Who to call when things go flutter-scratch-thump

There are few sounds quite as alarming as the unmistakable flutter-scratch-thump of a wild animal trapped inside your wood stove chimney.

When it happened at my house, I did what anyone with a conscience — and absolutely no idea how to extract a terrified bird from a chimney — would do: I went on Nextdoor.

That’s how I found Kyle McAward of Nutmeg Wildlife Management, a Sharon-based wildlife control business serving Connecticut and New York. I’m happy to report that the bird was freed and, as McAward put it, “hopefully living a good life.”

“I love to do the ones where, at the end of the day, everybody lived,” he said.

An outdoorsman his entire life, Kyle grew up in Sherman and has worked on farms and in construction, experiences that made wildlife management a natural fit. When he researched the business, he saw room for a different approach.

“A lot of the companies that you’re going to find now, they tend to use poisons,” he said. “I don’t like the ecological impact of them.”

Instead, Nutmeg Wildlife Management, which is licensed and insured in Connecticut and New York, emphasizes eco-friendly exclusion, humane trapping and remediation. McAward focuses on finding and sealing the places animals use to enter a structure and addressing what the industry calls “lifestyle issues” that attract them in the first place.

With rodents, that can mean keeping vegetation at least 2 feet from the foundation of your home, mowing lawns, moving bird feeders away from the house and keeping livestock feed at a distance.

“Usually there’s a smoking gun,” he said. His job is to find it.

The work can also get considerably more adventurous. McAward responds to calls involving birds and bats in chimneys, raccoons in crawl spaces and even timber rattlesnakes in yards.

“Any situation where someone’s coming into interaction with an animal that they don’t wish to, I come on by and provide help,” he said.

Rattlesnakes, which are protected, require coordination with state wildlife officials. McAward admitted that maneuvering one away from a home can be exciting, but said crawling into dark spaces can sometimes be more unnerving.

“A cornered raccoon can be a little scary,” he said.

Local homeowners praise McAward for being communicative, thorough and practical, providing clear explanations and photographs of completed work. His philosophy, though, remains simple: solve the problem without creating another one farther down the food chain.

“At the end of the day,” he said of poison-based rodent control, “you could end up with just you, the mice and the poison.”

Nutmeg Wildlife Management and Kyle McAward can be found on Nextdoor.com, reached at 516-491-6893 or by email at kylemcaward@gmail.com.