When bat guano starts piling in the cracks of the Student Union balcony, cleaning it out is simple, but getting rid of the source requires specialists. Those specialists come from a two-man branch of the Office of Facility Services — the Department of Animal Control.David Perault and Jeremy Bernard grew up hunting and fishing across Louisiana, and those skills are being put to use on campus every day.Bernard said he’s gotten pretty good at catching the bats roosting inside a crack on the Union balcony. He’s already taken more than 500 of them back to his property in Livingston.Bernard said he traps the bats by attaching a metal pan beneath them while they sleep. When the bats drop from their perches to fly away, they fall into the pans and can’t escape.”Most hunters can raise their animals, take care of them and understand them,” Perault said. “It’s about knowing what’s out there, not just going around and killing things.”Perault said any day on the job starts with a phone call reporting animal activity, usually inside or underneath some campus building. He said his department doesn’t respond unless the animal poses some problem to the University.Those problems come in all sizes, shapes and smells — from squirrels chewing wires in an attic to skunks feeding on peanuts underneath the old Alex Box Stadium.Perault said he hasn’t encountered anything he couldn’t handle in 15 years of work. He said his main goal is keeping students safe.”We have aggressive animals on campus, but no one ever got bit — no one ever got hurt,” Perault said. “We’ve just been lucky, I guess.”Perault said the biggest issue with most animals are fleas, especially when it comes to feral cats.Once the flea-infested animals are gone, Perault said the University usually contracts Bayou Cajun Extermination, a local pest control agency, to get rid of the fleas. Perault said he only concerns himself with cats if they become a nuisance or if they’re spreading fleas. Some of the bigger animals — raccoons, possums and skunks — need a little more attention. “Anywhere we think the animal will be a hazard to the students, we’re going to set up traps to catch and replace them,” Perault said. “I buy a lot of tuna.”When a call comes in, Bernard is dispatched with those cans of tuna and a couple of animal-safe traps. He’ll puncture the cans, but only enough to lure a hungry rodent to the trap.They’re then loaded into the back of a Facility Services truck and taken off campus. Bernard said he usually releases them on River Road near Ben Hur Road.”We take them down to the farms where they can run around and hopefully not get caught again,” Bernard said.
 
 
 
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