My friend was helping me the other day in a beaver pond. While filming the construction of a beaver deceiver he basically asked me,
“What good are you to a homeowner or business owner? Can’t they just do this themselves?”
Beaver deceiver fully installed to protect the culverts from beaver activity.
Well, yes of course they can do this themselves. People, we are amazing beings. We can adapt and learn, and apply new ideas to novel problems all the time. It’s one of the things that kind of makes us pretty cool creatures.
My friend caught me off guard. All we had been discussing up to that point was beaver habits and biology. And leeches. The video is lots of fun, and I recommend you watch it, but I wanted to try and make things a little more clear as to why you should hire a professional.
Maine Wildlife Management with a live caught beaver ready to be relocated
Reason #1: Experience
This goes for any industry in the world. A true professional in their field is going to have years of experience and intuition from both losses and gains. They can apply those past lessons to every new unique situation they encounter. This is especially important when it comes to choosing a wildlife control operator.
Animals don’t play by the rules all the time. They have quirky minds like us, and rarely follow the play books. Unfortunately. When a family of squirrels shows up under your recliner, you don’t want an amateur guessing at solutions. You want the problem solved.
Relocating our trailer dwelling skunk into a new habitat
Reason #2: Cost Savings
I said it above, but it bears repeating. You only cry once when you buy quality. Professionals, in any field, have gone through the trials and tribulations to learn their trade. We’ve all been through the situation of trying to get a job done using the least expensive, least time consuming, most time efficient manner possible.
What ends up happening in reality is the cheap route isn’t robust or effective enough to get the job done, and we end up doing or paying for the job again. Sometimes multiple times. That’s really aggravating. And sad. In the end it’s an amateurs decision to go cheap. Pros know in the end we’ll be way farther ahead in terms of money, time, and effort savings.
A quick selfie with the last remaining baby red squirrels before reuniting them with their mother
Reason #3:Freedom
When you hire professionals to handle things that are outside of your expertise, you essentially buy yourself freedom and piece of mind. You transfer the risks and responsibilities to someone that’s going to take care of you. This allows you to focus your mind, spirit, and energy towards things that really matter to you in your life. Your family. Your hobbies. Your business. Your friends. Your personal goals. Your health.
Hiring fly-by-night businesses to help solve your problems is the fast track to stress induced aggravation and degradation of happiness. Understanding what your comfortable doing, your familiarity with the topic, and interest or involvement will help dictate what businesses you choose in the future.
Just one more nail…
I’ll leave you with one more personal story. Just in case my “Joke Telling” analogy on the video wasn’t as succinct and clear as it could have been. This time, I’m using my car. Everyone has a car and can relate. I also just found out yesterday when getting an inspection that I need a whole host of new front and rear end parts. Ties rods, ball joints, rear shocks. Thank you, Maine pot holes.
I can do all the work myself, and have done lots of my own auto work over the years. I’ve even rebuilt my own motors and spent many hours as a shade tree home mechanic. However, I don’t do mechanical work all the time. Looking everything over, I’m faced with a large portion of an entire day that will be tied up working on the car. I’ll still have to buy all the parts, and then invest my time. Apparently I need to buy a special tool as well for the tie rods….
Or, I hire my mechanic to do the work. It’s going to cost me more money than if I did it myself. However, they can do in a couple hours what would take me most of the day. By hiring professionals to help solve my problems, I’m essentially buying my time back. That small investment frees me up to pursue things in my life that matter to me.
Like writing blogs, catching critters, and fishing with my son.
Maine Wildlife Management getting some relocation help with nuisance groundhogs
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Great blog Randy. Knowing when it is best to hire someone to do something we think we can do, and may in fact be able to do, is not always an easy decision. I have hopefully learned enough with the experience of age, and taking on tasks which in hind-site were better left for the professional, to properly value my time and energy. In economics the term is opportunity cost – A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else. I can change the oil in my SUV, or replace the shifting mechanism on my ATV (which is at the dealer now being repaired), but the pros can do it more efficiently and I would rather spend my time doing many other things.
Absolutely Jay, well said! I find that in many situations you can certainly handle many things yourself. Especially in this day and age of easily accessible technology and information. Thank you YouTube lol. The question though is do want, or should, you take on a new task. It’s different for everyone and every situation. I’ve certainly learned some hard lessons as well. Sometimes It’s good to do something difficult though, so you can find your limits. Then hire a pro to do the job correctly and more efficiently haha.