RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

One of the first things I was taught when I first became a “PMP” (Pest Management Professional) back in the 70’s was to always look up! Come to think of it, we were “Exterminators” back then.

In many situations this holds true for keeping rodents out of your home.

Mice are excellent climbers and our native mice (White-Footed and Deer Mice) are exceptional climbers. I remember camping once and I woke up at 1:30AM to attend to some business. As I exited the camper with my trusty flashlight (PMP’s always carry quality flashlights) I observed a White-Footed mouse climb the truck of a large Eastern Hemlock onto a large branch and disappear into the dark woods!

If you want complete mouse proofing, seal everything larger than 1/4” all the way up to and including the gutter line. Our company has always struggled to be competitive in offering this service to our clients due to the cost of enormous amount of labor and it’s tedious nature. We do offer it though if anyone is interested in it.

John Stellberger
President - Environmental Health Services, Inc.

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

Alcoholic Mice Live to Drink

A new line of mice, bred to prefer alcohol over all other beverages, is expected to offer insight into the role genetics and lifestyle play in alcoholism. The mice drink more alcohol than other animal models and consume it in a fashion similar to humans: choosing alcohol over other options and binge drinking.

A study published in the journal Addiction Biology reports the mice reach blood-alcohol levels of more than 260 mg/dl of alcohol daily—over three times the equivalent of the human legal driving limit and the approximate consumption level that the severest human alcoholics attain.

“The free-choice drinking demonstrated by the new mouse line provides a unique opportunity to study the excessive intake that often occurs in alcohol-dependent individuals and to explore the predisposing factors for excessive consumption, as well as the development of physiological, behavioral and toxicological outcomes following alcohol exposure,” says senior author Nicholas Grahame, a biopsychologist specializing in alcoholism at Indiana University.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, an estimated 17.6 million Americans abuse alcohol or are alcohol dependent. Alcohol abuse and alcoholism can be treated but cannot be cured.

Mice share 80 percent of their genes with humans, so they are an excellent model to study alcoholism, a disease with a strong genetic component. The risk of developing alcoholism is known to be influenced by lifestyle. Animal models allow researchers to employ methods that they are unable to use in humans.

“This line of high-alcohol-seeking mice should be able to give us a better understanding of the basic brain mechanism involved in alcohol consumption as well as greater insight into the toxic effects on the brain, with the goal of developing therapies,” says Grahame, whose research focuses on behavioral genetics and behavioral pharmacology.

As with humans, the mice become intoxicated when the pace of alcohol consumption is faster than the liver can eliminate it. Typically it takes six or seven hours of continuous alcohol drinking for the new strain of mice to reach the highest levels of intoxication.

Doctoral candidate Liana M. Matson is a co-author of the study. She has conducted research focusing on when the mice drink and determined that they are nocturnal drinkers. This knowledge enabled the mice’s blood-alcohol levels to be tested when at their highest level.

Undergraduate School of Science students Amy Buckingham and Nick Villalta assisted in the research by measuring intake and blood-alcohol levels in the new strain of high-alcohol-seeking mice. In a related study, they analyzed how drunk the mice became by testing how the animals performed on a balance beam.

The research was funded by NIAAA and the School of Science at IUPUI.

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

click on image to enlarge

Mice are about as adaptable as any animal on the planet! I have seen mice eat things that humans would not even remotely consider tasting let alone eat! Ketchup is certainly an edible food but not exactly a meal…..except for mice. The attached image shows that mice completely cleaned out an individual packet of ketchup. Just this little amount of food is enough to support a mouse infestation.

This packet was found in a soon to open restaurant. Needless to say they needed EHS to protect the facility and their reputation before they even opened their doors. They put their trust in EHS and we take it seriously!

Pat Hagan
Commercial Business Development Manager

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

YOUR MUST TRAIN YOURSELF TO SEE WHAT OTHERS OVERLOOK ~ Sherlock Holmes

click on image to enlarge

This is a very important saying here at EHS and it is so fitting! Most people do not have the keen senses that pest control professionals have. We walk into an area and it is like we have super hero skills or an extra sense.

It is pretty cool! Most of the public will never ever observe what us pest management professionals see. I was on a bedbug inspection when I observed the ceiling light fixture loaded with mouse droppings. Needless to say we needed to control the mice plus bedbugs.

Alex Johnson
Service Specialist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

Click on image to Enlarge

So what are you looking at??? This is the unofficial-official “Mice Trap Gauntlet”

So the story goes...... a homeowner in Rhode Island has been battling mice for over a year. They tried several methods of “do it yourself” pest control and failed miserably. The mice were getting worse. They called EHS to solve the long-standing mice issue. When I get there I see this VERY elaborate contraption in the kitchen. The homeowner explained to me the mouse trap that was made up of 13 mouse traps.

The goal of the trap is to kill the mice as they investigate the food (peanut butter) but if they survive the 1st wave of traps then they go up the “ramp of death”.

They then try to get to the peanut butter smeared on the soda bottle, it then spins causing them to fall into the pit where additional traps wait for them. According to the homeowner it took two hours to create. They realized they could spend their time on better things plus all their efforts & they still had mice! There was a happy ending, EHS eliminated the mouse issue.

Tim Lynch
Service Specialist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

The newest deterrent to would-be terrorists at airports might just be mice. An Israeli company, BioExplorers, has created a detector that looks like a full-body scanner, but actually contains three compartments containing eight mice, according to the Telegraph.

The mice will work four-hour shifts and are, according to researchers, more effective than dogs or x-ray machines, according to the Daily Mail. Air is pumped into the mice chamber every four hours so the animals can breathe.

When a mouse picks up a trace of something curious, they are trained to flee to a side chamber, which triggers an alarm (to prevent false positives, more than one mouse has to flee).

Mice take roughly ten days to learn their first smell and unlike dogs, they don't need interaction with trainers or constant attention.

The device was first tested on shoppers last year in Tel Aviv when mice picked out 22 people carrying mock explosives

Source = Huffington Post

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

Westlake High Cafeteria Closed Down by Rodent Infestation

The cafeteria at Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks was shut down earlier this week because of a rodent infestation and unsanitary conditions, officials said.

County environmental health inspected the site Tuesday and suspended its license until the problems could be resolved. The cafeteria was closed Wednesday and has remained shuttered as staff correct the issues, said, Superintendent Jeffrey Baarstad of the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

In the meantime, the county OK'd the school serving prepackaged food on the quad. That food is prepared in the district's central kitchen.

"We've been aware of the problem," Baarstad said. Over the past week and a half, the school used exterminators and worked to stop rodents from getting inside the building but wasn't able to fix the problem in time.

The issue likely stems from extensive renovation work on the large building that houses the cafeteria, kitchen and theater, along with the site's proximity to a barranca and the hillside. Rodents can squeeze in any gap or hole left unsealed — even if it's just the size of a quarter, Baarstad said.

Maintenance staff at the school are working to seal any holes, exterminators are getting rid of rodents already inside and cleaning crews also are working on the site, according to the district.

Baarstad hopes to be ready for inspection as early as Monday. With an OK from the county, the cafeteria could reopen by Tuesday.

The environmental health agency inspects about 4,000 food facilities throughout the county, including restaurants, markets, produce stands and more, said Elizabeth Huff, manager of the community services section of environmental health. School cafeterias are inspected two to three times a year to make sure they are in compliance.

Westlake High sent letters home with students on Wednesday to let them know about the closure.

"It's certainly not the letter you want to write home to parents," Baarstad said. But there were reasons why it happened, and the district is working to make sure all issues are cleared up, he said.

Source = vcstar.com

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

Everyone always states that mice need just a 1/4 ” void or the diameter of a dime to get inside a structure. Well, here is some visual proof of that being a fact! The attached image shows a juvenile mouse stuck on an insect monitor. The dime is there for visual reference. Let me just repeat that last part…..The mouse is stuck on an insect monitor, we use those to obviously monitor for insects. It caught a mouse, go figure!

EHS performs expert structural exclusion because we know that keeping pests out is vital to the success of our program. For rodents, if you close off a runway they use it creates stress on the population & forces them to do things they would not ordinarily do.

So next time you hear “mice can not get in through an opening that small” you have this picture to prove them wrong.

Rats are a formidable a foe. They will do just about anything to survive. In this case a new client of ours was having a rat infestation that previous pest control companies could not solve. Since rats were inside the structure using a rodenticide was not an option as they could die inside & cause an awful smell. For this reason we used mechanical traps to crash the problem. The rats were inside wall, ceiling, & floor voids and there was evidence of chewed wires. With the risk of fire high we needed to crash the population fast. After the initial visit we returned three days later to find a trail of blood to a wall void with just a snap trap. It looks like the rat could not pull the trap off him so he chewed his paws off. This is the challenge we are faced with rats, they have a stronger will to survive, even more so than humans. We offer humane control of nuisance pests but with commensal rodents (rats & mice deriving benefits from man) we are forced to use whatever means possible to eliminate the serious health & safety risk they pose to our quality of life.

Location = Swansea, MA

I know people take their work home with them but for some obvious reason (see below) pest control puts a whole new twist on this practice!!! Also, I have long curly hair, that will come into play in a few seconds too.

I went to get my cat “LD” (Little Dude) to come in the house last night after his evening of terrorizing anything that moves in the wild, I noticed he was acting weird and low & behold he had a mouse in his mouth and right before he ran off I grabbed  him. LD dropped the mouse from his mouth as I pick him up. We were both looking for the mouse in the grass but could not find it anywhere. I saw the grass moving but just gave up trying to find the mouse. You see, the grass was quite long as I have been lax in this department, cutting the grass is on my “to-do” list but keeps getting bumped. I scoop up LD and head into the house, as I was walking in I felt something like a stick in my hair so when I got inside I asked my mom if she saw anything. She replies NO so I put my hand in my hair and the missing mouse jumps out!!! I’m screaming, my mom’s screaming, and LD’s happy as #!%$*! that we brought her play toy in the house for her. I was able to open the door & scoot the mouse out much to LD’s dismay! Yep, I need to find other work to bring home with me.

Nicole White

Customer Service Specialist