The Rubbery Facts of People’s Perceptions

f I had ten cents for every remedy I have been told on how to “fix pests” I’d have a Ferrari, possibly two!

For some reason every third grandmother in town has a good old fashioned solution to get rid of pests.

Some of the best ones are:

• Ants: Bicarb Soda or talcum powder spread down the driveway – [I think the white powder is the key?]
• Spiders: Vinegar and water 50 / 50 sprayed onto external walls- [I’m still working this one out?]
• Termites: Just throw the damaged timbers in the fire – [only misses 99.99% of the colony who are safe in their nest down the street]
• Rats: Flour and concrete mixed together dry, and a saucer of water nearby. [I can see the theory behind this one]
• Mice: Apart from good old mouse traps [that get 50% less than the reproductive rate of the colony] Greased sticks over bins full of water with a piece of cheese as lure.

I don’t know what percentage of the mouse population the above stick over bins of water accounts for but my worry is, what do you do with all the dead mouse infused water? Call the EPA for advice?

What I do know is that I get to hear all of these fantastic stories as people are booking my services.

Usually it is the frustrated wife, having waited for her spider warrior husband [or wife] to get results and given up. Or it might be the annoyed tenant who has endured weeks or months of ant infestation while the landlord spreads various white powders around the place.
One of the latest incarnations recently is the electrical device that gets plugged into the power socket behind the couch or in the hallway. We see lots of these devices, blinking away-doing not very much it seems, as we are carrying out our treatment regimes in homes. The apt answer to the question “do these electrical gizmos work?” is, “well we see a lot of them, but why are we there”? I am happy to listen to science based advice, and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki’s advice is that rodents have the same frequency of hearing as humans and if you sat on a couch with one of these behind you trying to annoy rodents out of the house, you would hate it too. That and the evidence of the home owner calling us is fairly strong that they are not too effective.

So putting aside people’s many and varied perceptions and embracing science I can say that we will guarantee our outcomes, I will get results and I get those results quickly-and they are long lasting. That is our non-rubbery guarantee, still don’t have that Ferrari.