Pest Control and Bug Exterminator Blog

Okay… I like Spiderman and all, but did it really out rank Ironman? I mean, I even have a biased to the spider since I am a pest control guy and all, but Iron Man nailed it! … But putting them in a real order wouldn’t leave much to debate here. And at least now I have a couple of rentals to consider since I haven’t seen several of your top 25. Cowabunga!

http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/05/10/best-comic-book-movies/

Here is their list:

25. ‘Shogun Assassin’ (1980)
24. ‘A History of Violence’ (2005)
23. ’300′ (2007)
22. ‘Road to Perdition’ (2002)
21. ‘Hellboy’ (2004)
20. ‘X-Men’ (2000)
19. ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’ (2010)
18. ‘Persepolis’ (2007)
17. ‘Sin City’ (2005)
16. ‘X2′ (2003)
15. ‘Ghost in the Shell’ (1995)
14. ‘Iron Man’ (2008)
13. ‘Lupin the 3rd: Castle of Cagliostro’ (1979)
12. ‘Spider-Man’ (2002)
11. ‘The Rocketeer’ (1991)
10. ‘Superman’ (1978)
9. ‘American Splendor’ (2003)
8. ‘Men in Black’ (1997)
7. ‘Batman’ (1989)
6. ‘Spider-Man II’ (2004)
5. ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ (1990)
4. ‘Ghost World’ (2001)
3. ‘Akira’ (1988)
2. ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
1. ‘Blade’ (1998)

Well, where to begin with this list. Let’s just start with #1… SERIOUSLY? Sure the logic is sound, but I doubt that the general public would even place Blade in their top 10 list let alone #1. And I am surprised that 2 sequels beat out the originals (Spiderman II, and Dark Knight). In fact, Batman Begins didn’t even make their top 25. It only made mention to why Blade was number one. Which may not be all that honorable of a mention considering that they mentioned Daredevil in sync, which also didn’t make the list. If they were dipping into the top 25 as legendary status they also missed Tales from the Crypt, an EC comic book. And then you have to think about Dick Tracy being skipped over for a couple of less known animations films. Which is especially insulting when they didn’t add in any of Marvel’s full length Comic Book Animations. “Batman: Under the Red Hood” was an amazing movie. But I can see why you wouldn’t want to add another Batman to the list.

I must think that there is some criteria that is not being explained in the author’s selection. Some unwritten rule about it having to be a Comic Book prior to being a movie, which is understandable. I mean the Stars Wars and Indiana Jones movies made the comic books. But this doesn’t explain why Transformers was left off the list. Granted it was a Toy prior to it’s TV and Comic Book debut. But none the less, Transformers was a comic book at the same time it was a TV series, so without proper exclusion from the list for being a toy first, Transformers should have made the top 25. The author also included “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” which was graphic NOVEL, not a comic book.

Disclaimer: I am not a certified comic book specialist. So don’t mind me, just a Phoenix pest control guy doing my pest controlling.

Cricket wireless announces that it will now be carrying the Android phone. Per their news release they will be offering…

the first low-cost Android device to hit the Smartphone market in the United States* and the third Smartphone to be included in Cricket’s dynamic line of phone offerings. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101006005730/en/Cricket-Shows-Respekt-Low-cost-Android-Device

While I am not quite ready to give up my iPhone… despite some small bugs… Offering me a test drive of the droid at a $55 low cost, unlimited access plan makes my iPhone look like yesterday’s news.  So… Yes. I am falling for the cricket bait. … I hope everyone appreciates the puns loaded in this post about a pest control guy falling for cricket bait! NEED A CRICKET PEST CONTROL SERVICE?

Cricket Marketing

Leap Wireless International has a business model down that encompasses everything a marketing plan should. They are embracing the future of phones and they are shouting it loud and clear.  Further, their customers get decent service. Yes, DECENT. Everyone knows that Cricket’s service isn’t going to compare to Verizon’s service.  Sorry, but you are flying 2nd class, which means that if the plane is full you might just get bumped to the next flight. But, what cricket is doing is establishing it’s position as the low-cost phone solution.  They are so low-cost that they are even cutting into the land line market. Your key marketing ingredient is your message compared to the rest of the market.  Cricket’s message is low-cost. Everyone knows that if you want a budget phone service you call cricket. Verizon’s message is quality service. “Can you hear me now?” Everyone turns to Verizon for a “reliable network.” Where does that leave AT&T… In the middle somewhere…??? Exactly, the only defining quality AT&T has right now is the iPhone…. So long marketing advantage when everyone else starts picking up competitive smart phones… or worse yet the exact same model.  If you are only selling a product then you better be the only one selling that product or be the best priced. You have no competitive edge if you are just selling a product. Thomas Ballantyne @Thos003 Don’t mind me I am just the pest control guy… FYI, Bulwark offers Full Service pest control.

As a technician in San Antonio, Texas you see a lot of different things, meet a lot of people & enter some interesting houses.  As usual, on one of our hot summer days, I stopped by a customer’s home that was on my route for a routine service.  I parked my truck, got out & walked to the front door to greet the customer.  A lady pleasantly answered the door. I proceeded with my routine script, “Hello Ms, my name is Ande. I’m from Bulwark Exterminating & I’m here to do your routine service. Are you having any pest problems or seeing anything inside your home?” She replied, “Yes. I’ve seen a couple of those pincher things inside my kitchen,” as she moved her fingers in a pinching motion. I smiled & informed her that I could do an interior & exterior treatment for her.

I went to my truck, grabbed my equipment & returned to the home. She told me to come on in. I asked her if she wanted me to treat just her kitchen or the whole interior. She opted for the whole interior. I tend to work clockwise in a home, so I informed her that I would start by the front door & just work my way around. She responded okay. The first room to my right was a bedroom as I entered I noticed there was a lady lying on the bed, under the covers watching TV. I asked her if she wanted me to treat her room. She said yes.

As I proceeded to the window, to do a window treatment, I could here a faint growling sound. I turned around to see where the sound was coming from, but I did not see anything or anyone besides the lady. I continued towards the window and as I’m treating the window the growling continues. I looked back towards the lady on the bed and she just smiled. As I move towards the back bedroom corner to finish checking the corners for pest, all I keep thinking about is why is this woman growling at me? I tell myself that I need to hurry up & finish this room because the lady no longer wants me in her room. The growling intensifies & as I turn to head out the room barking begins. Now I’m really thinking this woman is crazy & I need to get out of this house. Just then she grabs the covers & says, “Princess stop barking!”

To my relief she pulls a small tea cup Chihuahua from under the covers.  I’ve never been so on edge in a in my life. I’m glad my imagination didn’t run wild, the lady wasn’t acting crazy & a cute little “Princess” could entice more than just pests to leave a room.

A couple of months ago we had a customer call in to schedule an interior service. He let me know he had just left town, and was going to be gone for a while, but that he had noticed some bugs inside before he left. He said he felt comfortable letting the technician treat inside without him being home. He gave me the alarm code for his house, and the code to unlock the front door, and just asked that the technician relock and reset the alarm when he was finished. We chatted for a bit, and he let me know that he had some steaks in the refrigerator that he wasn’t able to cook before he left, and they would go bad before he was home again. He asked that the technician please take the steaks out of the fridge, and he can keep them if he wants. He let me know they are really good fat steaks, and he would really appreciate if we helped him out with this. When I asked the tech to get the steaks out of the fridge he just laughed, but said they did look good and he wanted them. I just thought this was one of the oddest requests for pest control.

Jamie
St. George, UT

During one hot summer in Austin, I was performing first time services for new Bulwark customers and training a new technician.  It was getting late in the week and the two of us had performed several first time services, so I told the trainee to get started on the outside and I would go inside, talk to the new customer, and get started performing the inside service.  I expected the trainee to come inside after doing the weephole screening and power spraying the perimeter, but after about half an hour, he had not yet come inside.  I explained to the new customer that I was going outside to check on my partner and that I would be back inside in just a few moments.  The hose was on the reel in the back of the truck, the weepholes were already meshed, but the trainee was nowhere to be found around the outside of the home.  I didn’t want to start yelling his name and cause any of the neighbors to question the professionalism of the technicians working for Bulwark, so I decided to finish the inside service, and think about where the trainee could have gone.  I completed the interior work and explained to the new customer, what I had done on the inside, what products were used and how they worked.  After thanking the customer and in the process of walking out the door, the customer said very calmly and nonchalantly, “make sure the dog doesn’t follow you out the gate, she has a habit of escaping” and the customer followed me out into the yard.  As we walked, I recognized the trainee, sweat dripping off of his face and petting a little dog in the yard.  The customer then told the trainee, “I’m surprised you two are getting along, she’s quite an escape artist, anytime someone comes into the yard, she gets out”, to which the trainee replied, “oh no ma’am we pay close attention when there a pets in the yard, we would never let anything happen to someone’s pet”.  The trainee and I left the home and hopped into the truck and asked him, “where’d you go, I was looking for you?”  To which he replied, “That little dog got out when I was reeling up the hose, so I tried to catch her.”  “I have been running all over the neighborhood for that last half hour.  I couldn’t pick her up and carry her the three blocks back here because I’m allergic.  So I caught up to her and fed her my sandwich to get her to come to me.  I took off my belt and made a leash and the two of us walked back to the house right before ya’ll came out.”  We laughed for a few minutes and I offered to buy him a Gatorade and something to eat.  As we pulled into the parking place at the convenience store, there was an unmistakable “LOST DOG” picture and poster in the store’s window from one of the previous escapes by his new friend.

Russel Shoffner

Branch Manager Austin

One time I went to do a service for interior earwigs.  As I was on my way, I called the customer (wife) to let them know I was on my way.  She said, “Yes, please come over we need a spray badly!” So, when I got there, the husband came to the door and said, “What are you doing here, I already canceled the account!”  So I said “I just spoke to your wife and she said to come over and do the service.”  So he said, with a grumpy old face, “Come on in then!”  So as I went in, and the wife began showing me where the earwigs were, and the husband kept running around following us and saying, “You know, I can take care of this myself!”,…. “And I can do a better job!” So as he kept complaining, the wife said, “Honey, What did I tell you!!” as she grabbed him by the ear and dragged him to his room.

What I heard from the other room was, “I will pay for the service.” She came out and apologized and thanked us for the service.  I thought to myself, HMMM, She just put her husband in time out for trying to refuse Bulwark’s services!

Tevita Fine
Las Vegas, NV

It was a typical hot, humid Texas Summer day.  I had completed most of my schedule and I was getting into the stretch where every customer is home and needs just a little special attention to feel comfortable that their bugs will be gone.  I pulled up to the next house on my schedule at the end of a cul-de-sac.  I rang the doorbell.  No answer.  I knocked.  No answer.  I then went to the gate on the side of the home; I knocked loudly on the gate and began whistling hoping to attract the attention of any dog that may be in the back yard.  I have not proven this, but I theorize that a dogs lack of colored sight cause them to view Pest Control Technicians as chew toys that must be gnawed on.  No dogs came barking at the fence, or wagging a tale.  I now felt safe to service the home.

I power sprayed the front exterior of the home and entered the back yard.  As I came near the rear corner of the home I heard music from a radio.  I came around the corner and found our customers kneeling on their back deck.  I quickly put on a huge smile, raised my arm and announced myself to my customers, saying “Hi I’m the Bugguy”.  In the next moment I understood why the customers where kneeling down.  I was confronted with one of the most terrifying situations I have ever been in.  No less than 6 small black puppies sprinted off the deck of the home and charged in my direction at what seemed to be 200miles per hour.  I HAD LEFT THE GATE OPEN and the puppies where headed for it and me.  I dropped my equipment and ran towards the gate hoping to close it before the puppies could escape.  I was successful and hours of dog catching had been prevented.

As I came back around the corner of the home with the puppies nipping at every inch of me from the knees down, the customer’s were doubled over in laughter at the sight of a grown man fleeing for his life from a group of puppies with the largest weighing at about 6lbs.  I didn’t try to explain.  I only joined in the laughter and completed the service.

Wayne Bryant

Las Vegas

My name is Luke and this story is about my first day on the job 2 years ago. I was an eager young lad ready for some hard work and had just been hired by the Atlanta Branch as a field technician. Like most employees on their first day out in the field, I was both nervous and excited. One of my advisors, Ben Montez, had just taught me how to drive a stick shift and I was ready to conquer the world. Picking up my paper work, I read through for the challenges of the next day so I could make sure I had everything I needed. A couple exterior sprays, a couple of ant mounds, and a German Cockroach account in Cumming. Sounds easy.

The next day went pretty smoothly – I was a new face for the company so there plenty of people to meet. The day went by very fast – it was relatively hot outside and was around 4 p.m. before I arrived at my last home, just on time. I walked up to the door and knocked when a young woman and her husband answered the door. “Hi! I’m here to help with the cockroach problem!” They smiled politely and welcomed me into their home. I took off my shoes and they proceeded to take me into the kitchen. A warm and curious smell entered my nostrils.  Mmm, I thought to myself…chicken.

They offered me a glass of juice and began to tell me a little bit about their problem. “I see a lot of roaches around the sink area, and if I wake up in the middle of the night to grab something, they are like everywhere, you know?” I nodded to myself. That would make sense, the kitchen is an area with heavy moisture and most roaches are nocturnal. According to my manual, roaches need moisture to survive and it’s likely they have infiltrated the cabinets. I pulled up my sleeves and prepared for an inspection. Armed with a flashlight and special bait formula, I decided to check under the sink first. Between the brillo pads and Windex bottle, I saw the yellow orange glow of what appeared to be some sort of shell. Being new to the job, this was a discovery the likes of which only Sherlock could have appreciated … my first egg capsule! I was getting closer to the source …

After I was done reviewing the immediate area around the sink, I had to stand up and stretch. I reached for my glass of juice and took a sip. What is that wonderful smell? As I set my glass down I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Standing between the sugar and some coffee filters was a tiny little cockroach staring back at me – I felt my heart skip a beat. If I can follow this thing, I’ll know exactly where they are coming from. As I moved in closer, the little guy scuttled behind a blender at the edge of the counter top. Happy to follow, I slowly picked up the blender and was surprised to find five more underneath. I was about to explode with excitement when all of them took off the counter and onto the wall behind the fridge. “Aha!” I thought to myself. I recruited the woman’s husband to help me pull out the fridge and grabbed my flashlight. What I was about to see has haunted me in my dreams ever since.

I couldn’t understand what was happening at first, but I’ll try my best to explain it. I poked my head behind the fridge and pointed the flashlight down. A large black vibrating mass began to scatter as about a hundred or so cockroches looked back up at me. In absolute shock and horror, I took a step back to catch up with my mind. That was when the walls started to move. I thought I was hallucinating at first and wondered if the family had put something in my juice. The lights began to flicker and to make matters worse, the woman began shouting nervously in her native language which really freaked me out. I took a couple steps back and heard a thick series of ‘crunches’ beneath the weight of my foot. I looked down to find previous white socks now covered with roaches. The woman continued to yell and started scooping up her crying children from the kitchen table as I looked around nervously for something to grab. I found a broom and began sweeping furiously against the flow of roaches as they made their way across the kitchen floor. Eventually the strength and size of the mass dwindled, as they began to scuttle back to various hiding places throughout the kitchen and cabinetry. The family had began to calm down and the blood was slowly returning to my face when I decided to step out and call some of the other technicians for advice.

Long story short, I scheduled a free follow-up visit after treating the residence and the family’s problem was solved. I however, have a harder time sleeping at night and can no longer stomach the smell of the chicken.

One day I was servicing a home while training a guy that had been sitting in the truck while I did all the spraying and all the services. He always was having an excuse to be on the phone. I was really getting frustrated cause I believe that he was just being lazy. I knocked on the customer’s door and there wasn’t an answer. I checked the gate, it wasn’t locked, so I went back to the truck and asked if the trainee wanted to spray the house. He was still on the phone so I just started to spray the house. When I got to the backyard I made it to the far side when this big dog came from under the dog house, filthy dirty, and growling viciously. The dog came towards me, and I felt like I had to run. I jumped the neighbor’s wall and came to the front yard. I saw that my trainee was off the phone and I just quickly asked him to finish up the back while I made a phone call to the office. He went towards the back yard where I was sure that he was going to have to jump the wall like myself. To my surprise he finished the service and rolled up the hose while I faked being on the phone with the office. I guess if I would have not run the dog would not have chased me. But at the least it got this tech to start to spray houses and learned the lesson that not all dogs of this sort are really vicious.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Richard Wickoff

Mgr. Las Vegas

One day, I went and serviced this home and when I got to the back yard, I was all into spraying the house and making sure I hit every spot.  I thought to myself as I was admiring my work, “This customer’s going to love me!”  Since I was facing the house and walking backwards while still spraying, I didn’t realize that they had a pool and then CRASH!! The lights were out and before I knew it I woke up at the bottom of an empty pool.  And as I woke up I saw a “BIG CHIHUAHUA” licking my face as to say “What the heck are you doing in MY POOL!!!”   I quickly jumped up in total embarrassment and looked around as I slowly climbed out of the pool, hoping the customer didn’t see me.  Boy, I felt like an idiot.  Luckily the customer didn’t see me and I escaped with just a couple bruises on both my elbows and a sore back.  When I got back to my truck I realized that I had been there for 40 minutes, I must have had a nice long nap!!! That’s what I call a knock-out service!!

Tevita Fine

Las Vegas, NV