The Critter Hunter

He stalks skunks, raccoons, foxes, snakes, and more—any wild varmint that's invaded city or suburb. Got bats in the Attic? Rick Wilberschied is on the case

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Wilberschied's Chevy Silverado four-by-four holds his gear, baits, and tools and blasts Mötley Crüe.

The sign at the entrance to the football field at Concordia University in River Forest calls the small stadium the "Home of the Cougars." But of late, it's been the domain of a fox. "He's peed on the carpet," Linda Holowicki, the director of the physical plant, tells Wilberschied as she leads him on a tour, pointing to the artificial surface of the field. "He likes to sit under the stands or over by the cafeteria. You see that little mud pile? One day he sat there all day, just scratching himself," she says. "The last week of school, he was eating a rabbit in front of the cafeteria. Our football coach tried to hit him with a football one time, but he missed."

The fox's audacity is emblematic of a growing lack of fear among urban and suburban wild things. "In the wild you couldn't get within 200 yards of a fox," says Wilberschied. "This one is so brazen you could almost pet him. The thing is, all it takes is for one person to start feeding them, and all those natural inhibitions go out the window because there's a free meal around."

"Have you seen him today?" Holowicki asks a passing student.

"Not yet," the student says.

"You see?" Holowicki says. "Everyone here knows him."

"Have you, by any chance, been able to see the plumbing on this animal?" Wilberschied asks. She shakes her head.

"Well, the fact that it's hanging out here tells me that it's not a he, but a she. Probably a mother with a litter somewhere that's not really big enough to follow her yet." Wilberschied cases the campus and finds a few rabbit bones, a skull—leftovers from a feeding. "See? She eats these and then goes back and regurgitates them to her young."

As Wilberschied is talking, a rusty mini truck with the words "King of Trash" spray-painted on the side pulls up. The King is actually a maintenance worker who wears dirty sweatpants and a gray T-shirt. "We've been trying to catch him," the King says. Wilberschied climbs a ladder onto a platform and peers into a large garbage bin. He pulls his mirrored shades up onto the top of his head and looks down at the King. "Do me a favor," he says. "Don't. You don't want to go messing around with a wild animal."

Wilberschied makes one more trip around the campus. Sly fox. She picks today to make herself scarce. "Well, call me if you see her again," he says. "If I can actually get from me to you, I can try to noose the animal. If I can't, the next thing to do is dart it. I've got a dart pistol—just let security know. Not too cool to be showing up with a gun on a campus these days."

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Having professionally trapped for three years, Wilberschied is a relative newcomer to the nuisance wildlife animal business, but he's been a lifelong student of critters. "Pretty much from the time I was old enough to walk I was trapping and fishing and hunting," Wilberschied tells me as we drive to the day's next stop, a squirrel complaint in Hoffman Estates. "My dad got me and my two other brothers into the outdoors."

It was on a family bow-hunting trip, in fact, that Wilberschied's heavyweight bear bout occurred. "I was in northern Minnesota, hunting with my brother," he recalls.

He was waiting in a tree when two cubs smelling bait ambled up right below him. "I pulled an arrow out of the quiver, turned it around, and bopped one on the head," he says. "He let out a little 'Rahhh,' and pretty soon, Mom is coming to the rescue. She got to the bottom of the tree and started popping her jaws and woofing. Now, you have to remember that bear can climb a tree the way a squirrel can, like somebody launched them out of a cannon. So when she started up, I reached down and punched her in the nose with my fist. Fortunately, that was enough for her, and she wandered away."

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For the Wilberschieds, who lived in a bungalow near the corner of Addison Street and Harlem Avenue, catching critters wasn't a matter of recreation—"It was a way of life," he says. "My dad and uncle would go down to Montrose Harbor during smelting season—they'd come home with, like, five-gallon buckets, loads of them. They'd clean them up; then my mom would flour them and fry them right there."

"I was raised on rabbit," he says. One of Wilberschied's earliest memories, in fact, was catching bunnies in wire snares he strung across paths in the woods near his home. "For a lot of people [catching dinner] was a novelty," he says. "For us, it was living."

After attending Prosser Vocational High School, Wilberschied went into his father's line of work, construction. "It pretty much tore me up," he says, referring to the assorted injuries he sustained. "Makes it fun trying to climb around attics and on the roofs of three-story houses." He later upholstered himself in a coat and tie and sold construction supplies. "Every morning I woke up and I just hated going to work," he says. "It just sucked. I wanted to be one of those people who could get up and be pumped up about the day. I couldn't stand being behind a desk." One day, he says, a friend who was a bricklayer told him about a job working with nuisance wildlife. "He said, 'You hate doing what you're doing—why don't you come try this?' I knew immediately that I'd found something I could really enjoy doing."

He started out working for another operator. Then three years ago, he formed All That's Wildlife, which he advertises at AllThatsWildlife.com. He was a natural. From his childhood, and years of self-guided study, he had an almost preternatural ability to find and trap animals. As with all commercial wildlife operators in Illinois, he had to pass a rigorous licensing exam that requires extensive knowledge of wildlife diseases and symptoms, mastery of the proper way to capture and dispose of animals, and the ability to recognize species and their habits. Today, he is one of about 330 licensed wildlife operators in the state.

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This article appears in the September 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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