RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

All American pest roaches--like most American humans--were immigrants.

• Roaches wear their skeletons on the outside of their bodies.
• Cockroaches bleed white blood.
• Roach mouths work sideways.
• Roaches use their feelers as noses.
• Cockroaches have 6 legs and least 18 knees.
• Pregnant for life? It doesn't sound like much fun, but some female cockroaches mate once and are pregnant for the rest of their lives.
• No food for a month--not even a crumb? Roaches can go without eating for a month but will only live a week without water.

George Williams
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

“The lord in his wisdom made the fly. Then forgot to tell us why.” ~ Ogden Nash

The reproductive capacity of flies is tremendous. Thankfully for us they can never be fully realized. If you took just a pair of flies in April and they were all progenitors (originator or direct ancestor), and they all survived (flies typically only live 30 days) until August you would have 191,010,000,000,000,000,000 flies!!!! That is in just four months!

To give you a visual idea of how many flies that is, it is enough flies to cover the entire earth 2.5 feet deep!

Unfortunately flies are downplayed in society ala “Waiter there is a fly in my soup. What’s he doing? I believe the backstroke!” The hard fact is that flies transmit over 25 diseases and are VERY serious pests especially in food handling facilities. The risk of bacterial transmission is enormous. Call EHS at 877-507.0698 to protect your brand!

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, MA , Pest Control, RI

Big Brains Steal Insects’ Breath Away (From The NY Times)

There is a type of cockroach that can go without breathing for seven minutes at a time, and a moth pupa that can go several hours without breathing. Now a new study in The American Naturalist reports that there is a commonality among insects displaying this behavior: they have large, complex brain structures.

The behavior, known as discontinuous gas exchange, is seen only in certain insects, and only when they are in a resting state.

“If you’ve got a big brain, it’s costly to run,” said Philip Matthews, a physiologist at the University of Queensland in Australia and the study’s lead author. “If you go into a sleeplike state, you can save energy.”

When in this state, the insect will stop breathing for a long period of time, followed by a series of short breaths, and then one long breath.

To conduct the study, Dr. Matthews and a colleague, Craig White, studied the brains of several species of insects that display this behavior.

They found that when the insects’ brains were removed, they displayed discontinuous breathing patterns.

“They have a nerve cord comprised of ganglia, which are kind of like mini-brains,” said Dr. Matthews. “We think that when the insect is active, the brain is sending a constant message to breathe, but when it’s inactive the ganglia take over.”

The breathing pattern has been seen in different species of wasps, ants, moths, butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles and cockroaches.

Previously, scientists have hypothesized that insects display this behavior to more effectively retain water. But this seemed unlikely when the breathing pattern was found among insects in dry deserts and in the humid tropics.

George Williams
General Manager

Pest Control, MA ,  Pest Control, RI

Recently awarded the “Green Buildings Product Seal” from Green-Buildings.com, the Leaf Defier gutter protection system from FXI Building Products Corporation helps improve storm water management, enhance building durability and prevent pest infestations by allowing water and fine particulates to flow freely through gutter systems while keeping leaves and other debris out, the firm says.

Designed with high-performance urethane polymers, Leaf Defier is easily inserted into gutters to ensure leaves, twigs, pine needles and other possible obstructions and animal food sources are kept from entering and clogging gutter systems. As a result, water flows readily through the foam filter insert, into the gutter valley and out the downspout to virtually eliminate overflows.

In addition, recent research within the pest management field has confirmed the potential benefits of Leaf Defier, which if used properly can change conducive conditions away from pests, the firm reports. In fact, Leaf Defier can help solve problems by preventing all forms of pests from entering the gutter cavity, including insects like mosquitoes that breed in standing water or carpenter ants that can build nests in moist wood caused by clogged gutters. EHS is an authorized installer of the Leaf Defier system.

George Williams
General Manager

Pest Control, MA ,  Pest Control, RI

Juicy Couture is the latest victim of the global bedbug pandemic!

Liz Claiborne Inc.'s Juicy Couture clothing division said Tuesday that its store on Fifth Avenue in New York is closed due to a bedbug problem.

"Like other major retailers recently impacted by this issue, we are moving swiftly and aggressively to address the problem," the company said in a statement.

The store is expected to reopen this week.

Three other Juicy Couture stores in Manhattan are open and unaffected.

In July, an Abercrombie & Fitch store and its sibling Hollister store were closed briefly to clean for bedbugs, which have also been found in other New York stores and in apartments, movie theaters and even on the subway.

By the Associated Press,
Posted on MSNBC, December 1, 2010