Reality Bites

Someone in an office felt something bite them.  They looked on their arm and saw what they thought was a little red bug.  They grabbed a tissue, killed it, balled up the tissue and threw it in the waste basket.

The office manager heard about what happened and was worried that it might have been a bed bug, so she dug the tissue out of the trash and looked inside.  Then she called me.

She would later tell me that when she looked in the tissue she "didn't see anything."  She said this with an air of confidence, as if to say, "there's nothing to worry about."

So I asked her to point me to the trash can, where I proceeded to dig out the tissue a second time and look inside it.  In the picture above you can see what I found (not the nickle, the little thing next to the nickle.)

I showed it to the office manager, and, of course, her response was "I don't really see anything.  What is that, fuzz?" etc.

I believed it was a bed bug, so the next step was to bring it back to the boys at the lab and take a look at it under the microscope.

Lo and behold:

That is the top half of a bed bug.  I'm guessing the back half got lost or destroyed in the initial encounter.

This is a reminder that pests can be a lot smaller than we can even imagine, and unless we really look closely and inspect, inspect, inspect we might miss something.

Fortunately we were able to go in and do some treatments in the office and prevent a further outbreak.

Please keep every bit of evidence you can for your Pest Management Professional to look at.  Don't throw anything away.  Don't assume that we won't want to see whatever is is that you found.

No evidence is "too small" or "nothing."  Look at everything.  You could be sitting right on exactly what we're looking for.

Ew York City will be peering in at you tomorrow.