Monthly Archives: October 2007

Bed Bug Information, Bed Bugs, Pest Control

Bed Bugs in New York City? Call 311, the Bed Bug Hot Line if You Dare

Believe it or not, there is actually a hot line in New York City where tenants can call to report bed bugs. You can report bed bugs by dialing 311. Unfortunately many tenants are reluctant to call no matter how bad their problem is and even though landlords are responsible for treating infested apartments.

The big questions are “Why don’t these people want to call?”. Well, rumor has it that some landlords can allegedly check the list of people who have complained and then black listed the tenants so they can’t find a place to rent.

The way that tenants escape from bed bug infested apartments is generally by breaking their lease and moving. The only safe way to warn future tenants, they feel, is by posting the infested address on the “Bed Bug City” or “Bed Bug Registry” website that lists bed bug infested rental apartments and hotels. What you see if you go to Bed Bug City is a Google map of New York City (they also have one for Boston) with bug icons at addresses where these pests have been reported.

Both are useful websites. If you are looking to either report an infestation or want to rent an apartment, you should definitely check them. Nevertheless, it would be much better if bed bugs were treated like the public health issue they are and not some shameful secret tenants and landlords try to hide from.

Professionals know how to get rid of bed bugs and prevent recurrent infestations. It is good business to cal them if you discover or have a reported problem with them so the pros can take care of the problem right away before it gets worse.

Animal Control, Pest Control, Rodent Control

Bats in Your Belfry? What to Do

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Although associated with vampires, being evil or scary, and getting caught in people’s hair, all attributes that are completely made up and not true, bats are actually incredibly beneficial animals. Your typical bat will eat almost half of their weight in food in a single night. One brown bat can eat more than 600 mosquitoes in one hour. Now of course most bats don’t really weigh that much, some only about the weight of about 17 dimes, but given how little mosquitoes weigh, a bat can help keep night-flying insects somewhat in check.

Good as these little flying mammals are, they can be quite upsetting if they happen to get into your house. Although they can navigate extremely well in very complicated terrain at night, in a house with a lot of commotion going on, they can get stressed and confused. If you get a bat in your house, you should turn out the lights, leave the room, and leave the doors or windows open. Undisturbed, the bat should find its way outside in short order.

If you see a bat in the daytime however or, if it seems to be having difficulty flying, stay away and do not be tempted to try and catch it, knock it out of the air, throw something over it, or touch it. Bats are the result of nearly all of the recent confirmed cases of human rabies in the United States and any bat doing anything that is not normal bat behavior should be treated with extreme caution.

If you are awakened by a bat in your bedroom, because the teeth of a bat are so small and sharp, it is almost impossible to detect if you have been bitten. If you think you have been exposed, you should contact your local health department immediately and seek their guidance. If you find a dead bat. Do not touch it or throw it away, rather try an get it into some type of bag without making contact and then take the bag and bat to the health department so it can be tested.

Bees, Insect Control

Carpenter Bees and Your House

Anyone on the east coast of the US has probably seen them. They are big, slow flying, hairy bees that are a major pollinator of open faced flowers and like to live in wood. Sometimes that wood is in trees or shrubs, but sometimes it can be in the wood in your house.

Carpenter or “wood boring” bees are considered solitary bees and live in tunnels they drill in wood. Many times they or their progeny return to the same place and live in the same holes year after year.

Certain times of the year, especially in the spring, you can see these giant bees slowly flying around your house or hanging around, almost hovering motionless around your eaves. These are generally the male carpenter bee and they are protecting the entrance hole to where their mate lives.

Male bees will sometimes buzz you, but they don’t have any stingers, so though it seems scary, they are pretty harmless. The female bees, which are the ones that do the real damage, do have stingers; but they are not very aggressive and generally more interested in foraging for food. They will generally only sting if really provoked.

Although carpenter bees are solitary bees, they are gregarious and like to live near one another. The damage they do is to make nests by tunneling into wood. They do this by rasping their mandibles (mouth parts) against the wood and then vibrating their bodies. They can drill nearly perfect circular holes in a beam or facia board that is about the diameter of your little finger. This tunnel serves as a nursery for their young as well as a storehouse of pollen for them to eat.
A good way to spot if you have carpenter bees is to look for the “spray” or grayish to black drip-like discoloration that fans out on the shingles or siding below where the bee hole is located.

Although you can eliminate these bees yourself, it is a tedious job. One way is to squirt insecticide or boraic acid into each of the individual holes and then fill them with caulking compound and then repaint the wood. If the infestation is bad enough the wood might have to be replaced.

In the case of carpenter bees or any other wood destroying insect, it is always best to call a professional so that you can be sure that the job is done right.

Groundhogs, Raccoons

Raccoons and Rabies: What is the Danger?

Rabies is regarded by most of us as a very scary disease that makes you crazy, makes you foam at the mouth, and then kills you. Raccoons have a bad reputation for being carriers of rabies. Although there is no doubt that raccoons, like people, can get rabies, they are not necessarily more susceptible to it than your dog. If a raccoon, or any animal for that matter get rabies (except humans that can receive shots to prevent the disease from taking its ultimate course) it will die.

Rabies is a virus. It can only be transferred from one mammal to another during a very short contagious stage when the animal is close to death. You can detect an animal with rabies if you see it acting very aggressively for no reason, acting confused and walking in circles, possibly dragging its legs partially paralyzed, or foaming at the mouth. It is in the animal’s saliva by which rabies is most frequently transferred.

Just because you see a raccoon walking around in the daytime does not mean it is rabid, unless it is showing these other symptoms. It is probably just hungry or can’t sleep. If an animal looks and is acting healthy, then it probably is.

In terms of being able to get rabies from a raccoon, that is pretty rare and there have been only less than a handful of reported cases in which raccoons have given rabies to humans. Rabies is most often reported in raccoons, as opposed to skunks, foxes, groundhogs, and bats which also are susceptible, because raccoons are more likely to live close to humans. So we tend to see them more than other wild animals. Squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rats, and rabbits can sometimes get rabies, but this is not very common and there are no reported cases where these animals have transmitted the disease to humans.