Somebody making soup?

Nothing wrong with soup, especially in these chilly months.

But don't leave it sit out over night.  It might end up with some extra ingredients.

Ew York City will be getting steamy tomorrow.

Let's Get Exponential!!!

We actually find this a lot.

Here is a German roach, female, pregnant, 5'9'', 125 pounds, strawberry blond hair, enjoys long walks by the kitchen appliances.

Anyway, she wandered onto a glue monitor, got caught, dropped her egg sac (ootheca is the term, it's that long brown thing almost the size of the roach) and out came thirty something roach nymphs hungry, ready to start life, but unfortunately they got stuck too.

This is a good reminder to us why German cockroaches are masters of their domain:  there are so many of them, some are bound to survive.

Notice how close to the edge some of the babies are.  Is it possible one got off and lived to fight another day?  Absolutely.

So when it comes to German cockroaches, crunch all you want, they'll make more.

Ew York City will be adding to your life tomorrow.

Keep Your Head Down

Have a great weekend from your friends at EW YORK CITY!!!

What's Under Your Fridge, Number Two

I'm not going to have a chance to post tomorrow since I'll be at a conference all day, so I thought I would give you two for one today.  That's nearly unheard of in today's economy!

So what are we looking at?  Well this is also what lurks under your fridge, except that instead of dozens and dozens of water bugs under a residential fridge, here we have a restaurant walk in fridge with pounds and pounds of, well, whatever this is.  There's a clearer picture below:

Needless to say, this restaurant was having a major fly infestation.

"But we clean and clean and clean."

"Did you ever dig under this walk in fridge?"

"Oh, we didn't know stuff went under there."

Not just stuff, my children, but years worth of decaying organic matter that smells like a sewer system in a fourth world country.

The restaurant staff was literally, by that I mean literally, standing around us with their jaws hanging open as we dug out this smut with our screw drivers.

Needless to say, the fly problem got a lot better by the very next day.

So what can we conclude about this?

1)  Even if you think you know, you do not know, until you do know.

2)  Admit that you need a fresh set of eyes every now and again to check your place out.  Teach your staff to clean using third eye vision, the mind's eye.  Learn that your problems aren't just the ones you can see.

3)  The earth is alive.  Water and organic matter are essential to life.  If you have water and organic matter in a kitchen, it's going to be full of living creatures, some that you can see, and some that you can't.  Are you okay with that?

Ew York City will be wrapping up a long week on Friday.  But Sunday's coming.

What's Under Your Fridge?

Someone called me and said, "I saw a roach crawl under my fridge."

A quick inspection with my flashlight on my hands and knees tipped me off that there was a "situation" under this man's large kitchen appliances.

So in preparation, I laid out a bunch of glue traps (about 25) and then I applied a flushing agent under the fridge.

All I had to do was sit back and watch the madness.

Dozens of the fastest, juiciest, and biggest American Cockroaches (Watah Bugs) come racing out from underneath the fridge.  Wow this was so exhilarating.   It was intense.

A couple things we learn from this:

1) Even if you think you know, you do not know, until you do know.

2)  Don't just jump in.  Make preparations.  Use some strategy.  If I would have just gone in hard under the fridge without any backup, these people would still be chasing water bugs around the house and finding them in baby's crib.

3)  We live in a beautiful and magical world, full of mystery and awe.  Will you embrace it?  Or will you catch it on a glue trap and throw it away?  Probably the latter.

Ew York City is crawling up your leg again soon.

It's a Cold Cruel World

I'm going to revisit this picture on a subsequent post, but I just want to get random here for una momenta.

1,2,3, "Random!"

The city has a policy that New Yorkers not feed pigeons.

Choosing not to feed something is called "starvation."

New York City's official policy is that we practice the starvation of pigeons.

Obviously, you can't feed pigeons without feeding other birds, so the policy is this: practice the starvation of birds in NYC.  When you see a dead pigeon on the street or sidewalk, it's very possible it died of starvation.  Starvation is a very painful way to die.

Why starve birds?  To fight rats.

So I say all that just to remind us of the reality.  It's not pretty.

And you're a New Yorker.

And an Ew Yorker.

See you tomorrow.

Don't Ask Alice

Every now and then I get creeped out.

Look at the size of these rat burrows (those are my two fingers on the left, I'm wearing gloves.)  Large is the appropriate word, either to describe the number of rats (plural) that are using this burrow, or the size of the rat (singular) that is using it.

In either case, I could fit my whole arm down this thing, but I'm not sure I'd get it back if I did.

However, the size of the rats is not the issue, nor is the precise number of their population in NYC.

The issue is that they prefer to live close to human beings.  They wouldn't be content to have their own island paradise away from us.  They like being near enough to people so that they can take advantage of all of the great garbage we produce.

So in these pictures, just a few feet away from these bushes are some stroller moms, out for a picnic with baby.  And baby is eating animal crackers.  And the crackers smell so good.  And so does baby's face.

Ew York City will be back the day after today.