Riders on the Scum

You would not believe how often I see cockroaches on the New York City Subway system.

Quite often I find them dead, but I've seen live ones too.

In most instances I'm guessing they are hitchhikers so to speak, riding in someone's belongings or clothing.  Maybe it came from their apartment, maybe from the restaurant they just ate at, and it came right into the train and decided to try to get off at a different stop.

I think this guy was on the 6 train.

Sometimes when I'm on the train I feel like falling down and sticking my legs up in the air.

Notice how he has his legs spread, taking up more space than he should be.

Ew york city will not be here on Monday.  We're shooting for Tuesday hopefully.

Have a good weekend.

Eating Rodents

This is a rodent I ate back in 2007.  You know cuy.

As we think of alternate food sources and entomophagy and other subjects, we've got to stay open to the opportunity to eat rodents.

This one was quite delicious.  I even ate the internal organs and the brain and eyes, which I'll post another time.

Ew york city is busy, but we'll make time for you tomorrow.

Bed Bug Eggs

Our service manager Nick furnished us with this nice bed bug related photo.

This was photographed on the bed frame in an apartment in Brooklyn.  It is an extreme closeup.  

The translucent blue things are bed bug eggs, and it appears that the babies may have hatched already.

The darker blue lumps are bed bug feces.  The bugs have already been feeding for some time.  We did find adults and various instar stages as well, so the fecal matter might be from them.

The bluish color is due to the lighting, not the actual color of the eggs or feces.  

The person who lived in this room did not believe that he had bed bugs, so he most likely does not react to their bites, which can sometimes make identification a little more difficult.

Another challenge with this particular apartment is the amount of clutter the tenants have.  That always makes the job more challenging for us, and more expensive for you, so it's in everybody's interest to throw away that collection of plastic shopping bags from C-Town and those boxes of VHS tapes you haven't looked at in years.

The bed bug eggs are about this size of this comma, not the word comma, but the actual comma after the word comma earlier in this sentence.  If you have an iPhone, they're about the size of the numeral "1" on the time display at the top center of the face of the phone's main display.  They're small.  And as I have mentioned before, they come equipped with an adhesive on the outside that enables them to stick and be transported by nice people like you to other nice people.

If you were hired and funded to design a more efficient pest than the bed bug, I doubt you could do it.

Bring it.

Ew York City will be with you again tomorrow.

Busy grimes

Here's another perfect example of how a cleaning crew can get the easy spots but miss things that are harder.

This restaurant kitchen was really clean, except behind the legs of the appliances, where it was filthy dirty nasty cruddy.

Again, I get it.  You're busy.  They're busy.  Business is busy.  Life's busy.  Bees are busy.  Beavers are busy.  The squeegie guy is busy.  Your third grade art teacher was busy.  The guy leaning against you on the train is busy.  The middle-aged diner waitress with the T-shirt that says "I'm busy" is busy.  So yes, everybody is busy.

But so are pests!  And if you leave them anything like what you see in the picture above, they will get even busier, overnight even.

So the plan is, schedule occasional but regular deep cleanings; once a week, once every other week, etc., so that you are regularly getting to all these spots.

Because life is too busy to be too busy...

Ew york city might be back tomorrow.

This Is Not Today's Post

Bed Worms

Bed bugs aren't the only bugs we find in peoples' beds.

In this instance, we found a good number of beetle larvae wriggling around this person's mattress.  These were carpet beetle larvae, a fairly common pest in the NYC area.

Here is a closeup of what one looks like from a photo on the infraweb, all rights reserved:

Often times these larvae will cause skin reactions on people similar to bed bug bites.  That, plus the fact that they also can hang out in your bed, often causes people to think that they have bed bugs when actually they do not.

The best advice I can give you for this situation is to vacuum.  Get a vacuum with an extendable hose and a fine tipped attachment and suck the worms out of your bed.  The larvae can in fact do damage to your fabrics, so that might motivate you if the thought of worms crawling around your bed was not enough.

On another note, I want to thank all of our readers for helping to make Ew York City the number one destination for my pest related pictures throughout the entire world.  We couldn't have done it without each other, and I sincerely hope that these past pest posts have inspired you to keep your world a little cleaner, a little leaner, and a little cleaner.

Ew York City will be back Monday.  Keep on the straight and narrow.

Look into you looking into you

Nice sized hole in the wall of a boiler room in the basement of a Brooklyn restaurant.

Basement was full of rat droppings.

Two words:

Cement

Ew York City will be back tomorrow for the final post of winter 2014-15.

Let the Revolution Begin

I see a lot of pests on the subway.

I've seen rats come through the door.

I've found German cockroaches on the seats.

I've seen a bed bug crawling on a lady's belt, and another one on that bag that I showed you a few weeks ago.

Nature is amazing.

And this lady is amazing.

Not just because she has eleven toes.

(By the way if thumbs aren't fingers, then what about thumb toes?)

But because she was rocking sandals in freezing weather, AND she stuck that sixth toe right in my face: that's why she was amazing.

Wow!

Now, is this a mutation?  Is it evolution happening right before our eyes?  Eventually we will all develop that eleventh toe so that we can do a better job of texting while we drive?  The sixth toe provides for us just a little more spring in our step as we jay walk across sixth avenue.  Sixth toes are like sixth sense - they enable you to detect when that next big earthquake is about to bust out, or when that next big sale at Uniqlo is dropping.  Or even if you need a toe to fake a kidnapping, you'll still have ten left.

These toes go up to eleven.

In any case, I can't wait for my sixth toe to get here.  Every inch helps.

Editor's Note:  There is no charge for today's episode of Ew York City.

See you tomorrow.

Poison Green

This is inside a rat bait station.

There are two types of bait blocks here, green and yellow (I won't get into all the technical differences between the two).

It seems like the rats prefer the green ones.  The one closest to the bottom is almost gone.

For these rat bait stations to be successful you've got to remove as much of the competing food source as possible.

Think of these bait blocks as some sort of artificial candy that you would eat if you had to, but you in no way would choose to eat it over one of your favorite meals.

The rat's favorite meal is human trash, so if there is any trash around, the bait will most likely go untouched.

The best part is when I open one of these and there is a live rat inside eating the bait!  That's always exciting.

To avoid that, I'll often knock on the top of the bait station.  Usually the rat will say, "I'l be out in a minute," so then I just wait.  If I don't hear anything I'll go right in.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow.

The bait is green.  Today is St. Patrick's day.  I tried.

Soda Slime and You

Soda.  The single greatest invention in the history of mankind.

I don't drink that much, but I work with it big time.

That sticky, syrupy stuff is such an attractant to flies I can't even begin to describe it to you.

You've got to think of your soda fountain the way a soldier thinks of his rifle in terms of sanitation.

Take it apart, lift pieces off, look inside of it with a flashlight, and clean it once, twice, three times dope.

Once we began to steam clean this bar's soda fountain, the number of flies decreased dramatically.

One time I saw one of my technicians wash his hands with cola.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow.

Hope you had a nice weekend.

Bleeckerpillar

Spring is right around the corner, warmer weather on the way, and pest nightmares are about to become a dark reality.

Here are some shots of a nice little caterpillar on Bleecker Street.

I'm not sure what sort of flying beast he eventually turned into, but in his caterpillar state he / she sure is cute.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.  Ew York City will be back Monday after a few much needed days off.

Peace.

Keep Digging

One of our senior service managers and NYS licensed applicators Nick sent me this little gem of a picture.

One of the things that's so fascinating about being an exterminator is that you really are a modern day version of an archaeologist like Indiana Jones, except without the princess and the wookie.

This photo holds several secrets of pest activity from a past era.

First, we see the mouse skeleton, preserved fairly nicely for us.  You can make out the spinal column and the hind legs as well as some of the tail.  You don't really see the mouse's head, and that's probably because someone is wearing it as an amulet around their neck to ward off cheese monsters.

Second, we see a wing of a Water Bug, i.e. American Cockroach.  It's the dark burgundy thing on the right side of the photo that looks like the wing of a Water Bug, i.e. American Cockroach.  It's dark and burgundy.  Right side of the photo.  Water Bug wing.  Burgundy.  Shaped like a wing.

Thirdly, we see the pupae of a housefly. It's the small burgundy thing on the left side of the photo that looks somewhat eggish, or similar in shape to the Fubol Americano pigskin.  Obviously, burgundy is a popular color this time of year, and pestilence is no exception.  As Spring starts to spring we will begin to notice more yellows, chartreuses, mauves, and Salmon egg shell reduction.

Now, what does all of this tell us?

This blog is gross.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow I think.

Stairway to Rodent Heaven

One of our faithful readers sent this picture in today.

By the way, I love getting pictures from the people.  It's just further proof that our pest friends are everywhere we go.  Plus it saves me from having to go to the Fotomat (r) to get my film developed.

This was on the stairs to the train.  The stairs give you an idea of size.  Its death could be natural causes, or maybe some rodenticide that floats around in the subway system, or perhaps even some blunt force trauma from an encounter with a larger being, or maybe even that bad smack that's been going around the east village lately.

In any case, dead rats remind us of live rats, of pests in general, of the reality of death, and of the fact that it's 2015 and these things are still thriving in the most advanced city in the world.

They also remind us not to walk around barefoot.

Ew york city will be back tomorrow, and maybe Friday.

Be Afraid

Yes, you have a problem if you see this many rat droppings in one area of your restaurant's basement.

As I have said before and will say again, mice leave behind a lot more droppings than rats do, so if you see this amount of fresh rat droppings you have a lot of rats coming into your area.

The black void on the right side of the photo is a trap that leads down to a pipe.  The restaurant people had laid a big board over the trap and put a heavy piece of equipment on top.  The rats were still able to find their way in.

Exclusion is an important part of rat control.  We actually went down into the trap and sealed up the pipes with wire mesh that had been treated with repellants.  You have to fight fire with fire, and you have to fight big rat doodoo with something that is equally heavy duty.

Each one of these rat droppings can be full of deadly disease and harmful pathogens.  And, every single one of them can be a violation point against your restaurant when the DOH comes in to inspect.  And what's even worse is that each and every dropping clashes with those new curtains I just hung up.

When dealing with rats, you have to out think, out smart, and out run them.

I know you can do it.

Ew york city will probably be back a few more times this week.

Happy Monday from the Monday Morning Muck Mouse

This is some muck that was in a restaurant somewhere.

Doesn't it look like a mouse?

Happy Monday from Ew York City

B I N G O

Sometimes you get a gift.

"Yes sir, we found where the rats are coming into your restaurant."

Lots of bait and some cement was what it took.

Everybody stay dry today.

Ew York City will be back tomorrow.

Fluffy

This is actually one of the first rat pictures I ever took.  Just some random dead rat on the street.

It's bloated from being out for a while.  The license plate gives it some scale.

There's a lot in the news today about diseases that rats carry.  The tabloids love a good fear mongering story, but obviously rats do carry disease, we've known that since we were three and dad told us to take that dead rat out of our mouth.

So be diligent, wash your hands, and kill as many as you can. Who knows, we might be the first generation to live in a rat free society.

Ew York City will return tomorrow.

Yankee Ingenuity

What you are looking at here are a couple silver box mouse traps that have glue boards inside.

But what are those dark green squares or blobs on top of the glue boards?

Seaweed.

Yes, the proprietors of the restaurant, who happen to be Japanese, have baited the trap with seaweed.

You have to admire their efforts to attract the mice into the traps.

I am not sure that mice are generally eaters of seaweed, but I did overhear some rats ordering the miso soup the last time I had sushi.

Ew York City will come around the corner again tomorrow.

This is Why We Fight

The enemy is on your plate.

Then the food is on your plate.

Then the food is in your mouth.

Need we say more?

Get involved!

See you tomorrow in Ew York City.