Category: People

Catching unwelcome wildlife comes naturally to a local trapper.

Tracking coyotes, grappling with alligators or having a snake land on your head after it falls out of a tree might be disconcerting to most people. For Dan Eaton of Evans, it’s all in a day’s work.

For more than 25 years, he has owned and operated CSRA Trapping Services to conduct the humane removal of unwanted wildlife from properties. He started the business after a local farmer called him and asked him to trap beavers on his property because they were keeping him from moving his cows from one pasture to another.

“I said I would do it in a couple of months, but the farmer said he would pay me if I did it then,” Eaton says.

Bats & Birds, Squirrels & Snakes
The job is a natural for Eaton, who has been trapping animals since he was 10 years old. Growing up on a farm in southern Illinois in the 1970s, he trapped minks, muskrats and raccoons.

“When you’re only 10 years old, you have to trap the animals you find around ponds and creeks,” says Eaton, whose uncle taught him how to trap.

Now, he traps animals such as coyotes, alligators, snakes, foxes, raccoons, possums, squirrels, bats and birds with his business that is licensed by the Department of Natural Resources in Georgia and in South Carolina.

“If it walks, crawls, flies or swims, and you’ve got ’em, we get ’em,” says Eaton.

During his career, Eaton has been bitten by frightened or angry critters only a couple of times. Of course, he has a foolproof way to protect himself from bites. “I don’t put my hand in the animal’s mouth,” he says.

He uses various tools of the trade such as cages, foothold traps (which have no sharp edges), choke sticks and snake tongs to humanely snare wildlife. He reaches into crawl spaces with a claw to catch uninvited animals. Under regulations, Eaton has to check his traps every 24 hours. He takes care of the animals based on state requirements, which can range from euthanizing to relocating the animal.

According to Eaton, people’s reaction to wildlife should depend on where the animal is and what it is doing.

“If you see an animal in your yard, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s living there. It could just be passing through,” he says.

Wily Coyotes
From 2014 until 2016, Eaton was part of three-year University of Georgia study to understand how coyotes thrive in the South, and how they differ from those in the North and West.

He trapped about 75 coyotes altogether, and he had to weigh, measure, photograph the teeth and put a GPS tracking collar on each of them.

Biologists also took DNA and blood samples from the animals, and the scientists hoped to learn how coyotes navigate agricultural fields and woods and how they hunt.

The technology allowed researchers to follow the movements of the coyotes to see how they dispersed and populated new areas. Biologists also hoped to develop management strategies to reduce coyote populations by gaining an understanding of their movements and patterns.

The ability to monitor so many animals simultaneously shed light on coyote behavior and identified traits of resident coyotes, which exhibit strong allegiance to areas, and transient coyotes, which have nomadic tendencies.

Eaton says it’s a challenge to trap coyotes. For the study he used beaver-based bait to entice them to put a paw in a 3.5-inch, circular foothold that was buried underground in a 100-acre area.

“They’re pretty smart. They’re harder to catch. Everything else is pretty easy. Coyotes learn, and I learn from them,” says Eaton. “They’re survivors. Just when you think you have something figured out, they do something different.”

Coyotes are also a concern in suburban areas, where they can prey on small pets, and Eaton finds it particularly gratifying to catch predator animals. “Coyotes are the apex predator in Georgia,” he says.

Later, Gator
Coyotes might be wily, crafty creatures, but alligators, well, not so much.

“Their brain is the size of a golf ball,” Eaton says. “They’re not smart.”

Not that it’s effortless to trap a gator, though. This summer Eaton caught a 4-foot alligator that was taking a dip in a pool at a Burke County home. “He didn’t want to come out of the pool,” says Eaton.

He had to guide the gator to the shallow end of the pool with a long-handled skimmer and pull it out with a catch pole. After taping the alligator’s mouth and legs together, he put it in the back of his truck and released it in the Savannah River.

“You can tape alligators’ mouths shut with two fingers,” says Eaton. “They don’t have any strength when they open their mouth. It’s all when they close it.”

Another alligator that he recently caught in a residential pond in Louisville required different tactics. “We had to wear him out first,” Eaton says.

The trapper got in a boat, caught the 3-foot alligator with a fishing pole and let him pull the boat around until he was exhausted. Eaton released this gator into the Ogeechee River.

He even caught an alligator in downtown Augusta by throwing a towel over its head and jumping on its back.

Fear Factor (Or Lack Thereof)
However, the call he dreads the most is the one to trap moles. Not because of anything the little varmints do, however. “It’s not a quick fix, and everybody wants a quick fix,” Eaton says.

So far, his most unusual task has been capturing a red-tail boa constrictor that was a one-snake welcome committee for new homeowners who found it after moving into their house. The boa had belonged to the college-aged son of the previous owners. His parents thought he had taken the snake to college with him, but it actually had escaped from its aquarium – much to the chagrin of the new residents.

Eaton’s biggest fear on the job comes, not from the animals, but from the possibility of falling off of a roof or a ladder. He took a 40-foot fall from a rooftop about three years ago when he was trying to trap bats. He had to have shoulder surgery as a result of the fall, but he still caught the bats.

Largely self-taught, Eaton is a member of the National Wildlife Control Operators Association, and he has taken certification classes through the organization. He is a member of the Georgia Trappers Association, and he has a good relationship with the state Department of Natural Resources.

“I have learned a lot from other people, and I have taken classes and seminars through associations,” he says.

Since animals tend to appear on their own time, trapping them is not a 9-to-5 vocation. And it’s no wonder Eaton has no qualms about tangling with wildlife for a living. After all, he spends his spare time jumping out of airplanes and teaching freefall and tandem skydiving lessons.

“I’m not smart enough to be scared,” says Eaton. “Nothing surprises me anymore. I expect the unexpected.”

Anytime, anywhere.

“I got bitten by a copperhead once and had to go to the hospital, and I wasn’t even on the job,” he says. “I was picking up wood in my own backyard.”

As for any snake that freefalls on top of him out of trees in the woods, he has a matter-of-fact method of slithering out of its path. “I grab the snake and throw it one way,” Eaton says, “and I go the other way.”

By Todd Beck

A husband and wife, who teach art at local schools, like to mix their individual styles when they create public artwork together.

Artwork is meant to be shared, and there is nothing that husband and wife artists Wesley L. Stewart and Colleen Beyer enjoy more than spending time together to create art.

“Typically, visual artists travel a lonely road,” says Wesley.

Currently, however, they have gotten a double dose of gratification by working together on a project and sharing their talents with the community. Since October, Colleen, who teaches art at Harlem High School, and Wesley, an adjunct professor of art appreciation at Georgia Military College, have been collaborating on a public art project in Harrisburg.

During the academic year, Wesley and Colleen, recent winners of the 2020 Greater Augusta Arts Council Kath Girdler Engler Award for Public Art, worked on it for two hours at a time. This summer, though, they have worked in larger chunks of time to complete the project.

Concrete Canvases
The couple won a grant from the Porter Fleming Foundation in 2108 to do the artwork on the Calhoun Expressway underpasses at Eve Street and Crawford Avenue. The concrete “canvases,” which are about 100 feet long and 30 feet high, are on Georgia Department of Transportation property, and it took a year to get approval from GDOT for the project.

“We submitted our idea, but they really wanted the artist to work with the community on the design,” says Colleen. “We walked through the neighborhood and picked out flowers that were prominent. We painted bees because there are some beekeepers in the neighborhood. We wanted to mix our styles of art.”

Colleen usually creates two-dimensional paintings in acrylic or watercolor. Influenced by nature, botanical forms and mark-making, she often paints animals, plants and portraits of children and pets. Her pieces begin with a charcoal drawing.

“I like 3D, but my brain doesn’t really work that way,” Colleen says.

Wesley prefers abstract, linear designs, and he draws, paints and welds. He incorporates color to accentuate specific areas of the work or the surrounding area where it is placed.

Primarily a three-dimensional artist, he developed an interest in sculpture, especially metalwork, when he worked for the family business – Stewart Sheet Metal.

“I’m a metal guy. I do a lot of sculpture work,” says Wesley. “That’s why we work well together. We’re good at different things.”

For the public art project, they painted the massive underpasses with sloping sides beneath the concrete stanchions supporting the expressway. Colleen painted the sides with whimsical plants, flowers, vines and bees, and Wesley painted intricate black and white graphic designs on the uprights.

“It’s not a flat surface,” he says. “This is the largest artwork we’ve painted.”

They went through a learning curve to paint the space technically. In a split-second decision Wesley tried to reach a little farther to make a final swipe of black instead of moving his ladder, and he took a tumble. Even though it’s hardly discernible, he still laments the slight smudge his fall left behind.

“We see imperfections that the average person wouldn’t,” Wesley says.

They painted the spaces to be viewed up close, not just from passing vehicles. After all, Colleen says, the neighborhood gets plenty of foot traffic.

“The intent of our work is for people to notice a place that they never noticed for days, weeks, months or years,” says Wesley. “We want to bring attention to places that people forget about.”

People also do photos shoots at the underpasses, much to their delight.

“We want people to enjoy our work and take pictures with it,” says Wesley. “We want to inspire other people to get involved with art by buying it, taking art classes and asking their communities to fund public artwork.”

Challenge & Connectivity
Of course, being art educators, they also enlisted the aid of local students in the public art project. Children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of the CSRA painted with them for a day.

AP students from Westminster Schools of Augusta also helped them with another Harrisburg art project at Hillside Park, which they finished this winter. For this public art piece, they decorated a chain link fence at the park with “Put-in-Cups” in a design that was chosen by a committee of the Harrisburg/West End Neighborhood Association.

“We bought a bunch of different colors and arranged them to look like pixelated flowers,” Colleen says.

The cups interlocked in the fence, but it required a bit of elbow grease to attach them.

“The cups are made for chain link fences and can withstand winds of 100 miles per hour,” says Wesley.

The couple seems to like teaching art as much as they enjoy creating it.

“It’s really fun working with students. This was my fourth year at Harlem, and it has been fun to see my students’ growth from freshmen to seniors,” says Colleen. “I like the act of creating and pushing through to create something out of nothing. I like the challenge and problem solving that comes with it. You learn a lot of skills like time management and how to pay attention to details.”

For Wesley, art means conversation, contact and connectivity.

“I just enjoy having the conversations with people so they tap into something about themselves they didn’t realize before. Art is about contact, looking up and feeling the surface. Art connects us to each other,” he says. “You get to live people’s stories that you couldn’t otherwise. A lot of our history is told through art like cave paintings.

“I love looking at other people’s artwork and techniques,” he adds. “I like making art and talking about it. We like that other people like our artwork.”

Pride in Public Art
Colleen and Wesley, who met in graduate school at Georgia Southern University and first collaborated on a team project called “Eagle Nation on Parade,” hope to keep sharing their artwork with communities.

“It’s art that is accessible to everybody,” Colleen says of public art. “You don’t have to go into a museum or gallery to see it.”

They painted a floral and linear mural at Pineapple Ink Tavern, and Wesley is part of a team that is working on an art project at Beacon Station apartments.

In addition, his artwork can be found at Frog Hollow Tavern and Farmhaus Burgers. He also has a sculpture on the first floor of the city’s Municipal Building, and he created artwork on two traffic boxes in Augusta. His outdoor, public sculptures can be seen on the University of North Georgia campus in Dahlonega and in the downtown areas of Lakeland and Kissimmee in Florida.

They continue to apply for local and regional calls as a couple, individually or as part of a larger artist team to create more art in public spaces.

“Public art creates a sense of pride. It’s singular. There are not multiple copies. I think a successful culture has robust public art,” says Wesley. “We would love to have more opportunities to create public art. We would love to break into Columbia County at some point.”

Colleen agrees. “We’re always looking for the next challenge,” she says.

By Sarah James

After the coronavirus pandemic upended the wedding plans of a local bride, she and her fiancé had to shift gears to plan a completely different ceremony.

For Augusta native Allison Goodwin and her new husband, Jared Bishop, their wedding day was a walk in the park. Not that this was the scenario they originally had in mind, however.

Allison and Jared had planned to have an outdoor wedding March 28 at the Taylor Grady House in Athens, Georgia with 175 well-wishers in attendance. They still got their outdoor ceremony that same day. Instead, though, they exchanged vows in front of seven family members and their officiant at Bluff Creek Park in Oklahoma City, where they were living at the time. The remaining 30 to 35 guests that were able to attend watched the ceremony from their cars

The change of venue on short notice came courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying restrictions.

“I went through so many emotions,” says Allison. “At first, I was really sad and heartbroken from all of the planning I had put into the wedding. I had dreamed of this day since I was a little girl. I felt like it had been taken away from me because I couldn’t celebrate with my family and friends.”

She not only went through a roller coaster of emotions.

“At that time no one, including government officials, knew what to do,” Allison says. “Multiple times a day for multiple days, everything changed from hour to hour. We were getting really frustrated, but we knew that March 28 we were going to get married no matter what.”

Let the Scramble Begin
Allison, who moved to Oklahoma City three years ago to work for Young Life, and Jared, who grew up in Edmond, Oklahoma, met each other through church and mutual friends. Once they got engaged, they already were on a tight timeline to plan a wedding because Jared was scheduled to start his residency in orthopedic surgery in Little Rock, Arkansas on July 1.

They had planned to drive from Oklahoma to Georgia on the Monday before the ceremony. About a week before their wedding day, however, they heard that Athens was shutting down. They had trouble getting in touch with anyone at their venue, and other friends who were getting married said their venues were cancelling on them.

“When we realized we had to change our plans, we went through a long list of options,” says Allison.

They ultimately decided to get married in Oklahoma City at the park. However, because the Oklahoma governor had ordered that all nonessential businesses in counties affected by covid-19 had to close by midnight on Wednesday, March 25, Allison and Jared had to fast-track some wedding day customs.

They had hired an Oklahoma City photographer for their wedding, and she took traditional wedding photos such as the bridal portraits, the first look and the reading of their letters to each other that Wednesday. They scrambled to find a local videographer to document those events that day as well.

“Most of our vendors were understanding, and almost everyone gave us a full refund,” Allison says.

They formulated a text to send to everyone to announce the change in plans. “It was the most efficient way,” she says.

‘So Much Fun’
Only 10 people, including Allison, Jared and the officiant, were allowed at the ceremony. They were joined – properly social distanced, of course – by Allison’s parents, Ginger and Bret Goodwin, and Jared’s parents, brother, sister and his sister’s boyfriend.

Originally, the wedding party included five bridesmaids, seven groomsmen, three ushers, three flower girls and two ring bearers. “None of the people in the bridal party except for Jared’s brother and sister could come,” Allison says.

Two of her bridesmaids, including her sister, were pregnant, and two of them have young children, so they weren’t able to make the trip to Oklahoma.

Jared had asked his brother and his best friend to serve as his best men, but only his brother could stand with him because of the limited number of people who could attend. However, his best friend, along with some of the other groomsmen, were there in their cars.

Jared’s sister became Allison’s maid of honor “and everything else.”

By the week of the ceremony, they also had ordered and paid for flowers for the entire wedding party from a local florist – another last-minute find. However, she ended up using the flowers to make bouquets for Allison for the wedding and for her bridal portrait.

“We got married in part of the park that was closer to the street, so our friends and extended family parked in their cars,” says Allison. “When we were pronounced husband and wife, everyone honked their horns.”

They livestreamed the wedding on Facebook for the rest of their guests.

After the ceremony, Allison and Jared cut their cake and had champagne. Then they walked down the row of cars to greet their guests and pass out cake to them.

“That was so much fun,” Allison says. “It was way more fun than we thought it would be, given the circumstances. With the extra things stripped away from the ceremony, it made it more about the marriage than the wedding.”

Still to Come
The couple will not have another ceremony, but they are planning to have parties in Georgia and in Oklahoma at some point.

“We hope to have original pieces of our reception for the parties,” says Allison. “We’re looking forward to it.”

They had scheduled a party at the Taylor Grady House for June 13, but they had to cancel it as well because of more coronavirus restrictions.

“Since we were moving to Arkansas from out of state, the hospital needed for us to quarantine for two weeks,” Allison says.

Their honeymoon to St. Lucia also was lost to the pandemic because of international travel bans. However, they hope to turn the trip into a one-year anniversary celebration instead.

“It’s been a wild past few months,” Allison says. “We’ll remember all of the stories we’ll get to tell because of coronavirus and all of the support we’ve gotten from family and friends.”

By Betsy Gilliland

When she was growing up, a Columbia County bride used to joke about having a backyard wedding. Little did she know. . . .

As a wedding photographer, Georgia Miller Latremouille is used to rolling with the punches. After all, things seldom go exactly as planned. For her recent marriage to Andrew Martinez, however, the punches she had to roll with for her wedding day were more like a series of hard-hitting body blows.

Georgia and Andrew got married March 28 in the early throes of the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, and they quickly had to improvise their plans on the fly because of the ever-changing CDC guidelines.

“At the beginning, it was so scary,” says Georgia.

Though it was stressful at the time, she now says she wouldn’t change a thing about their wedding.

“It was so special, pandemic and all,” she says.

Silver Linings
Georgia and Andrew, who met in 2017 during a mission trip to the Philippines, originally planned to get married at Enterprise Mill in front of 300 guests. Instead, they tied the knot in the backyard at the home of Georgia’s parents, Donna and Yves Latremouille, in Martinez with about 20 family members and friends in attendance.

About 10 days before the ceremony, Georgia and her mother first realized that the wedding they had been planning wasn’t going to happen.

“I came home one night, and my mom looked at me. She looked really upset,” says Georgia. “She told me about the CDC guidelines that limited the number of people we could have at the wedding. It was so sad. We both just cried together.”

After an 18-month engagement, however, Georgia and Andrew agreed that delaying the wedding was not an option.

“We wanted to get married and start our life together,” says Georgia. “We had a week to figure everything out. We spent two days calling and texting everyone.”

And then they had to reconfigure everything. Originally, the wedding party was going to include seven attendants for each of them, but they ended up with only a maid of honor and a best man. Two of Georgia’s friends who were supposed to be in the wedding were able to attend, however.

“My dog got to be in the wedding. That was a silver lining,” says Georgia. “He wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”

Chairs for family members were grouped together at the ceremony, but otherwise, the seats were placed 6 feet apart. One person served the food at the scaled-down, backyard reception.

Instead of a sit-down dinner, they served a variety of sweets that included a small wedding cake and a cookie cake that her uncle made for them at the last minute.

“Almost everything we did was not in the original plan,” says Georgia.

They already had paid for the flowers, and, although they were able to cancel one order, they had to figure out what to do with the rest of the blooms. With a little creative thinking, they decided to create a beautiful floral arch of roses, peonies and other flowers for the ceremony.

“I’m obsessed with flowers. I knew that was one thing I wanted to spend a lot of my budget on,” says Georgia. “The flowers would have been spread all over the venue. Instead we put them all into one arch.”

In addition, she says, “The day before, my mom and I went through the neighborhood and foraged for lilac. We had planned to do that anyway.”

Her friend, Caroline Cain, played the violin for the ceremony, just as originally planned.

“The whole thing was memorable. It made me realize how important the person you’re marrying is,” says Georgia. “As a wedding photographer, I always worry about the details. But I realized we weren’t getting married to have this big thing. There were so many great moments.”

The people who had watched her grow up were there, and some of them took on roles they otherwise would not have done. Her aunt fluffed up her dress before she walked down the aisle. Her uncle made them a cookie cake. Her brother became an impromptu bartender.

“And my dog was sitting on my dress as we got ready,” Georgia says. “I got married at the house where I grew up. I had always joked about getting married in our backyard, and I would highly recommend a backyard wedding. There isn’t anything like it.”

Twists of Fate
Georgia and Andrew did a Zoom call with a handful of people during the reception, but they didn’t livestream the wedding because they thought they might have another ceremony at a later date. However, Georgia says, “Afterward, it was so perfect, I didn’t want to do anything else.”

They originally rescheduled their vendors to have a party in July, Georgia says, but it is still too soon to have a large gathering.

“I love all my vendors. They were all great. Everyone has been nice, helpful and accommodating,” she says. “We might have a smaller celebration with friends and family later.”

However, her weekend availability is at a premium because of her wedding photography business. Of the dozen or so weddings she had booked to shoot this spring, only about five of them took place – on a much smaller scale. The rest have been postponed.

Georgia and Andrew, whose family lives near Savannah, also rescheduled their honeymoon to Grenada for November. Instead, they went to Beaufort, South Carolina after their wedding.

“My family has an old cottage there that was built in the 1940s, and it has not changed since then,” says Georgia. “It’s no resort. The shower is outside, but it’s my favorite place in the world. It’s like camping with walls.”

Even before their wedding, Georgia and Andrew knew all about the twists of fate that life can bring. Georgia is the youngest of four children, and her older siblings are triplets. Andrew is a triplet, too. So it seems almost natural that destiny had a hand in their wedding plans.

“I don’t think I would have changed anything,” says Georgia. “People sent me the nicest messages. After we got married, I felt so loved and celebrated.”

By Betsy Gilliland