When Ryan Fleming bought T&G Pest Control from Glenn and Janet Williams in November 2019, he came with 20 years of experience in the industry and a desire to expand how the company thought about pest control.
Since its founding in 1984, the company has been a family business and dealt with primarily pests and termites. Fleming’s wife, Stephanie, is the company’s director of customer service.
Fleming relocated the company from Warrick County to Evansville and added services dealing with wildlife making unwanted visits to Hoosier homes. Most work involves wildlife-proofing and exclusion so critters cannot burrow, slither, or crawl their way into any part of a house. It also involves the humane removal of wildlife from a home. Some animals require a bit more finesse to remove than using a trap or catch pole.
“If they can fit their head in, they can get in, typically. They are skilled at squeezing through areas,” says Fleming, a graduate of Central High School and Vincennes University. “Professionals have to be careful about how they treat wildlife and make sure we’re taking care of wildlife properly.”
The most common animals T&G Pest Control encounters are raccoons and skunks who slip inside homes, but bats and birds on the premises also are common.
Fleming once needed a 40-foot boom lift to remove bats from the roof of a historic home in Newburgh, Indiana. Another incident involved a raccoon peering down from above a closet. The smell of spray made it clear a skunk had dug its way underneath the foundation of an Evansville home.
It’s not glamorous work, but it’s necessary, and sometimes exciting.
“We run into a lot of creepy crawling pests in dark and damp cave-like spaces,” Fleming says.
Stay Out
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