The National Pest Management Association continues to warn homeowners, that when the temperatures outside turn cooler, an estimated twenty-one million rodents will begin their search for warmth, water, food and shelter; to wait-out the long and cold winter months. Ideally, they will be looking to the cozy homes, offices, buildings and structures, across most of the United States and North America.
Pest management experts and industry professionals have identified garages and basements, as ideal targets for rats and mice, looking to invade homes and businesses. Smaller rodents like mice, require only a quarter of an inch, to enter a home, structure or dwelling. This means that determined rodents can gain entry through cracks in the foundation, air conditioner and dryer vents, pipes; or gaps in electrical wiring. In fact, some mice can even push their way through tiny openings, the size of a pencil.
Once inside a warm dwelling, it will not take long for a very serious pest control problem, to develop. Females rodent invaders can give birth to a litter of five to ten mice, every thirty days, and they breed all year-round. Furthermore, because some rats and mice are carriers of disease, like salmonella and hantavirus, the real danger comes when rodent droppings begin to collect; and must be safely removed from the home.
Using a vacuum (Shop Vac or like appliance), homeowners must collect all of the rat and/or mouse droppings they have discovered, and discard them outdoors; far away from the dwelling. Pest management officials warn that whoever will be responsible for collecting and disposing of the rodent droppings, should wear a protective mask, to avoid breathing in the associated fumes. This precautionary measure is especially important, if anyone who is coming into contact with the rodent droppings, suffers from asthma; or any other kind of related respiratory issue.
Spider silk is becoming a hot commodity. Because of the strength of spider silk fibers, five times stronger than steel fibers, research is being done on potential uses. From bullet proof skin to artificial tendons, medical doctors are looking to capitalize on the health benefits a super spider silk lends itself to. But sadly the spider silk just doesn’t come quick enough. Noted by the spider silk tapestry that took millions of spiders to create. So scientists genetically engineered silkworms to produce a spider like silk. And that silkworm spider silk officially stopped a bullet. Taking that one step further, silkworm spider silk weaved with human skin was created, tested, and also stopped a bullet. Interesting enough, a professor from Utah might just have a gold mind on this hands if he can take this mutated silkworms spider silk and produce similar fibers from goats milk. By mutating the goats genes, the goat will produce milk with the same protein in the milk. The Utah professor then takes these proteins, isolates them, mimics the spider’s weave, and spins a spider like silk.
Many individuals have been asking, How does the recent FDA approval of the Scorpion Anti-Venom change anything. Most people don’t die from scorpion stings in the US. So why is this anti-venom getting so much coverage?
Here is the personal anti-venom Anascorp story of Tony (owner of Airport Phoenix Hotels), a Phoenix resident and a father.
To the relief of Tony and many other Phoenix families the FDA approval means the scorpion anti-venom will be readily available in Phoenix Hospitals soon. It will also be available in other hospitals throughout the US where scorpion stings occur on a regular bases.
Quality Products at the right rate and in the right locations
Protective Physical barriers.
Consistency in treatment intervals.
While the antivenom may help parents sleep easier, scorpions are still a pest. Having a consistent treatment with the right products is essential in the fight against scorpions. General Phoenix insect control covers common bugs, but a scorpion is not a common pest. Scorpions actually fall under the arachnid family. Eight legs, two pinchers and one tail with a lethal stinger. Yes scorpions sting, and there is no such thing as a scorpion bite.
Have you tried Bulwark for your Phoenix Scorpion Control needs?
Bulwark Pest Control 40 N. Central Ave, Suite 1400, Phoenix, AZ 85004 (602) 652-2251
The longest I had ever ridden my bike was 85 miles, and that was only 2 weeks ago. Everyone that I knew riding in this year’s El Tour de Tucson was riding the 109 distance. I was thinking I might only do the 80-mile race, but when a couple of older riding buddies (44-year-old female and 58-year-old male) kept egging me on to go the distance, there was absolutely no way I could back down from that.
I buckled down about 3 months ago. I went from riding once or twice a week to three or four times a week. I haven’t had a normal Saturday morning in that long. I would actually get up earlier on Saturdays than any other work day. Up at 4:15ish, meet my riding buddies around 5:00, back at home by 9 or 10. Home around 1:00 more recently.
I ran cross country and track in high school, and continued to run recreationally in college. I even entered a couple home-town races just to make my running worth it and feel the edge of competition again. But this was different. The physical demands were different. The training and inherent tactics were different. The nutrition was only similar. I never ever drank anything in the middle of a run under 8 miles. I was having to learn to not only drink during a ride, but also eat once and sometimes twice. I was having to learn how to properly eat for the rest of the day after a long ride. And post-ride naps were out of the question per my wife and mother of our two small children. If daddy was going to be gone on Saturday morning, then there was no napping or other me-time for the rest of the day. Or weekend, for that matter.
El tour started at 7:00 am, but with nearly 9,000 riders, we’re wanted to get in the start line around 5:45. We were up at 5, trying to down bagels and peanut butter at 5:15, checking tire pressure at 5:30 and out the door at 5:35. Arrived to our place in line around 5:45 and had the next hour and 15 minutes to chat and stay warm.
Seven ‘o clock came rather quick and before we knew it we were off. It felt like it took me a good 15 or 20 miles to decipher how cold I was vs. how much adrenaline I was pumping vs. how hard I was really working before I settled into a manageable pace that would work for the next 90 miles. Just when my saddle started to feel somewhat comfortable around 8 miles in, we came across a dried river crossing. One or two riders tried to brave the dirt pathway, while the remaining 8,990 of us didn’t hesitate to get off the bike and safely walk across the ravine. The culture of Tucson awaited us on the other side, and I was in a much better mood now than I was going to be much later in the race, so I had to document this…
Other than the dried river and another wooded hiking trail that would come a little while later, I didn’t take my first real pit stop until 45 miles in. Refill one of my bottles, grab some orange slices, stretch a little bit and apply some Bengay on my left knee, and off we go. I was a little disoriented as to where we were in relation to downtown where we started, but the next several miles were through the suburbs of Tucson…I think. I’m not gonna lie, it was fun to blow right through red lights as police had traffic stopped in all directions. A lot of the locals even took time to camp out on the sidewalks with their cowbells and signs of encouragement. I figure that’s about as close as I’ll ever get to climbing the Alps in the Tour de France with thousands of rabid fans running along side my bike waving United States and California flags in my face.
At this point there’s still 50+ miles to go, so one, especially a newcomer like myself, has to be smart about how you ride. As a first timer, I didn’t have any shame or guilt about drafting behind other riders the entire race. Drafting can save up to 40% of your energy, and with winds coming out of the south at 20 mph, I made sure to never lead any packs. I’ll admit it, I even drafted behind a couple of girls. Another factor I couldn’t overlook was fatigue. That sounds simple enough, but I was about to surpass my longest ride by 25 miles. I was feeling my way through the race as far as food and drinks were concerned. How much to eat, how much to drink, a Clif Bar with higher density vs. an energy gel with no density and maybe half the calories. When the body is tired, then the mind soon becomes tired. When the mind is tired you forget things. Simple things. I needed to consciously remember to eat and drink and map out the remaining miles ahead in my mind to do so on a course I had never ridden. My friends that have raced Tucson before cramped up around mile 85 or 90, so I needed to stay well hydrated to avoid that.
Things were going about as well as I could have expected until I hit the frontage road of the I-10 going south back to downtown Tucson. The winds were still blowing as hard as they were earlier, but now I was getting a face full of headwind. I knew I had the energy to finish, but I didn’t have any explosion left in my legs, so I was consigned to finish the last 12 miles at whatever pace I could go. Riders would creep up on me and pass right by. A couple times I tried to go with them, thinking that if I could get enough momentum to stick behind them, I could use their draft. But every time I tried to fall in line, they just kept passing me. Five feet head. Ten feet ahead. Now twenty. Oh well. I’ll try it again with this next group. Nope. That didn’t work either. Oh well.
Aside from it being the last 10 miles of the race, there were 2 things that made it exponentially more difficult than I expected. First, the wind. Physically speaking, if there is no wind whatsoever, and you’re riding 20 mpg down the road, you actually have 20 mph of wind pushing back against you. We call it “drag”. But now there is actually 20 mph of wind pushing back against me, plus my drag at about 12 or 13 mph. The second characteristic of this final stretch was loneliness. It’s a frontage road, so there’s not a lot of businesses, or parking lots, or neighborhoods along side. Which means there were no spectators yelling and clapping. It all of a sudden got real quiet. Just the sound of my wheels spinning and my legs hurting.
Eventually the police escort standing in the middle of the intersection directed me to turn left. All of a sudden, people. And they were clapping. For me? I think so! And more people. Still clapping. I turned one last corner and the finish line is about 100 yards away. And then, out of the hum of hundreds of people cheering I hear “STEVE-O!!!” Me: “Hey, that sounded a lot like my wife!” In fact, it was my wife. After I crossed the finish line and got off the bike I was staggering back towards the crowd and I see my wife emerge from a sea of people. After 7.5 hours of riding with complete strangers it was nice to see a rather familiar face. There was absolute, positively no way I would be riding and racing as much as I have without the love and support of my wife. She’s been the #1 reason I’ve been able to get on the bike and push myself like the good ‘ol days. And then I saw 2 more faces. My 5-month-old, Leia, and my 2-year-old, Max. I picked Max up and to no surprise all he wanted to do with play with my glasses and helmet.
I was done. I did it. This was something no one could ever take away from me. This race was apart of me. I didn’t really beat anybody on the course but myself. I pushed my body further than it had ever gone before, for longer than it had ever gone before. I was an El Tour de Tucson finisher.
I have to admit it was a bit emotional for me to finally be done. Months of training. Rides at 5:00 am. No Saturday mornings. Gatorade economy cases at Costco. Clif Bars. Smoothie Powerbars. Two or three tube changes a month. A new bike. A different pair of shoes. Stiff legs. Pulled muscles. Rides in the rain. Rides in the wind. Fifty five degrees outside. A hundred degrees outside.
Three days later I’m still a bit stiff. I’ll get back on the bike sometime this week and warm my body back up and let my muscles stretch back out. And then…I’m not touching my bike at least until after New Years. But I already can’t stay away. I’m already thinking about how I want to train differently next year and areas I want to work on. Maybe I can make it out to CA for either the AMGEN Tour de California or Levi’s GranFondo. Tour de Phoenix will be a must. And it’ll all end this time next year at El Tour de Tucson.
I am in a class yesterday some what bored by the simplicity of the course, when I hear the instructor mention something about a “Green Server”. My ears perked up…
“… this server option is considered green. Versus your traditional server options, a shared hosting plan or shared server leaves less of a carbon footprint and for many of us that are in this industry the greener the better.”
Rewind… “A Shared server is considered green?”
So like a good student I did my research on Green Servers, Green Hosting and Green Websites. Here is what I found:
Garner Research – http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867
According to Garner the IT industry is responsible for 2% of energy consumption worldwide. Some have said this is nearly as much if not more then the aviation industry, but I could not confirm that rumor. Further Garner is including much more then just PCs and servers in this equation.
Gartner’s estimate of the 2 percent of global CO2 emissions that ICT is responsible for includes the in-use phase of PCs, servers, cooling, fixed and mobile telephony, local area network (LAN), office telecommunications and printers. Gartner has also included an estimate of the embodied (that used in design, manufacture and distribution) energy in large-volume devices, namely PCs and cell phones. It also included all commercial and governmental IT and telecommunications infrastructure worldwide, but not consumer electronics other than cell phones and PCs.
This information sounds great if you want to point fingers and pass blame onto the IT industry for adding to the carbon footprint, but what about the benefits that IT is providing? And streching this all the way out to telecommunications and government infrastructure???
I did find some useful information on how to be a little greener. Here are a few tips on a “Greener Server”:
1- Newer equipment is considered more energy efficient, and therefore green. FYI, Dell is coming out with servers that are designed to be energy conservative.
2- Cooling. Servers require cooling measures. Fans, A/C, ventilation, etc. Perhaps your floor fans are overkill or just placed ineffectively to optimize the cooling capacity.
3- Hosting on your own separate server/ dedicated server may give you more features, options, and speed, but like the Dodge Viper that out performs your smart car, your Dodge Viper only gets 8 MPG. (i.e. your performance comes at a cost that may not be worth the extra performance.) Shouldn’t everyone be content with a GEO Metro? … Of course, I would be tempted to take a Dodge Viper if you gave it to me.
4-Websites. Not only should you consider the servers you are hosting them on but the computers that are visiting your websites…??? Sorry this is according the the ECOfriendly approved site stamp. Essentially the best ways to have an ecofriendly website is to control the number of visitors to your site and to limit the size of your website. So just consider all the waste that one or two extra images could add up to on your site.
Our servers are hosted and since we are running a blog the website is much more efficient and smaller! We qualify for a green website and green hosting!… My life is now complete.
Bulwark’s Pest Control, Green and Getting Greener.
FYI, This article does not give enough credit to the thousands of trees that we are saving by going digital, which should offset the 2% of consumption as trees saved should equal more CO2 eaters. Unfortuntely I don’t have the time or energy to spend quantifying the total offset… sorry, just conserving some of my own energy and putting it to better use.
TIP# 5
In red, because its the most important… It’s estimated that 2/3 of PC use is waste, WHY? Because people don’t turn them off. So if you really want to help and be green then TURN OFF YOUR PC.
Green is the thing especially during Green week. The yellow brick road is now green. Pest control is no different. Green Pest control is the new buzz. But what does it mean? What is green pest control?
Is the pest control company green or are they just “Green Washing” ?
This brings back memories of the 80’s “Light” craze. Everything was going “Lite”, “Light food”, “Lite Beer”, “Lite Cheese”, stick a light label on it and it was hot. It’s the “New and Improved” sells pitch. Or try “No Calories” for water that never had calories. “Fat Free” gelatins, no fat all sugar. “Reduced Fat Mayo” sure you’ve gone down in fat nano grams, but shouldn’t you just skip the mayo all together? We went through and are still suffering from the “Low-Carb” label. From craze, rave, wave, to the grave. The problem with the newest fad is that being new makes it unknown and the results unsure. Fortunately the rage that is worthwhile leaves its everlasting impression. And we believe that green means better, better for you and better for the earth.
“Greener is Cleaner”
The problem still remains, “What is Green Pest Control?”
Unfortunately after day 1 of The Green Pest Management Conference, there is still no concrete answer. Being green is still too new for most of the pest control industry. The best way to say it is that Green comes in shades. There is the “100% Organic group”, the “All Naturals”, and the much looser “Mix and Match”. More of a hybrid approach.
Bulwark’s stance, forget the label and the hype, we know and have always known that the customer wants the most effective and the safest pest control solution. If you label green as using the most effective solution with the least amount of exposure to families, children, pets, water, and the environment then you can label Bulwark Green. Bulwark began its service with an in-wall treatment plan, no baseboard spraying, and using products that had been used and proven in agriculture pest control. Bulwark was one of the first pest control companies to feature EcoSmart products. Bulwark has always been aware of a customers concern about the safety of their family. Bulwark has always tried to do what we feel is best for the environment. Call it what you want. If you ask me, yes were are green, always have been a shade of green,… and a very dark green if you look at the logo…
and getting greener.
Always moving, always improving. Or as our employees have so lovingly phrased it, “Bulwark means Change” … The world is evolving, shouldn’t your pest control?
Bed bugs have become a major concern for pest controlcompanies. Calls for bed bug service are pouring in around the nation. The National Management Control Association says they’ve seen a 71% increase in bed bug related calls. New York reported that bed bug infestations increased 34% during the past year. Where are these bed bugs coming from? Why are bed bugs on the rise?
Authorities want to point fingers at international travelers. They believe that individuals traveling abroad bring back the pests in clothes and in suit cases. Travelers within the US may also pick up these pests from hotels that are frequented by international travelers and bring them home. But what’s even more frightening is that idea that these bed bugs are moving out of the bed and into couches, airplanes, and movie theaters! …YIKES!
After a 50 year slump these bugs are back with a vengeance. And Pest Control companies are perplexed on how to solve the problem. They don’t fall under general pest control treatments. Realistically it takes special equipment and several interior treatments to rid a home of bed bugs. Plus its recommended that residents wash all of their laundry around the same time to kill of any bed bugs that are hiding in clothes. And according to pest control companies that attended the recent EPA: National Bed Bug Summit ,”Residents are a problem and are sometimes unwilling to cooperate or engage in behaviors to manage pests” ….Residents are a further nuisance because… “Preventative and ongoing inspection is necessary to address the problem, … residents and property managers do not cooperate or do not consider pest inspections to be a priority” The conclusion therefore is that IPM which integrates the residents doesn’t work.
It seems that ultimately those in attendance still don’t have a solid solution for controlling bed bugs. They made suggestions like “Property managers must be certified pest control operators to treat their own properties.” to ideas like “Pest Control Companies should be certified in bed bugs and there should be a national accrediting body for those pest control operators.” In the end, the biggest complaint from PCOs was that the EPA has restricted the use of products that use to work for bed bugs. So it seems they believe the only solution using the current products is a program that both the residents and PCOs can work together on and both share some of the burdens of failure or success. Needless to say, “We need to educate the public” was among the better solutions they came up with at the summit. So at least they all seemed to agree on one thing… There is a Bed Bug Epidemic and that the public needs to know about it.
But don’t worry they plan on holding another Bed Bug Summit to further discuss the problem and possible solutions.
For those working in the industry there could not exist a more important equation dealing with safety. Risk = Toxicity x Exposure
Understanding this is imperative. The goal is always to minimize risk or ultimately eliminate risk if possible. As a service manager I would always try to hammer this into our technician’s mindset. Worrying about our customer’s and technician’s safety is cardinal when it comes to effective pest control maintenance. I would always advise our technicians to especially be cautious when handling pesticides. The reason is “Exposure.” Technicians are consistently exposed to pesticides if they are not wearing proper PPE. Although the chemical may be of low toxicity, because there is a high risk of exposure while applying pesticides; Risk increases:
(Low Toxicity) * (Daily Exposure) = High Risk
Always read the label, and apply pesticides with the recommended Personal Protective Equipment.
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