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Two things have happened this week that have spurred this week’s blog post. And yes, today is only Tuesday. The first is that I have found not one but three ticks in my hotel room. The second is the news report that the CDC is reporting that they are seeing the highest rate of emergency room visits for tick bites in a decade. Oh yeah, I'm in New Jersey right now, but this also hit my news feed today: Why are either of these things important? Great question, thanks for askin

I have a lot of Google alerts for words relating to pest control. I typically skim through, look for any scientific articles and quickly delete. Then this one caught my eye.   Ugh, here we go again, I think to myself. And yes, here we go again. Now, I get it. Pesticides are scary, especially when you call them “poisons”. Yes, they are intended to knock down the pest. Yes, some are poisonous (ingested). Yes, we want to make sure only the target animal is impacted by the pesti

Sometimes pest problems are relatively easy to manage. One or two visits, some targeted treatments, sanitation, and exclusion recommendations, and presto! Problem solved! Then there are the times it isn’t so easy. Particularly when it seems the customer is working against you.   The other day, I was at a location, let’s say it was a bookstore. (It wasn’t, I’m trying to protect the innocent here!) Now, as I was browsing through the bookstore, out of the corner of my eye, I saw

It’s October and that means it’s my favorite season of the year: spider season! Living in Georgia (USA), we are still under siege from the invasive Joro spider . It is actually a very pretty spider that builds big orb-shaped webs. While these are beneficial (I am pretty sure we had next to no mosquito issues this summer because of all these webspinners), they are very abundant. People don’t like them near their structures, and there is the “ick” factor of walking through one

The Black Plague ravaged Europe starting in the 1300s, with some estimates of 60% of the population being killed. It’s a great history...

I slept like crap last night. I overslept this morning (aka hit snooze too much). I’m going to be in the field most of tomorrow so I’m...

This episode marks my five year anniversary. That’s officially five years of weekly (ranting) writing about all things urban pest related...

I’m probably going to get some pushback from this, but I don’t like birds. I admit that birds of prey, like raptors and owls, are very...

My friend and I were having a conversation the other day about the disconnect that can happen between science and people in the field. It...

Many of our pest species have seasonal trends. Even if you live in southern climates without much of a temperature shift during the year,...

I wasn’t going to do it, but since it’s hit the headlines, and there’s been plenty of …. dubious info….let’s science this, pest control...

I do not live out west where the devastating fires are continuing, and that doesn’t mean I’m not impacted. All of us will be in some way...