deBugged

As is the case every Olympics (Winter or otherwise), I am in awe of what the human body can achieve.  The years of dedication, of training, of success and of triumph that Olympians endure deserves our respect.

But in watching the 2010 Olympics, it occurred to me that humans have nothing over most pests when it comes to amazing physical abilities and there and some pretty amazing unbelievable truths too.   Now, as I said, I have complete respect for all human Olympians.   But just think about the events we could hold at The Pest Olympics and what amazing pest feats you might see:

The High/Long Jump: Mice have a 12 inch vertical jump while rats have a 36 inch vertical jump and a 48 inch horizontal jump. Some fleas can jump 150 times their own length. That compares to a human jumping 1,000 feet!  (One flea actually broke a world record and won a gold medal for jumping 4 feet!)

The Tight Squeeze: Rats can fit through openings that are as small as 1/2 inch in diameter and can climb the inside of vertical pipes that are 1 1/2 to 4 inches in diameter.  (Fortunately, a proessional pest control comany can advise on how best to close these gaps!)

The Long Distance Shuffle: Bedbugs are capable of traveling as far as 100 feet to feed.  That may not sound like much until you consider that we’re talking about an animal that is 1/8 inch long.

The Speed Demon: If a man could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could run as fast as a racehorse.

The Weight Lifting Event: Remember the Rubber Tree Plant song?!  Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight.

The Rodent Free Fall: Did you know a mouse can jump down 12 feet and a rat can drop down 50 feet without injury?

The Slam Dunk: A single brown bat can catch around 1,200 mosquito-size insects in one hour.

Survivor at Sea: Rats can swim 1/2 mile in open sea and tread water for 3 days. They can dive 100 feet underwater and hold their breath for as long as 15 minutes.

An infestation of any kind is unpleasant. We know that lots of you want help with how to get rid of pests, so we had a Google to see what’s at the top of your priority list….

We noticed that, alongside searches for a range of pests, a lot of you are searching for how to get rid of some other nasties. First of all, if you discover any of the above unpleasantness about your person – don’t panic. Although prevention is nearly always better than the cure, there’s still plenty you can do to make the problem go away. Here are our 7 steps towards pest-free nirvana.

The most important thing to establish is that you are attempting to combat the right problem. Different kinds of flies require various methods of elimination; different kinds of facial blemishes require various treatments. So consult an expert, and find out exactly what problem you’re facing.

Many of the problems in this list can be prevented with a bit of forethought. Don’t want ants invading your kitchen or stretch marks decorating your thighs? Then keep available food to the minimum, particularly the sweet stuff. Don’t want flies making a mess with their proboscises or a hickey lurking on your neck? Easy, just eliminate all methods of entry in the first place.

As long as you keep the presence of edible stuff in your house under control, there really shouldn’t be a problem. If, however, you’re unlucky enough to find any of the following anywhere in your proximity – fruit flies, love handles, blackheads, ants, cellulite or acne – you might need to rethink your relationship with food. In terms of action, the best solution is “out of sight, out of mind”. Cover all food, and make sure your rubbish bins have tightly sealed lids.

Those who tritely answer ‘…is next to godliness’ are actually spot on. Improving your levels of cleanliness will eradicate at least half of the nasties on this list. There are obviously lots of different cleaning techniques involved here, but a common requirement is to remove any excess grease. For ants, flies, blackheads and acne you should clean up any greasy spillages that might be lurking in hidden crevices. There are lots of specialist kits you can invest in, though we strongly recommend you only use Rentokil’s DIY products for pests of the crawling or flying variety!

Unfortunately, none of these problems will go away unless you throw yourself into solving them properly. If you let Fido sleep with you, for example, washing your sheets won’t permanently eliminate his fleas from your bed. A quick clean once or twice a week or the one-off avoidance of cookie crumbs isn’t really going to do anything but dishearten you in its failure to make a significant difference.

The majority of these problems have become multi-million dollar industries. Unfortunately, many of the proposed fixes are scams and will either leave you the same or worse off, and always considerably lighter in the pocket. Anything that promises immediate results with no effort needed from you should set alarm bells ringing. Make sure you get some feedback from previous users before handing over any cash.

However motivated you are to solve the infestation you are unfortunate enough to suffer from, sometimes the wisest course of action is to call in the experts. That could mean investing in some DIY tools off the shop floor, consulting your doctor for health advice and guidance or simply paying for someone to come in and fix the problem outright.

Well, just when you think you have done all you can to optimise your site for search, along comes news of the renewed popularity of an album called ”Mice & rats in the loft” by Jan Dukes de Grey in case you’re interested I hang my head in defeat wondering why artists cannot write songs about fluffy animals instead of pests!

It’s not just in work that I have this problem. Recently I was searching the big wide web on Florence (the city – and my honeymoon destination) when on the first page of Google there were results for Florence & the Machine (music band) – not what I was after. Do you get my point?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) becomes that much more difficult when search engines throw up results for pest associated terms that are actually nothing to do with pest control (e.g. The Rat Pack – mentioned in a previous blog post, Wasps Rugby Club, etc.), which means that:

a) we have greater competition to appear high up in the results and

b) it is more difficult for potential customers to find & visit our website and take advantage of our services.

The aim of SEO is to make your site as clear and as relevant as possible to what people are searching for when they want your products and services. This will help results of your site to appear higher up on a results page (ideally on page 1 – most people don’t tend to look further on) than other less relevant websites and thus hopefully encourage people to click through to your website.

Quick example about ants. When people search using the term ‘ants’ they could be a school student doing some research for homework or a fan of “Adam & the Ants” and either way, we (as Rentokil) cannot compete with the millions of results a term like ‘ants’ or ‘ant’ can produce on the internet. We have to be smarter than that!

We research what terms people actually use to find our site and tailor our relevant web page to those particular key terms/ phrases so there is a much higher probability that a Rentokil ad appears near the top of the search page. There are various tools to help us do this. We then ensure that we tailor our webpage to meet the demands of what people are looking for when they want a service like ours with this and other keywords identified.

Unfortunately this exercise will constantly need to be repeated and reviewed as people (and our competitors) get more search savvy and if we continue to have people, films, tv, music bands, etc. jumping on the (pest) band wagon – if you know what I mean.

And so, my SEO battle continues……

There’s something about a peaceful lakeside vacation that makes you a bit more reflective about the mundane.  Every day me and my colleagues think about pests in some form or another as part of our jobs – pests in homes, bedbugs in hotels, stinging insects at a picnic, the list goes on and on.  But as I watched my friends and family nurse mosquito bites we had received while fishing at dusk, I really started to think about how pervasive pests are.

Pests are not limited by season.  Sure, here in the Northeast, pests are more visible during the spring and summer.  Ants scurry in endless search of food; termites are busy caring for their colony queen, and millipedes are doing whatever millipedes do. In the early fall, we try to avoid stinging insects and survive October’s boxelder bugs that seem to appear out of nowhere.  Even in the dead of winter, we’re mouse-proofing our homes while others battle the cockroach.

Pests are not limited by location or social class.  They’re in the cleanest of homes and the dirtiest.  They’re in budget motels and the swankiest of restaurants. Pests are not limited by economic health.  In the words of our now-retired CEO, “The bugs don’t k know whether we’re in a recession or not.”  When the economy is good, pests are there.  When the economy is bad, pests are still there.

And pests, as I was reminded this week, are not limited by going on vacation.  Pests are the ultimate worker, always efficient and never on vacation.

Well, most would say science, but I have reason to believe pest control is becoming more and more a fringe art movement…..

Why I hear you ask. Well, what with:

• Fairy tales about rats from the Brothers Grimm,
• Hip hop perfomances in London over Christmas about the same,
• A suggestion that there are certain books you may be inadvertantly scaring your kids with (not pest related as such, but there was a tenuous Brothers Grimm link so I thought I’d mention this site I saw yesterday),
• The recent Pestival in London (am still a little narked they got there first with the word Pestival but I’ll stop griping about it) – a lifesize yet artifical termite mound on the South Bank is not something you see every day, 
• Up close and personal images of ants
• An (albeit several years old) play/novel about an exterminator (American expression) whose identitiy is mistaken for that of an assassin,
• All manner of coffee table books about bugs hitting the high street,

you’d be wrong in thinking all people hate bugs and creepy crawlies.

So for those of you not directly involved with pest control like me, do you think pest control is: art or science, literature or administrative paperwork, friend or foe? To coin a well know phrase… you decide!