For Facility Services employees David Perault and Jeremy Bernard, “Sportsman’s Paradise” isn’t just the state motto — it’s their job description.
Perault and Bernard, who comprise the two-man animal control division of Facility Services, have been using their experience hunting and fishing to capture live animals that have nosed their way into campus buildings.
The pair have encountered everything from squirrels, opossums and raccoons in buildings to small and full-grown alligators in the campus lakes. Perault said they had to call the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to deal with the alligators that were too big.
Perault, who has been working for Facility Services at the University for 30 years, said one day an animal problem arose in one of the buildings, and he took care of it. Now Perault has be the University’s go-to guy for animal control for the past 20 years. He said eventually the problem got out of hand and he hired Bernard, who currently takes emergency calls.
When the two get a call, Bernard, nicknamed the “critter getter” by his colleagues, will go to the scene of the report and talk to whomever called in the problem. Bernard will then scout out the scene and lay traps for the animals. If the problem is too big, he’ll call Perault to assist him. Once the animal is captured, Perault said they release the animals on University property off of River Road. If the two catch cats, the felines will be sent to a shelter.
“It’s not like the TV shows,” Perault said. “It’s very humane. We release the animals we