When that call goes out it means power company construction workers have come face-to-face with swarming bees, wasps, raccoons, opossums, coyotes, nesting birds or deadly snakes.
But never fear, Ryan D. Pietsch is here to wrangle the snakes, round up the raccoons, chase the coyotes, or dispose of wasps, hornets or wild honey bees that set up housekeeping in the elevator, outbuildings or cab of one of the gargantuan industrial cranes at Luminant Energy’s Sandow Steam Electric Station Unit 5 construction site in south Milam County.
The 33-year-old Pietsch, of Lexington, joined Bechtel Power Corp. more than a year ago as part of the environmental, health and safety team, which specializes in keeping the wild side of life from clashing with heavy metal.
Robert C. Donnelly, site manager for Bechtel, the construction company building the Sandow electric station, is so impressed with the corporate “critter-getter” that Pietsch has been hired as a permanent Bechtel employee to be used at future construction projects.
He’s built like a pro football player and has a bachelor’s degree from Texas State University in geography under his belt. He’s also undaunted by dizzying heights.
When the towering structures attract wild bees and Pietsch finds a swarm of 50,000 of the buzzing, stinging insects, he calls the Alcoa beekeeper to relocate them to a safe hive.
“This past Saturday, we had some bees in the elevator, and they filled up the whole box,” he said.
Pietsch is also audacious confronting angry wasps and yellow jackets with foaming spray because “I don’t want to have poison raining down on the people below.”
Common industrial gatecrashers are the poisonous and aggressive cottonmouth moccasins, which because of the warm-water biome of Alcoa Lake, are on the construction site year-round, Pietsch said. These are the only critters Pietsch kills.
Linda Tschirhart-Hejl, wildlife biologist with Texas AgriLife Extension’s wildlife services in College Station, said the noisy, dusty, well-lighted and continually shifting power plant construction site might qualify it as the world’s largest scarecrow and “birds become accustomed to just about anything over time.” Hence, it is not surprising to find birds and other wildlife mingling with noisy industry.
Killdeer - a bird species whose liking for human-modified habitats and a disposition to nest close to people makes them vulnerable to pesticides and encounters with vehicles and buildings - are found nesting in “the most odd places,” Pietsch said.
“We have to barricade it off and not disturb that bird until the eggs are hatched. Mourning doves have nested in the structure, and we just basically worked around them and let them be.”
Pietsch obtained written permission from the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department to relocate an inhabited nest of a scissortail flycatcher from a dangerous place in the construction zone.
“Only under those circumstances can we actually move a nest,” Pietsch said. “I put it in another place nestled in the bushes, where it was very well protected around it. I visited the nest a couple of months later, eggshells were cracked, and birds had fledged. I didn’t lose anything in the process.”
Pietsch, meanwhile, makes sure federally protected grackles and egrets nesting plant side are not disturbed.
“Go for Ryan!” pages come at all hours of the day and night, said Pietsch, who in one day tangled with a cottonmouth and a hive of bees before noon.
Another day found him rushing to a water sump at Boiler B when a labor foreman reported a 3-foot snake, “... and he was having no part of that snake. I got the rubber boots on, got the flashlight and snake stick. I was expecting a 3-foot snake. I got down in there and the snake is 8 inches long. I bring him out, set him on the concrete, and say, ‘That’s your 3-foot snake?’”
