The Urban Pantheist

The pest control industry is a highly regulated multi-billion dollar global industry. The discovery that vinegar attracts fruit flies, or kills weeds, will not drive them out of business. As with most internet claims, if a helpful hint for pest control sounds too good to be true, it is. A good test of whether a substance or a product is effective at controlling pests is if a major pest control product distributor carries it in its inventory.

You see, critics of the pest control industry are right about one thing: they’re in it for the money. But their business model isn’t “conceal the fact that cinnamon works as a mild insect repellant so that we can sell more bug spray.” Their business model depends on developing and selling products that work as directed, and marketing them effectively. They know that some common substances like boric acid are effective—but instead of ceding the market to the laundry detergent folks, they have formulated products that contain boric acid, but that are more user friendly (contain anti-caking agents, or are combined with food-based baits, etc).

If you want to see if a pest control product distributor is serious about selling effective merchandise, look for ultrasonic repelling devices. These are popular plug-in devices that make a sound that humans can’t hear that other animals can. They don’t repel pests. This has been proven scientifically. If the distributor is selling these then they care more about making money than solving pest issues. Or you could check to see if they sell diatomaceous earth—this is an all-natural mineral substance that (when used properly) effectively kills insects and some other arthropods. It’s relatively safe to use around humans and other vertebrates, and is inexpensive. If the distributor refuses to carry DE products, then they likewise care more about the bottom line than serving their customers.

Of course prevention is always the most effective method of combating pests: if your house is clean and tidy, if all of your doors have doorsweeps and your windows have intact screens, if there are no holes in the walls or gaps at the bottom of the garage doors or cellar bulkheads, if you have properly landscaped your yard to keep it sunny and dry, if you have trash cans and recycle bins that are designed properly and removed and cleaned regularly, then you will have very little reason to spend money on either dangerous poisons that threaten your children and pets, or to misuse dryer sheets and mothballs in a misguided attempt to scare away mice, ants, and evil spirits.

Tapinoma melanocephalum, the ghost ant, was featured on my 280 days of Urbpandemonium post on New Years Day. Here are some more shots of this interesting little invasive pest species. Here is a worker on the edge of a thin sheet of plywood.

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A light fixture is no place to establish a colony. I mean, it has its virtues--it's under the eave protected from the rain, for example. But whatever benefits this location provides are vastly outweighed by being an inconvenience to the humans within the building.


It's a shame because the architects of this young nest were bald-faced hornets Dolichovesula maculata*, who voraciously hunt other insects to feed to their young--I have read that they even catch their closest relatives, the much hated yellow jackets. Adults feed on liquid sugar, either flower nectar or the juice of discarded fruit. Workers defend the nest bravely and energetically. One memorable time I was attacking a mature nest and the workers kept bouncing off my bee veil, directly in front of my eyes. More often then not these social wasps build their nests high in the leafy canopy of trees, and we don't even know they were there until the autumn reveals the empty nest.

* "Spotted, long little wasp"

One thing I have learned time and time again as a pest control professional, is that you usually can't solve anything by throwing poison at it. This little fly (my stupid camera did a nice job for once--this fly is less than 2 mm long) lays her eggs in the bacterial slime coating the inside of a drain. The teeny maggots hatch, and feed safely within the mucusy goo. Attempts to exterminate them with bleach and other chemicals mostly deflect off the slime. The only way to interrupt the cycle is to do the hard work of scrubbing the slime out of the drain pipe with a sturdy brush. You can follow that up with maintenance treatments of a competing bacteria (several solutions are commercially available) that eat the slime-producing creatures that make the habitat for the fly. In this case, the fly is Clogmia albipunctata* usually referred to as the "filter fly," "drain fly," "bathroom fly," and so on. As pest issues go, they're pretty minor, but they have caused some fascinatingly hideous problems in rare cases: human urinary myiasis, nasal myiasis, and occupational asthma.

* You guys have been so good--what the hell does "Clogmia" mean? Is it because they live in drains, like clogs do? That can't be right. "albipunctata" means white-spotted. The family name Psychodidae uses the word "psycho" in the sense of "butterfly or moth," since these are also known as moth flies.

Generally speaking, these guys are too fast to be pinned down by a human hand. Then again, if you see one in the daylight, chances are it's not doing too well anyway. Vigorous and repeated attempts at chemical control mean that many cockroaches encountered indoors are staggering about impaired by a neurotoxin.


This on-the-back posture has been discussed elsewhere, common to dead and dying roaches. This individual is Periplaneta americana, the "American cockroach" which is probably native to subsaharan Africa. Think of it as tiny bit of karma for America's gruesome plunder of that continent's people and resources.


They can only survive indoors in hot and humid places like boiler rooms, subways, locker rooms, and greenhouses.

Pest control requires shoveling snow sometimes.

A chewing noise was reported from the ceiling of this building. I went up on to the roof and found this large gap at the peak.


This is the view down the gap--rodents have been chewing the wood smooth. Since we don't have roof rats in our part of the country these are most likely gray squirrels or possibly flying squirrels.


I mostly meshed over the gap, leaving a space for any rodent inside to escape the roof and get caught in a live trap.

Back at it, digging a trench to sink mesh to exclude rodents.

The view of the FP zoo restaurant from behind the door to the dumpsters.


Ugly cell phone photo of a striped garden caterpillar on the hospital garage door. The half inch mesh (and the 15 squares to the inch screen) nicely measures this larva out to 1.63333333333333 inches long.

On Friday my plan was to mostly tidy up my work so that I could leave for a week with a good conscience. Then I got a call saying there was a "huge yellow jacket nest in the playground." That sort of thing needs immediate attention. Fortunately when I arrived on the scene I re-evaluated the situation to "small European paper wasp nest." Still technically in the playground, so I killed them. At least I didn't have to put my moon suit on.