Driving home that Friday evening from Athens, Georgia, after a long day of filming, I should have been more excited. The critter control show was pretty much in the can.
But something wasn’t settling with me. Ironically, we spend so much time on attracting wildlife to our gardens; it was odd to be devoting an entire episode on how to keep it away. When I envisioned this show, I thought we would be able to really zero in on how to deal with the most common and objectionable backyard critters, namely deer, rabbits, moles and voles. They seem to be the ones that no matter where you live, everyone seems to struggle with. We lined up a great authority from the University of Georgia, Wildlife Specialist and Professor, Mike Mengak, Ph.D.
Smile for your closeup, stuffed mole! Now that's entertainment.
Towards the end of our productive day of filming, we had lots of great information, but at no fault of our guest host, nothing really captivating or exciting to see. And now it was time to talk about dealing with the moles and voles. At this point, you should know that one of the most important rules in television production is that if you talk about it, you need to show it. But how do you do that with a animals that lives underground, and their damage is subterranean? Dr. Mengak gets an A+ here for securing the actual mole and vole props. But there I was, holding dead, stuffed rats as our visual elements to cover this discussion! That’s when I realized we were in trouble.
To try and add the requisite action (another important element of television production), I found myself actually petting the fur of these little dead critters while doing anything I could to add motion such as rotating them slowly around in my hands. I was feeling stressed. This was not falling into either category of action or high visual appeal.
During the long drive home, I called our associate producer, Theresa Loe to share my concern. I even suggested scrapping this show and starting over. But without any idea how to make the subject matter more visually exciting, Theresa wasn’t able to offer much encouragement—not what I was hoping to hear.
Beautiful, majestic deer... ready to eat your garden
But in the end, most things work out and that’s certainly true with our talented team at GGW. Although it required another two days and a separate trip to North Carolina, we breathed some new life into this show by breaking up the interviews and inserting more visually appealing backgrounds and new locations. The new scenes helped to carry the story, but without staying in one place or interview for too long.
In the end, we had a better show. And from that day, we discovered an enhanced style that we’ve embraced since then. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of with our team; even when we hit was seems like a dead end, we put our heads together and come up with awesome solutions. It’s one of the things I value most about our amazing team. Thanks you guys!
Watch the episode! 209 Critter Control
About Joe Lamp'l
Joe Lamp'l is the Host and Executive Producer of the award winning PBS television series Growing A Greener World. Off camera, Joe dedicates his time to promoting sustainability through his popular books, blog, podcast series, and nationally syndicated newspaper columns. Follow Joe on Twitter
Greetings!
Your Critter Control show (209) was well done for homeowners who live in plush climates. I live near Cheyenne, Wyoming. This is high, dry, windy open plains.
My husband and I moved to a new home, no landscaping, east of town. This home was built on a retired cattle ranch. Yup, well fertilized in its day and the soil is dry.
Pest problem #1: We noticed an abundant 13-line ground squirrel population soon after planting three lines of windbreak, consisting of 200 plants: 1st row is ponderosa pine, 2nd row is Rocky Mountain spruce, and the 3rd, outermost row is cottoneaster. These plants were all purchased and planted in May of 2008 with the guidance of our local county Ccnservation Ddstrict. Each row has a 4-foot wide, black weed barrier fabric and a drip line that delivers water to each plant at ground level. The pesky squirrels detroyed 15 the cottoneater root systems in the spring of 2009. I replaced them with more cottoneasters. Those were gone in about 8 weeks. I then replaced them with lilac and they have not touched those. Oddest part of this is that of the original 80 cottoneasters in the line, the 13-line ground squirrels only ate the roots of the 15 plants in the same location, all grouped in the center of the line. The undisturbed, original cottoneasters are all 2-3 feet tall now and doing quite well. Go figure. Oh, and the trees are all 4-6 feet now, never having been touched by the squirrels.
Pest problem #2: We have held off doing much landscaping until we finished constructing a pole barn. Didn’t make sense to plant grass, decorative native shrubs and flowers until the heavy machinery and truck traffic would be done. Before the construction began, we had no problem noticing the mole(?) problem, obvious tunneling, extending for about 50 feet right where we planned to add a driveway for the barn. We were hoping that the construction activity would chase them away. Well, the construction is complete and the tunneling is there again.
What is the most effective way to get rid of them? Your show mentioned watering less so to drive the food source deeper. We don’t water now. We have hardly any measureable rainfall annually. We are not adverse to poison, but, that can have a deadly effect on the other wildlife in the area (hawks will prey on the squirrels and other critters).
Help?
Thank you.