by Richard "Bugman" Fagerlund
Daily Lobo Columnist
Pest management on campus is much different now than the way we controlled pests when I started in the business in Florida more than 30 years ago. In those days we relied almost exclusively on pesticides and various chemicals to control pests.
We had a routine we performed in every house no matter what kind of pest they had. If they had roaches, ants, mice, spiders or silverfish, the treatment was the same -- hose the house down with pesticides. We would make the new customer empty her kitchen cabinets and put the dishes and food on a table, covered with a sheet. First we sprayed all of the kitchen cabinets with chlordane or Dursban.
Then we switched to Malathion and sprayed the baseboards. Malathion had a particularly evil smell and we wanted the customer to know we were using the real stuff -- perceived value. After spraying the baseboards, we would dust the attic with DDT dust. We did this by placing a duster in the attic opening, which was usually in a bedroom closet. We knew the attic was full of dust when it started backing out the opening. Finally we fogged the whole house with a mixture of pyrethrum and deodorized kerosene. We asked the people to stay out of the house for at least four hours. However, upon reflection, we probably should have asked them to stay out for a couple of years!
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People rarely called us back for a retreatment. I assume they were afraid we would show up.
One time I stopped by the office to grab a fogger on the way to a job. I neglected to check the contents. When I started fogging the kitchen, a pink mist came out. I knew right away that something was wrong.
Apparently someone had filled the fogger with toxaphene and a sticker to kill caterpillars on a bush. It worked on the roaches as well.
They came out of the cabinets and stuck to the counter top. The lady thought this was the way it was supposed to work, so she was happily scraping roaches off the counter with a chisel when I left.
We didn't use simple mousetraps like we do today. We used some very insidious pesticides, including cyanide for rodent control. On one occasion we were called out to a shopping center to treat the rat holes along the back of a supermarket. We pumped the holes full of cyanide and then plugged them. That early in my career I wasn't aware that rats usually have two openings to their burrows. While we were pumping cyanide into the holes along the back of the store, the rats were coming out the holes along the front of the store and running throughout the parking lot.
We started hearing screams and went around front to see men running around pushing shopping carts, women standing on top of cars and children laughing gleefully. We left when we heard the sirens.
We don't use those methods or materials anymore (thank goodness). We use a process called Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which is a method of controlling pests with a minimum use of pesticides. I rarely use liquid or aerosol pesticides on campus. I almost exclusively control roaches and ants on campus by using only baits, and in the case of roaches, the bait is made from boric acid. Mice are trapped in curiosity traps and released off campus. Occasionally I use snap traps but we never use glue boards and rarely use rodenticides. Catching mice in glue boards is inhumane and in my opinion pest control doesn't have to be barbaric in order to be effective. Rodenticides are only used in areas where trapping is impossible. The reason we don't use rodenticides is that mice often die in inaccessible places where they can create an odor problem.
If I have to use liquid pesticides, I will only use them when the building is empty, or if I use them in the dorms, I will only apply them between semesters. Pesticides, in my opinion, are far more dangerous than any bugs we have on campus and I don't like exposing anyone to them.
Manufacturers will tell you their pesticides are safe, as will some of the people in the pest control industry. That is not necessarily true. Pesticides are by their very nature designed to kill. The suffix -cide, means kill. Homicide, suicide, genocide and pesticide all have one thing in common -- death. The term "safe pesticide" is an oxymoron. They can be used safely, but they are not safe. I only use them as a last resort.
My responsibility is to keep the campus as pest free as possible, without endangering the campus community and I take that responsibility very seriously. If anyone has any bug questions or concerns you can contact me at fagerlun@unm.edu, call me at 440-6384 or visit my Web site at www.askthebugman.com.
