Archive for March, 2012

Staying ahead of the Pine Beetle threat

She has also seen evidence of the in Fall River County and is working with her staff as well as with State Forester Dave Hettik to try to educate citizens on what to look for and how to deal with Pine Beetles if they are found. First and foremost?

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Pests in the NewsMarch 27, 2012

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Pest-case scenarios: Customs agents try to halt threat of foreign

CHARLESTON — Steve Switzer is like a kid with toy. He closes his lips over a straw-sized tube, sucks in, and poof! A tiny insect on the table vanishes from sight, then reappears inside a small plastic vial. “That’s how you catch a bug …

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Pests in the NewsMarch 27, 2012

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Bugging Out: Chocolate Allergy Linked to Roaches – ABC News (blog)


ABC News (blog)

Bugging Out: Chocolate Allergy Linked to Roaches
ABC News (blog)
“Anything more than 60 insect pieces per 100 grams of chocolate is rejected by the FDA. ” Trace amounts of insect parts that are ground into the food and can affect people with allergies and asthma. Some side effects include migraines, cramps, …

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Pests in the NewsMarch 27, 2012

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Concerns about insect infestation risen at DeKalb City Council – Northern Star Online

Concerns about insect infestation risen at DeKalb City Council
Northern Star Online
Concern about an insect infestation was the DeKalb City Council's main focus at a meeting Monday. The Illinois Department of Agriculture brought concerns about the emerald ash borer (EAB), an insect that feeds on ash trees. EAB program manager Scott …

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Pests in the NewsMarch 27, 2012

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Mar 27, 2012 – Bringing In The Heat

QUESTION:

What are your thoughts regarding pest control technicians reporting customers to public health officials? I had a situation where I was asked to follow up for another technician dealing with a rat infestation at a residential account, and he informed me that he reported her to the public health dept for the condition of the house – supposedly rat hair, rat feces, rubbish and odors. When I inspected the house the only odor I could detect was from her old dirty dog, which basically lived in the first floor of the house, and upstairs seems perfectly normal to me with no odors and relatively clean. I informed his supervisor of my findings and indicated that I didn’t believe that she should have been reported to public health, but that we should just eliminate the rats from her home and do the job she paid us to do. Also, the supervisor was the one that contacted the Health Department without even inspecting the residence himself and he became extremely defensive, questioning my judgement. Your thoughts please.

ANSWER:

Whenever I tread on controversial ground I tend to tiptoe a lot, but this is a very good question that relates to more than just this incident. If you have commercial customers, especially a restaurant that serves food to the general public, and you perceive a serious health situation that the management of that restaurant refuses to address, should you notify the public health authorities about it? This puts you in a ticklish situation. If you ignore an obvious public health problem perhaps you are guilty as well of putting people at risk when they unwittingly eat the food there. If you bring in the authorities you risk angering that customer and losing him, since he is likely to connect the dots on what has occurred. I think you would work as hard as possible with the customer first, to get the problems corrected and get him to cooperate and willingly bring his facility into proper health standards, but if that simply is not going to happen then how badly do you need to keep that account? If someone gets ill because of the poor sanitation there, linked also to the presence of pests, YOU will be brought into the mess because you will be blamed for not controlling the pest problem, and when the media publicizes this event they could well mention your company name in a negative way. Perhaps when all hope is lost bringing in public health inspectors is the right thing to do. 

Without knowing any background on this home you are dealing with I can’t pontificate too much. Is this just a private home with the owner the resident, or is it a rental? How long has the other pest control company been dealing with what they felt was a deplorable situation? Who asked you to do this follow up on this home, thus bringing in a second company? I am making the assumption that you and the other technician are with separate companies? On the face of your description it sounds to me like the first technician/supervisor may have jumped the gun. There is no law that says you have to be clean and neat, and what one person thinks of as cozy another may think of as pigsty. If this house has a rat problem then obviously there would be rodent hair, feces, and urine and the associated odors, and to be honest, all of that is exactly why we are called out to the home, and all of that is a situation that WE have the ability to correct. Part of the process of rodent management is to point out to the customer these unsanitary conditions and to offer to properly remove the feces and to sanitize the surfaces that are contaminated. If it seems to be beyond the scope of what we can do then recommending to the customer that a cleaning company be brought in is appropriate as well. 
It may be that the other company had been dealing with this situation for a long time, had gotten no cooperation or seen any improvement, and truly was concerned for the health of this resident. The only recourse they would have might be to try to get a public health inspector to see the place and add some authority to their desire to see it improved. Perhaps they may even have believed that with Public Health backing there might be public funds available to get the work done. I agree that before making a fairly desperate move like contacting public health that supervisor might have taken the time to see the situation personally to be certain that public health was needed, but he probably should have remained professional with you in your discussions with him. 

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Pest QuestionsMarch 27, 2012

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Mar 24, 2012 – Fix That Squeaky Wheel

QUESTION:

I did a treatment for mice in a large, brand new home where the client called me because he could hear a small noise in the living room. I found lots of holes, so we did a lot of rodent proofing and set traps in the attic, suspending ceiling, and so on. Activity in the basement and attic was noticeable so he cleaned up and this seemed to stop it. He still says he hears noise at the same place in the living room but I don’t see new activity. I have baited outside and there is no activity there either. What do you suggest? Do I look under the blown insulation, for bats or what?

ANSWER:

From what you say they definitely have had a rodent problem, but it is important now to identify that “noise” that this customer claims to still be hearing. It is not unusual for pest control technicians to be called out for a bug that keeps on chirping, only to find out it is the smoke detector with a low battery. Perhaps this noise the customer hears is something other than rodent related, or he even may be so hyper-sensitive to mice now that he is straining to hear things that are not there. This time of year it also is possible he has firewood next to the fireplace, and large wood boring beetles within that wood can be chewing and causing audible sounds that he may hear. This happened in my own home this winter until a couple of large eucalyptus beetles found their way out of some wood that I should have left outside. From 20 feet away my wife kept hearing the gnawing sounds. 

You should place plenty of monitoring traps around this room where pets and people will not step on them, and inspect them over the next few weeks to see if anything is captured. It is useful to clean up all visible evidence of rodents, such as feces and chewed materials, so that a subsequent inspection of that same area would reveal any new activity. I don’t know that I’d go burrowing through the blown-in insulation just yet, but definitely place glue or snap traps up in the attic with an attractant on them and see what you capture. In your question you don’t actually say that you caught or killed any rodents with the trapping and baiting you have done so far, but if you found previous evidence of mice and now do not then perhaps what you have done has been successful. 
I suggest at this time to move onto monitoring, as well as trying to identify what he is hearing in that room. With all the clean up and exclusion you have done you should have made any remaining mice, if they are there, uncomfortable and more likely to be moving around looking for new food resources, so hopefully you will capture them if they are present. 

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Pest QuestionsMarch 26, 2012

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Mar 25, 2012 – Could 1 + 1 = None

QUESTION:

Can a store bought pesticide, such as Raid, contaminate a product like Tempo SC?

ANSWER:

I can take your question two different ways Dominick. You may be asking if applying one near or over the other could cause a problem or you could be asking if keeping them together in storage could cause a problem. This second option is easier to answer. 

If the containers of both products are in good condition there should be no issues of contamination. But, if the Raid (aerosol) can is leaking or rusted and liable to leak then it certainly is going to lose its contents into the immediate area. If you have that leaking can on the shelf with other stored materials then there is that chance that the contents could get on to other things. Now, if the container of the Tempo SC is also in good condition then even a leaking aerosol can next to it should have no effect on the contents of the Tempo SC. The bigger problem would be if you had rodent or insect baits near a leaking container of a liquid or an aerosol, and the leaked materials got onto that bait. This definitely would give the bait on off-taste that might make it unacceptable to the insect or rodent. 
If your question is whether someone spraying raid over the top of your application of Suspend could contaminate the active ingredient in your product to the point it does not work well, the answer would be……….. maybe. The concern would most likely be whether that aerosol product would create such a repellency that bugs would no longer walk onto your treated area, and since so many retail aerosols contain pyrethrum, which can be very repellent, this could happen. Pyrethroids by themselves may be repellent to very sensitive insects like ants and bed bugs, so adding some pyrethrum to the pyrethroid may not have much more of an effect. Either the bugs will readily walk on it or they won’t. 
I don’t see this as an issue in the sense that spraying a store-bought aerosol is going to affect the active ingredient that you put down. However, even though these a.i.’s are relatively low in toxicity, putting one on top of the other, perhaps multiple times, starts to add to the toxic makeup of the material on that surface. It would be good advice to ask your customers to please avoid using their own insecticides after you have treated their home. If they just cannot stand the sight of some bugs still crawling over that surface, since our products are not laser beams that instantly kill the bugs, then they could remove the bugs with a vacuum. 

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Pest QuestionsMarch 25, 2012

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St. Paul tenants unclear on who pays to clean up bedbug-infested apartments

A firm went through the Westminster Court apartments last week, spraying for bugs and rodents. Tenants say it’s a hopeful sign that conditions at the dilapidated St. Paul buildings will gradually improve. What remains unclear to …

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Pests in the NewsMarch 24, 2012

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New firewood restrictions in place for Ind. parks

New firewood restrictions intended to combat the spread of invasive at Indiana’s state parks have taken effect ahead of the start of the summer camping season. The firewood rules adopted in January by the Indiana Natural Resources Commission took …

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Pests in the NewsMarch 24, 2012

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DECATUR | Animal shelter has rats, , high kill rate

DECATUR, Ga. — A pet impounded at the DeKalb County Animal Shelter has a 30 percent chance of getting out alive. It’s part of a report released by the DeKalb Animal Services Task Force. That same report details terrible conditions: rats eating through …

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Pests in the NewsMarch 24, 2012

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