The setting was a south Sea Pines condominium complex where a family of squirrels was living inside the column of a building. Maffo and Karijanian figured a drop fogger would chase the little buggers out – fast. “Joe was on a ladder, 40 feet in the air, when all of a sudden, 20 squirrels shot out of the hole, bouncing from his shoulders and head. They were like ants all over the wall,” he said with a chuckle. “That kind of stuff happens almost every day,” Karijanian declared proudly. Upon arriving at the scene of a typical animal nuisance call, Critter Management workers aim to separate man and beast without harming either. “I live-catch everything. Nothing is killed,” Karijanian said. In fact, that declaration appears on Karijanian’s business card, right underneath a picture of a hunchbacked raccoon: “We live-trap nuisance animals – raccoons, squirrels, possums, etc.” [Editor’s note: State-controlled animals, such as alligators, are the exception.] With an estimated 100,000 alligators living in South Carolina, combined with the one to two million tourists that visit Hilton Head Island every year, inevitably the two do clash. Unfortunately, most of these clashes end in the gator’s death. In 1999, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources hired C r i t t e r Management to answer nuisance-alligator calls from Hilton Head Island to Charleston. Dean Harrigal, wildlife biologist with the department, said Critter Management filled a hole left by Gordon Wells, a private Jasper County trapper who retired from alligator trapping. “When I receive an alligator complaint and we decide the animal is indeed a nuisance, I contact them. They go and remove the animal and destroy it,” Harrigal said. Typically a gator six feet long or longer that approaches a human is considered a nuisance and warrants a call to Critter Management, Harrigal said. “Nearly all the nuisances relate to the fact that the animal’s been fed. All it takes is one wise guy who thinks it might be cute to toss a piece of bread to a gator. Then the animal automatically associates people with food and doesn’t understand a human who comes bearing no food.” He added, “It’s not you seeing the alligator. It’s not the alligator crossing road. An alligator that sets up habitual behavior makes it a legitimate threat to people or pets.” According to South Carolina’s Alligator Law (50-11-750), it is unlawful to feed or entice a wild alligator with food – no exceptions. The law states that any person who violates this rule is guilty of a misdemeanor and will be fined up to $200 or imprisoned for 30 days. Karijanian estimates that nuisance gators account for only five percent of their business. Still, Harrigal said it’s been a good working relationship for the state. “They can deal with problems promptly. And that’s very important.” While the state does not compensate Critter Management for the manpower required for gator removal jobs, which can take anywhere from a few hours to an entire day, the business gains ownership of hides resulting from the destruction of all nuisance gators in the Lowcountry. Whereas gator hides have run as much as $50 per foot in 1998, the price has dropped to $11 per foot, Karijanian said. Even though its profit margin at year seven of operation is not substantially different from year one, Critter Management is constantly growing. While its main area of operation is rooted in Hilton Head Island and Bluffton, Critter Management’s services span the outlying areas of Savannah, Beaufort and other island communities including Fripp, Dataw and Callawassie. In fact, with the relocation of a former key employee, Karijanian says he can foresee the establishment of Critter Management offices in Charlotte, N.C. and Atlanta, Ga. in the future. In the transient Hilton Head area, people are constantly buying and selling homes. “My customers call me back every time they move,” Karijanian said. Of course, the job is always easier and less expensive for the homeowner to critter-guard a structure before they get in, he said. Karijanian estimates that if you walk into a grocery store on the island and ask 10 people where they can find someone to get rid of the critters plaguing their home or business, at least five will refer you to Critter Management. And as if local celebrity status wasn’t enough, Critter Management had its 15 minutes of national fame in the late 1990s. Bret Baier, now the national security correspondent for FOX News Channel, reporting from the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., presented a short feature segment on the unusual nature of Critter Management’s business niche on Hilton Head. Karijanian and Baier had become friends when Baier worked as an anchor for WLWL-TV in Beaufort, prior to joining FOX News. Besides brief national news coverage thanks to an inside Wildlife biology graduate Jeff Williams’ love of the outdoors makes critter control a fulfilling career. Another result of the company’s visible growth is its hire of an assistant general manager fresh from Clemson University last spring. Jeff Williams, originally of Greenville, S.C. and a 2002 graduate of Clemson’s wildlife biology program, says Critter Management appealed to his sense of work ethic and love of the outdoors. Williams met Maffo while doing on-site work at a local nature preserve. “I took a nuisance wildlife class and met Joe on a field trip. That was one of my favorite classes,” he said. “I wanted to work in a smaller place with hands-on people. This is a niche company,” Williams said. While trying to come up with a harrowing critter control anecdote, Williams remembers, “I’ve been face-to-face with a copperhead – that wasn’t too fun.” All in all, Karijanian and Williams agree critter control is a pretty decent day job if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty or being awakened at 3 a.m. for a critter emergency. “Animals don’t take a day off,” Williams remarked. Karijanian said Critter Management has less of a formal business philosophy and more of an on-the-job character building quality.“It’s more a matter of character – honesty and hard work can teach them the rest,” Karijanian said. On a typical Monday, the business responds to 50-60 calls. Compared to typical pest control services involving trapping and extermination, Critter Management goes a step further, Karijanian said. The main focus is critter proofing and critter removal, that is, getting the animals out of a building, keeping them out by stopping their points of entry and, of course, cleaning up their messes, he said. “We get jobs where the attic has had raccoons for 10 years,” he said. These are the cases where Critter Management workers deal with 70 to 80 pounds of animal droppings. In that situation, the number of days or weeks the job entails varies. Critter Management’s rates vary – usually depending on factors such as the steepness of a structure’s roof or amount of droppings. The business provides free estimates, and bills range between $2,000 for an elevated home to $900 for homes on a slab. Whereas Hilton Head nuisance wildlife ranges from raccoons, squirrels and possum to alligators, Bluffton’s geography harbors the likes of armadillos and flying squirrels. According to Karijanian, catching a flying squirrel isn’t as complicated as it sounds. “We have techniques that we’ve learned,” Karijanian said. In fact, the Critter Management crew has patents pending on a few critter-catching devices. One of those unique tools is an extractor tube – used to extract flying squirrels. Another is a bait holder and a better mouse trap, Karijanian said. In the way of competition, Critter Management hasn’t had much to worry about. In the last eight years, five to 10 businesses have tried to start their own critter-control companies with no success, he said. The reason Critter Management has an edge on the market: secret, specialized tools. “We learn something every day doing this,” Karijanian said. “What worked five years ago may not work today.” But the biggest reason Critter Management thrives as the area’s authority on critter control involves the nature of the business. New houses or old houses – no structure is immune to pests, he said. And, for the most part, the recommendation people share with each other is Critter Management. Such word of mouth increases the business five-fold per year, he said. Janice Dyer and her husband Ernest have lived in their Christo Drive home in Hilton Head Plantation since 1987 but had never gone to the trouble to call a pest control company. “We live on the marsh, so there’s always trouble with squirrels and marsh rats,” Dyer said. But it wasn’t until the Dyers’ neighbors commissioned Critter Management that the couple decided to critter proof their own home. The job, completed earlier this year, took about a week and a half. “So far, it looks great. We haven’t had any problems and our neighbors haven’t either,” Dyer said. Karijanian likes to think good customer service is another reason his clients keep coming back to Critter Management. He keeps a meticulous trapping log for every house the company has critter-proofed. “Above all, it’s important to keep promises made to the customer,” he said. “We do what we say; we say what we do,” he said. “We provide absolute best service, absolute best workmanship, absolute best follow-up.” ™ Critter Management’s Joe Maffo always gets his gator.