Difficult by Design

This is one of the most frustrating situations we see in restaurants.

This is under the kitchen appliances: pipes and hoses that have been installed in such a way that food debris is certain to get caught behind them and yet there is no way a broom or mop can reach those areas.

This sort of situation is a recipe for pest conducive conditions and pest breeding and activity.

We showed ownership what it looked like down here, and after some choice expletives, the only solution they were left with was to hope that their sanitation team would take the time and effort to get down and dirty and clean behind here.

Needless to say, you can only expect what you inspect, so if your team knows you don't check up on them, they will probably be prone to wander from the prescribed course.

Get down yourself from time to time and see what your kitchen actually looks like.

You're our only hope.

Ew York City will be back next week.

New Black Hole Discovered

I love mice.

I love how the base of this wall was sealed off with cement (looks like a whole bucket of cement, if not a boat load), and the mice proceeded to climb the cement, climb the wall (see the dark vertical stripe) and chew a new hole a foot above the floor!

Don't think for a second that mice are anything less than masters of climbing.  I have seen them climb cement walls and just stared at them as they made their escape.

In this case we just kept baiting the new holes and then closing them, and just eventually wore down their armies with our armies.  It was just a game of numbers.

But they'll be back, sooner than later I'm sure.

Ew York City will probably be back eventually too.

Go to the Lime

Ants on a lime.

If you stare at the picture for a long time, things start moving.

See you tomorrow.

Office Space Invaders

I know you've come to expect gnarly photos on this blog, so you might be a little disappointed to see pictures of office supplies, but take a minute really to look at what's before you.

Do you see the pests?

Do you know why you don't see them?  Because there are literally more than 101 places where they could be hiding in an office or closet like this.

Now, if the pest in question is some tiny insect that doesn't bother anyone, who cares, right?

But in this particular office, the pests were mice, and the office workers were finding dozens if not hundreds of droppings every day all throughout the work space.

What we discovered was that the mice were living inside and behind the boxes that had not been moved in a long time.  But creating a space that is conducive to pest harborage, pests will harbor there.

It's not rocket science.

Rocket science is aerospace engineering.

The cleaner your office, and the less junk you have around, the fewer pests will be all up in your grill.

Ew york city will be back tomorrow, or maybe Thursday.

Eight Days a Week

I like walking into a restaurant first thing on a Monday morning and finding a huge pile of octopi in a sink.

Fresh or frozen, all natural or totally artificial, healthy or junky, the bottom line is you never, never, never ever can be absolutely certain about the food that you're putting into your mouth as it relates to pest involvement.  There are bacteria and microscopic organisms all around us every moment of our lives.  That's why we call it "earth."  It's alive.

Obviously, we take all the precautionary measures we can, including sanitation, refrigeration, saying grace before we eat, etc.

But we're always at risk.  And we know that.

Yet we have to live our lives.  We can't live in fear.

Which is why you're absolutely doing the right thing by having Pest Management Professionals (PMPs) regularly inspect your home, business, restaurants, and dojos.  PMPs are like police officers, superheros, and Alexander the Great, all rolled into one.  An extra set of eyes goes a long way in keeping you and your loved ones safe.

After licking each suction cup above, I gave these octopi the all clear.  Another test I sometimes do is the "add mayo and put it on a potato roll" exam.  Especially with lobsters.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow.  Have a nice Monday.

Crack House

No idea how this little incident mishappened, but not it has to be dealt with.

This cracked tile in the kitchen is immediately a perfect spot for organic matter and moisture to gather, decay, and attract pests for breeding and feeding.

You would be surprised at how often restaurants will allow these sort of scenarios to linger and fester.

Our practice is to bring various materials with us to seal up these sort of situations, but every kitchen ought to have a bucket of putty or silicone around to fix these sort of problems.

So take some time, look around your kitchen, see if anyone dropped the mortar and pestle on the floor and didn't tell you that the tile broke, and make sure there are no invitations to pest love.

Have a great weekend everybody.

ew york city will be back monday

Death From Above

Just a picture of some pigeons on the train station.

Stay warm.

Miss Abyss 2015

Who needs to go to Mars or discover black holes when I've got drains like this in my life?

This is in a restaurant bar, and the first thing I have to tell you about this drain is it is really, really good looking!

No food debris!  No slime!  No floating bodies!  No sleep til Brooklyn!

Good looking drain as it relates to flies, although, upon closer inspection more might be revealed which could be problematic, but no red flags.

Except, what could come up and out of it?

Exactly: anything.  Anything known to mankind could come up out of that drain.

So it might be idea to wedge some wire mesh down in there and create some blockage in case a rat the size of Hanz and Franz tries to crawl out of there.

But don't get me wrong: good looking drain, nice looking drain, very good drain in my book...  very good drain.

Ew york city is coming back tomorrow

Fly Guys

Going to use the public men's room any where is always an adventure, just ask any woman in NYC.

The little dark dot to the right of the sign above is, of course, a fruit fly.

The dark eyed fruit flies love just to rest on surfaces, only flying away when you irritate them, which is usually whenever you cause the air current to change.

The fact that he's on the door means that there are more, and probably breeding going on down by the floor, or even next door, and what's more, you can never be sure that you've won the war before Thor ate s'mores.

Sorry, got carried away for a minute.

Bottom line is one lone fruit fly is an indication that somewhere not too far away there is some breeding site, decaying organic matter, filth, sludge, slime, or just some sort of sanitation situation that by Odin's beard you need to take care of before it turns into the biggest problem this side of Aasgard.

All right, I'm done.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow.

Fridge Motor Skills

Yes, this is what the inside of a refrigerator motor area at one of your favorite restaurants looks like.

Do they have flies?

You tell me.

Lots of condensation, food debris, decaying organic matter, and other goodies collect over time, and the flies go off the charts and up the walls.

Every so often (more often than not) you've got to get your team to open up these motor areas and wipe them down and clean them out.

Just because you don't normally see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

No ostrich lifestyles allowed in our cosmos Mr. Restaurateur.

Ew York City will be thawing out again tomorrow.

Buggy Friday

Since it's Friday the 13th today (or is it?) I thought I would put up a little freaky video.

This is looking down the shower drain of a very nice apartment on the Upper East Side.

Those giant looking cockroaches at the bottom of the drain are giant cockroaches.  The woman who owned this apartment had been terrified by giant roaches for some time.  She would find them in her shower, on her towels, even in her medicine cabinet.

Once we began to dig a little deeper, we saw that there were dozens of them that were living under the bathtub, probably established there for a very long time.

We put a little bait down the drain, and they swarmed it and ate it right up, just like the ravenous, omnivorous beasts they are.  That should take care of them for a while.

This is just a reminder that you are surrounded by insects 24-7.

The only way to escape insects is to move to Mars.

Even then, make sure nothing tags along with you.

Ew York City needs some serious weekend time.

See you later.

Bagboy

Once you take the red pill, you'll never see things the same way again.

Once you know how to spot bed bugs, you'll notice them in more places than you could ever imagine, including on the shopping bag of the lady sitting next to you on the train.  Sure she looked a little edgy, but by that I only mean she looked like a lifelong New Yorker.  Of course bed bugs don't phase those of us who are evolving.  We have learned to coexist with our parasite friends.  They are here to stay.  We are here to stay.  Live together in peaceful coexistence.  Those who cannot tolerate bed bugs will eventually go the way of the dodo bird, unable to adapt to the way it is, stuck forever in the way it was, and destined to fade into the meaningless dust of the cosmos.

If I followed you around for 24 hours I would show you how many encounters with bed bugs you have, all of which you are totally unaware.

Believe.

Ew York City will be back yo.

True Confessions

This was weird.

I was called in to a public school down in Chinatown.  They had been battling crazy rats since the beginning of time.  I actually saw a rat poke its head through the ceiling in the boys bathroom, and the entire cafeteria reeked of rat feces.

The school had been doing their own rat control, with limited success.

As I came down into the basement locker room, I saw several snap traps set for rats, and I saw this one, which just made me laugh and gasp at the same time.

Obviously, the pencil makes me think they were trying to catch students instead of rats.

But notice also that the snap trap has been baited with open rodenticide, the bright blue substance.  Even though it looks like blue raspberry bubble gum, it's actually rat poison.

So yes, I definitely think the goal was to catch kids more than rats.

I wonder how successful they were before I showed up.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow.

I Can't Wait To Fall Down the Neck of Your Shirt and Crawl Around On Your Back

Here is the ceiling of the office in a restaurant.  Looks pretty normal to me.

A little closer and I'm starting to see something.  Something has caught my eye.

Yep, there you are my darling.  This spindly spiky leg is connected to the big juicy body of a large American Cockroach, aka Water Bug.

The office workers have no clue that this huge bug and its friends are crawling over head all day long, at any moment capable of dropping onto a keyboard or down the back of your blouse.

They're not paying me to say this, but right now Ann Taylor is having a 25% off sale on all women's blouses.  I like the leopard print one.  Very chic.

Ew York City will be under your skin again tomorrow.

Mucky Monday

It's a nice mucky Monday here in NYC, and it's a nice mucky Monday in a lot of restaurants.

We dug this out from underneath an ice machine in a restaurant kitchen downtown.  They had a lot of problems with fruit flies and houseflies, and this type of muck is exactly what they're looking for to breed in.

The only way to get rid of these flies is to get rid of these breeding sites, and that means getting down on your belly face down in the muck and digging it out piece by piece and slime by slime.

It's a war, soldier.  There will be casualties.  Understood?

Ew York City will be digging out again tomorrow.

Pupae Station

Continuing the tradition of Gnarly Fridays, here we have a close up of a rodent bait station and some fly pupae.

The black plastic is the rodent bait station, the bright blue stuff is the rodenticide, aka rat poison, and the little brown things are empty fly pupae, which were once larvae, aka maggots, but are now flies, aka flies.

This is a good reminder how that flies can and will breed anywhere they can, and that your anti-pest measures may be effective in one way and counter productive in another way.

You can treat your rodent bait stations with an insecticide to reduce this sort of thing from happening, but you want to be careful that it is not repelling the rodents from the bait.

The best thing to do is keep the bait stations maintained regularly.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these flies will feed on the rotting rodent corpses, so nature knows exactly what its doing.

All right, get out of here.  Have a good weekend.

Bombin' Jerry

Sometimes you just have a gift entry point handed to you.

This was right next to a kitchen stove in a restaurant basement.

Notice all the dark markings around the hole.  Remember, rodents leave "sebum" wherever they go, so look for that just as much as you look for droppings.

We baited it up, sealed it up, and that was that.

Not bad.

Sometimes I wish I could crawl down a hole like that and get away from everybody who's trying to stomp on me.

Ew York City might be back tomorrow.

This Floor Tile Grout Is Nuts

I kept looking at this restaurant kitchen's floor, thinking to myself, "That's a weird design for a floor."

As you can tell, this is not by design, at least not by the design of the original builders of the kitchen.  This is a long term neglect of sanitation, wherein almonds find their way into the missing grout grooves between the tiles.

The nuts then mix with moisture and other decaying organic matter, producing a rancid smell and perfect conditions for fly breeding.  The larvae (aka maggots) have plenty of food, and the kitchen will soon be full of flies.  The flies will fly around the kitchen, landing on the prepared food, leaving excrement and vomit everywhere they go.

It's kind of pretty though.  Its like that art you buy when you're on vacation.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow.

Return of the Real

"Let me outta here!"

Sorry every one.  Due to a personal problem that I've been dealing with over the past week, I have been tardy on updating Ew York City.

But hopefully, we are back in action.

The end.

See you tomorrow hopefully.