I grew up inside the work.

Chapter I

The boy on the ladder.

Sam was twelve years old the first time he climbed a ladder for money. His uncle — one of the earliest humane wildlife specialists in the state of Michigan — handed him a drop cloth and told him to keep his eyes open. Most kids his age were watching cartoons on Saturday mornings. Sam was learning the difference between a soffit gap and a fascia gap, and why bats preferred one over the other.

It was not a job in the traditional sense. It was an education. His uncle didn’t hand him a manual. He handed him a house — a real one, with a real infestation — and walked him through it, one entry point at a time. That pattern would repeat, thousands of times, over the next three decades.

Chapter II

An apprenticeship, not a job.

There is no shortcut to understanding bat behavior. You don’t learn it from manuals or online videos. You learn it standing on rooftops in the rain, crawling through 150-degree attic spaces in July, and watching — patiently, after sunset — as a colony emerges from a gap the width of a pencil.

Sam carried ladders. Handed over tools. Observed inspections. Cleaned attic spaces most adults wouldn’t step foot in. Over years, not months, those experiences taught him something no classroom ever could: every house tells a story, and animals follow patterns if you know how to read them. That kind of literacy takes a decade to develop. He had one by the time he was twenty-two.

Chapter III

The uncle who pioneered the tube.

To understand Sam, you have to understand his uncle. In an era when most wildlife control meant traps, poison, and dead animals in walls, his uncle believed the answer was simpler and more humane: let them leave, and don’t let them back in.

He was one of the earliest practitioners in Michigan to develop and refine what are now known industry-wide as one-way exclusion tubes — devices that allow bats to exit a structure naturally but prevent re-entry. The methodology he helped popularize is still, to this day, the humane gold standard used by wildlife professionals across North America. Sam didn’t read about that technique in a textbook. He learned it from the man who helped invent it.

Chapter IV

Buying the family business.

When Sam purchased the family practice, he didn’t just inherit a name — he inherited a responsibility. By that point his uncle had been serving Oakland County homeowners for more than twenty-six years, and Sam had already spent years leading his own inspections. Together, the practice now represents more than 30 years of combined family experience in Michigan wildlife exclusion.

He didn’t modernize the trade. He preserved it. The methods, the ethics, the standard of care — all intact. What he added was infrastructure: a proper office, a training program, a written homeowner’s guide, and a brand that could carry the reputation forward.

Chapter V

Why bats. Why only bats.

As the business grew, Sam had a choice: stay a general wildlife company — raccoons, squirrels, skunks, opossums, the whole menu — or specialize in the single most difficult, regulated, and detail-oriented corner of the industry. He chose bats. Not because it was easier. Because it demanded mastery.

With raccoons, squirrels, or skunks, trapping and relocation are options. With bats, they are not. Bats are protected under Michigan law. Every removal must be done through live exclusion. No trapping. No relocating. No killing. On top of that, bat entry points are incredibly small — while most wildlife needs an opening the size of a baseball, a bat can enter through a gap as small as a quarter of an inch. A single missed opening can cause the entire exclusion to fail.

The work sits at the intersection of animal behavior, construction, roofing, ventilation, and Michigan law. Miss any one, and problems follow. That’s the level of care Sam wanted to be judged by. So bats became the only thing he does.

Chapter VI

Education over fear.

Ask Sam what bothers him most about his industry and he won’t say the animals. He’ll say the sales tactics. Too many companies use fear — of rabies, of disease, of collapse — as the primary lever to close a job. Sam refuses to work that way.

A homeowner who understands what’s happening in their attic makes better decisions than one who is scared into signing a contract. So Sam explains. He shows photos. He walks the roofline. He points to the entry point. He explains what a maternity colony is, what the state law requires, what a proper exclusion looks like, and what it costs. Then he lets the homeowner decide.

That’s why he wrote The Homeowner’s Guide to Bat Removal in Michigan. It exists so that a family in Oakland County can understand their situation before anyone shows up in a branded truck.

Chapter VII

The homes. The wildlife. Both.

Sam is protective of the homes he works on. He is equally protective of the animals living in them. Michigan’s bats are quietly essential — a single little brown bat consumes thousands of insects each night, and populations across the Midwest have been devastated by white-nose syndrome over the last two decades. Killing them is not just illegal in Michigan. It’s ecologically indefensible.

Sam’s standard is simple: the family sleeps safely in their home, and every bat leaves alive. That’s the promise. The methods, the tools, the training, the guarantees — all of it exists to keep that promise consistently.

Chapter VIII

Training the next generation.

No technician performs bat exclusions independently without riding with Sam directly, learning entry-point identification firsthand, studying Michigan bat laws, and completing a minimum of six months of hands-on training. Bat removal is not something you learn in a weekend seminar — the margin for error is too small, and the homeowner deserves better than a rookie with a caulk gun.

The bar is high on purpose. Sam was trained that way. He trains his team the same way. And one day — when a certain small person is old enough to hold a ladder — he’ll train the third generation the same way, too.

— S.S.