Jeff Carver and Marc Hammond walk through the desert near Saguaro National Park West carrying a green bucket with a perforated lid.
鈥淚 found one!鈥 Carver calls and motions to a hole framed by a tangle of desert vegetation, mesquite pods and cholla cactus at the base of a mesquite tree.
He had found a pack rat鈥檚 nest to release a rhumba of rattlesnakes 鈥 yes, that鈥檚 what a group of rattlesnakes is called 鈥 born four days before. No pack rat was present, but its midden will provide temporary shelter to the young snakes.
The snakes are only 6 inches long, a finger-width wide and have a silent button tail instead of a full rattle. Each was plucked from the green bucket using snake tongs and placed in the entrance of the pack-rat den.
They quickly slithered in.
鈥淭hey wouldn鈥檛 do that if they were adults,鈥 Hammond said. But these siblings are unsentimental. 鈥淭hey won鈥檛 stay together long,鈥 he said. 鈥淏y tomorrow they鈥檒l be spread out.鈥
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The young rattlers were birthed by a rattlesnake that Hammond removed from someone鈥檚 property, which is all part of a day鈥檚 work at 蜜柚直播 Animal Experts Inc.
Hammond and Carver, along with four contracted employees, receive about 50 calls a week, night or day, to remove almost any kind of critter: large, small, scaly, furry, winged, fanged or stinky from the property of (often) distressed customers.
Once an animal is contained, never killed, the company鈥檚 policy is to do anything it can to release it into the wild or rehabilitate it.
Their work has not gone unnoticed.
The National Geographic Wild Channel filmed the 蜜柚直播 Animal Experts and three other animal relocation teams across the country for a year to produce a new show called 鈥淲hen Nature Calls.鈥
It premieres Monday, Aug. 21, at 7 p.m. 蜜柚直播 time. The first show features Hammond and Carver releasing a pigeon-eating bobcat they captured in a coop. See a clip at National Geographic Wild website at
The Animal Experts been approached in the past by other networks for spots on reality TV, but they rejected most of the proposals because they were asked to create fake drama, something they weren鈥檛 comfortable doing.
鈥淭hey wanted us to get into fights,鈥 Carver said, 鈥渂ut there鈥檚 enough drama between the clients and the animal.鈥
The show focuses on teams that do animal relocation, which has been a company policy since its founding 27 years ago. Hammond and Carver founded the company when Pima Animal Care Center, then called Pima County Animal Control, cut funding for animal capture.
PACC opened the job up to the private sector, so the duo started out collecting feral cats and skunks. This move was followed by the 蜜柚直播 Game and Fish Department cutting its animal removal program as well, focusing on mountain lion and bear removal now.
That leaves Animal Experts to remove and relocate almost any animal from anyone鈥檚 property, if they think it鈥檚 necessary for animal and human safety.
Hammond and Carver strive to take the most humane path when deciding what to do with the animal once captured and balancing that with the needs of the community.
鈥淥ur business has always been that way,鈥 Carver said.
While working as animal cruelty investigators at PACC, they witnessed a lot of cruelty and death. The experience shaped their company ethos.
鈥淏eing a snake should not be a capital offense,鈥 Carver said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no sense in killing an animal that鈥檚 doing what it was put here to do.鈥
Educational outreach is also folded into their company mission as well.
鈥淛eff and I thought it was so important to educate the children that we鈥檙e still doing it today,鈥 and at no cost, Hammond said.
They鈥檝e posted videos to Facebook for years as well.
鈥淲e鈥檙e educating people, we talk about conservation or the environment, or why this animal is so important or why we鈥檙e releasing the animal here instead of over there,鈥 Hammond said.
Educational outreach is one of the reasons National Geographic Wild reached out to them in the first place, Hammond said, and why they agreed to be a part of it.
