Had a similar story from a gal calling 2 am in the morning many years ago. Said there was a rattlesnake in her sectional sofa and she was positive it was such. I said the service call would be $250.00 whether I found a snake or anything else it didn't matter. I got there and listened for a little while before disturbing anything.

Then all of a sudden I hear it and knew what it was right away. She said do you hear that I said I sure do. We need to do the paper work now, is this going to be cash or a credit card. She said aren't you going to get the snake first? I said no, our policy for emergency late calls such as this require payment upon arrival on site.

So she gives me a credit card for me to get the information needed to process the transaction. After securing that and calling to run the card I said now I can solve your problem.

I start running my hands along the cushion gaps and recover the rattlesnake. It turns out to be a vintage high tech gadget that was popular in those days, a Pager. Most who had the earlier versions were Drs., lawyers or higher income folks.

Some of you young folks may not know what that is. They had different settings in those days like tones or vibration type settings.

A friend of mine developed the pager many years ago but now has since passed.

The gal wasn't real happy she had to pay me for recovering her boyfriends pager that must have slipped off his belt while lying on the sofa at some point.

Oh well, another problem solved.

People who are likely to pay someone to come out and rescue them from nature, rather than take care of it themselves, are weak and susceptible to hysterical blindness and cannot see what is right in front of them.
We should get special recognition for helping the mentally handicapped. Bless their hearts.

I look at it quite differently. People who pay for someone to rescue them from nature have the brains to not want to screw it up

themselves and the resources to not have to worry about how much it's going to cost. Bless their hearts too.

I always assume they tried to deter or catch whatever it is. I usually ask them when on an estimate what they tried. It reinforces the reason to them why they should pay a professional who has the skills and experience, and will stick with them until the problem is solved.

Some there is no hope for though. We've been treating a small grocery with a kitchen for roaches. It's been going on for a while now. Each time the sanitation is horrible. After I treated, the guy offered to make me breakfast... I'm thinking, I just saw roaches running around your kitchen and there is food all over your floor. You want me to eat here? I politely declined.

Eaten, you've just hit on the reason we hate roach jobs and won't even do bed bugs. It's a housekeeping issue and if you're a slob,

your roaches probably have bed bugs!

Luck trumps skill every time. Customer calls and gives a perfect description of an opossum living under her deck. So I go over and

make my perfect opossum set using marshmallows, anise, and fish paste. She calls the next day and says, "You got him!" So I go to

pick him up and inside my cage is this really nice sized woodchuck. So I scratch my head and ask the customer if she would like me to

reset and she says, "No need. That's what I saw and you caught him right away. Good work!" HUH?

Give her a hand full of cards and tell her to pass them out to all her friends!

I've had experience with both Pager vibratus and nearly-deceased Smokus detectorii.
One that was kinda fun was the guy who needed for me to ID a dropping he'd found next to his easy chair. I picked it up and said, "It's a turtle! " (a chocolate candy cluster). He said,"(Darn) grandkids!"
..and, yes, I couldn't stop thinking about the Baby Ruth scene in Caddyshack!

What would he have done if you'd taken a bite out of it like in the movie? LOL

Call came in from a woman yesterday that there's a beaver running around their yard and continues to go under the porch. After speaking with the woman she was certain it was a beaver and had a flat tail. So I make the trip out and little to my surprise the "BEAVER" was still running laps in the yard. She says that's a beaver right? I reply sorry it's a groundhog, soon as it seen me it skedaddled. She was extremely relieved when I pulled up today and retrieved the trap with the hog in it, as was I due to the fact I was overly confident that it would be in the trap today.