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Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Travis McGowin
Hey, so today we want to come and talk to you about I would, I would definitely say one homeowners biggest fear something that they don’t want inside their house, they don’t want to share their space with it, these little insects don’t pay rent, so they definitely don’t want them. They’re German cockroaches.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, German cockroaches are probably the hardest thing to get rid of. For a homeowner, they always try to do it themselves. And I mean, there’s just no good way to do it yourself. It’s just not, I personally have not seen it possible to do it yourself, you really do need a professional take care of it.
Travis McGowin
So one of the issues with with the German roaches, especially when it comes to the DIY person, and don’t get me wrong, it can be done DIY. But so let’s just say you go to the store, you go to the grocery store, you go to the hardware store, you go to the pest control products aisle where they’re, you know, they’ve got the shelves full of stuff. And you know, on the labels, cockroach killer, wasp killer, you know, killer, they’ve got all these things, and they’re all supposed to be targeted and specific for each pest that they kill. But I always tell my customers this, just because something says it kills a cockroach on the label or on the on the packaging or whatever. Just because it says it can kill them doesn’t mean that it actually should be used to kill the roaches.
Michael Wienecke
But it lasts up to a year.
Travis McGowin
That’s the best line. It’s tested. That’s the best line that I’ve seen here lately is lasts up to an entire year. And I’m like, Man, even the good products we use are three months, you know? So anyway,
Michael Wienecke
German cockroaches, but termites, mosquitoes, rats, mice,
Travis McGowin
and more. You know, crazy family members, you know, or whatever the case may be. So but yeah, so in particular. You know, we’ve we’ve had a rise of German roaches. And the funny thing about German roaches to me, is that they don’t really target a certain group of people now, yes, I mean, you can be more susceptible to get them if you have lower standards of cleanliness than say, you know somebody else. But I mean, Michael, give me an example. Just how easy is it to bring a German Roach into your house?
Michael Wienecke
It’s easier than you would think. We have seen, you know, I would say $50,000 homes, we’ve seen millions of dollars of home, million dollar homes, with German roaches, they they really do not discriminate. It’s all in the lucky person that gets to bring them home. One of the main ways that we see that they are brought home is use furniture. That’s a big one used appliances use furniture a lot of times coming from frigerators. I’ve seen him from a dishwasher, microwave couches, you know all that. So that’s our first thing when we always talk to a customer is when did it start? Did you bring anything new or used into the home? And then it started shortly after? And that kind of gives us a better identification? First of all, how long it’s been going on? And second of all, what is the cause of this problem?
Travis McGowin
Now definitely. And you know, a lot of times, whenever I do an initial inspection on for German roaches, the very first place that I’ll look is behind the fridge behind the freezer. And then of course, in my line of questioning to the customer’s always, you know, have you guys gotten any new appliances? Anything like that? You know, especially recently because that tends to always be a primary culprit.
Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah. I mean, we had a customer one time, you know, million million plus house, beautiful fridge, it was one of those that have the trim work all the way around, it’s, you know, into the wall, it just looks nice and full of German cockroaches. So they definitely weren’t happy about that. We ended up getting rid of it, of course, but just having to deal with that after you know, spending that kind of money on a brand new fridge is definitely not fun.
Travis McGowin
Definitely not. So, you know, I have stepped into some very, you know, I would even say horrifying, unbelievable houses in terms of having a very significant level of infestation. And I’ve actually got some photographs, you know, for people to see, this house in particular was probably I would have to say the very worst one that I have ever been in. When I first spoke to the customer on the phone, they advised me that they were localized to just the kitchen, and I walked into the house and immediately walked through the front door and I said, you know they’re they’re in every room. You just walked in and you knew it.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah. And I’ll say to you know, the biggest thing is, is just being honest with with the tech addition and saying, Hey, we’ve been going on this for a year, we’ve been treating ourselves that’s going to help us and help us, you know, solve your problem faster. Because if you tell us it’s just in the kitchen, that might may be the only place that gets treated. We may have not seen any in the bedroom or anything like that. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there. They’re extremely good at hiding, and you’ll see this in video we have that they can fit into very tight cracks.
Travis McGowin
Well take a look at this picture. There was no doubt they were in the kitchen.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, that’s a I mean, I would just by looking at that, that is a huge infestation. Right there. What Yeah, I’d say 300 Plus.
Travis McGowin
Oh, so So here’s the kicker about this house is notice the ceiling, that’s a drop ceiling. So there’s a void space above it. And you know, if you have a infestation, and keep in mind as well, that this is during daylight hours, this is not at night, it’s not like I just walked in there in the evening time and turn the lights on. This is broad daylight, if you have a level of invisible infestation in your house, that is this visible in broad daylight, you have a serious problem. More than just the roaches, you have serious health concerns and serious issues that need to be addressed. Yeah,
Michael Wienecke
I mean, their feces are going to cause asthma issues. And that’s another line of questioning we asked always asked them, How many are you seeing in the daytime compared to at nighttime because they are more active at night. So if you’re seeing, you know, two or three in the daytime, not a huge infestation, obviously, 300,000 Plus, you’re seeing in the daytime? Well, there
Travis McGowin
were 1000s plural. But just to kind of give you a tour of of this, of some of the spots that are dealt with in this house. So this was just Kitchen Kitchen Cabinets. And you notice there’s a course of cleanliness issue there as well. But you know, I don’t recall exactly how long they said this infestation had been going on. But as you can see, I mean, they’re all around the cabinets. And if you look right up underneath the countertop area, there’s I mean, there’s all kinds of feces and things from them to where they’ve just, you know, hung out up underneath that crack and crevice. I mean, even in just doorframes this was and this wasn’t just one doorframe, every doorframe in the house had roaches in the corners, you can see they’re all just piled there together. And this is I mean, it’s the worst that I’ve ever been in.
Michael Wienecke
And another thing you can tell by a really bad infestation is if you want to go back to that picture real quick. As you can see the different stages of life. They’re all kind of hanging out together.
Travis McGowin
So in this particular house, we had roaches, in the very early nymph stages, we had roaches running around with egg sack still attached to them, I mean anything and everything in between. And you know, speaking of the, the egg sacks I mean, there was one cabinet in particular that was completely full of execs all of those spots, those those little rounds, you know, spots in the in the cabinet right there on the cabinet surface are all hatched egg sacks. And, you know, each egg sack from one German cockroach can hold relatively, you know, 30 plus baby cockroaches in it. So if you multiply all those execs, you can just kind of get a mental idea of how bad the infestation was in this house. And that wasn’t even all the execs that was one cabinet
Michael Wienecke
well and that’s another thing too with German roaches they make they’re very hard to kill their greater survival because they will actually carry the egg sack up to hatching so they you know were your other roaches American smokey Brown, they will stick it onto something and it’s kind of survival of the fittest where these guys can can kind of time where they want that that their offspring to to be so just something to think about and like he said 1000s One female can create 1000s of babies in a year.
Travis McGowin
Yeah and so then the other thing too is it’s really bad when you walk in and you see this yes, this is obvious areas where roaches have have been and kind of hung out. Yeah, I don’t know if at some point I would assume that the homeowner had maybe a refrigerator or something like that in that corner at one point and you can see at the bottom there was a deep freezer there but there was obvious signs that there had been an infestation just kind of you know hanging out in that area at some point and the you know, and something had been moved or whatnot. But I mean they don’t just get into your kitchen. They don’t just get into your cabinets. You know this house had roaches in the furniture and all the electronics. The cable boxes, the TVs I mean there were roaches everywhere. I mean they got even into the laundry as you can see. You know they were literally crawling around on laundry baskets into your food. As you can see, this was a bowl of cereal that had been left on the table and I I don’t know how long it had been there. But I mean, you know, I’ve even heard customers complain of say, I can’t even leave something out on the cabinet or out on the counter for just a couple minutes. And there’s roaches in it. So definitely, yeah, exactly, exactly. And just definitely a problem. So so what we ended up doing with this house, after I walked in, I told the customer that we we did need to do a knock down on this house, we needed to try to get a grip on some of the population before we really started doing our standardized treatment. So they they allowed me to do that with a UL V. Fogg. And let me just show you the aftermath of the UNLV fog. So this was what I saw when I first walked up into the house. This was right through the front doors, you can see there’s, there’s dead roaches all over the floor. You know, going back into into every room of the house, they were just I mean, they were just dead roaches everywhere.
Michael Wienecke
Think I saw smokey brown in there? Yes,
Travis McGowin
yes, there actually was a couple of running around, he got unlucky he was he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you can see I mean, there were there were just roaches of all different sizes, just dead everywhere. All across the house from from where they had fallen from the ceiling, they come out of the cabinets. It was just a very, very bad situation. And I really hate to see anybody that gets, you know, that lives in a place where this level of infestation is gone for for this long. I mean, you know, I mean, you can just see there, there were 1000s and 1000s and 1000s. And I hate to report that the customer, we were able to treat two or three times and then they never would contact us back or get a hold of us again to continue. So you know, I’m sure that they’re, I’m sure that the level of infestation was better. But unfortunately, without allowing us to continue to treat. I really feel like most likely it read it probably rebounded back. And they’re probably back into a very similar situation that they were in, you know, before we got started.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah. And that’s like what Travis said, that’s very important to let us finish or whoever’s trading, let them finish the service. Because I have I had one a couple of years ago, just like that it took me a year and a few months to get it under control. She is still a customer. She does our quarterly program, but she has not seen a German Roach for almost two years now. And she we found out that she was bringing them from grocery bags, she got well not bags, the boxes. So she was getting the boxes from the grocery store and transport her food. And they were coming in through that. So she just she was getting rid of them. And then they were coming right back. And she didn’t figure out why. So once we figured out the problem, we stopped that that eliminated them getting back in the house, and she hadn’t had an issue since.
Travis McGowin
Yeah, and you know, the other thing too is people underestimate it, like a lot of people see. Face value. So the only only things they can see with their eyes. But I mean, these roaches can get into places that that we can’t physically get to cracks, crevices like I was saying in that other you know in that photo that I was showing at the beginning, the drop ceilings, wall voids, areas behind your your appliances, areas behind your cabinets. So and this is an example of that right here. This was inside of one of the closets, I believe it was the pantry and you see that the wood is kind of split. And I mean, there’s just hundreds of roaches that have made their home. And that’s in the customer’s pantry around the doorframe. You can see there’s all kinds of different life stages that were inside that doorframe. And I mean, they were just literally crawling everywhere. And Michael, you brought us some video footage to kind of demonstrate that as well. And also to show one of the roaches consuming some of the bait product that we use. So I’m gonna play that real quick for us.
Michael Wienecke
To see how quickly they can fit in a crack that I could barely fit, you know, my fingernail under. So just any type crack crevice there, they’re gonna be able to get into. And that’s why it’s so important to get into those cracks and crevices, especially with any kind of fog, any kind of bait, anything like that. You
Travis McGowin
know, and the biggest takeaway from this that I think I have for anybody who’s who’s watching and listening. You may not think that you have that big of a problem. And it may not be that big of a problem. Until all of a sudden one day it is and I think that that’s where a lot of our customers a lot of our phone calls come from is that people don’t understand the level of how bad the problem can be hidden up until it cannot hide any longer and I’m not saying that tomorrow, or a week from now that your problem is going to be as big because you know, the ones that we just showed in these photos and video. But if left to its own devices long enough, unfortunately, it can be that bad. You know, my customer even said, Hey, would you mind treating behind the headboard, because they like to go back there and then they crawl on me at night. So, I mean, something like that is a health hazard. You know, these roaches, they contaminate your food product, they contaminate your surfaces, your your utensils, your they contaminate your air in your house, I mean, you know, they can cause respiratory problems. You know, asthma, if you didn’t have a problem, you either develop one or any kind of health problem that you have, it can kind of exacerbate it and make it worse. So these are definitely insects that you don’t want to share your space with.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, 100% I mean, and you know, like we said, it’s normally we try to help anybody do it themselves, if they so want to this is just not one of those one of those things that you can do yourself. You know, it’s I look at it like roof and a house. I don’t know anything about roof and a house. So I would never tried to found out. But German roaches, it’s a whole nother animal. And it can turn into, you know, like these pictures. I mean, it just, it’s it’s sad. And it doesn’t need to be that
Travis McGowin
way. Well, and I think a lot of people think that when they go to buy the over the counter products from the hardware store, the grocery store, that they’re doing some good and you know, I always tell my customers, yes, you’re going to see dead insects, you’re going to see dead roaches, especially if you spray and contact them with them, it’s going to do its job, it’s going to kill them. The only problem is, is that most of what people buy over the counter, ends up moving or relocating the roaches into a different room of their house. And that’s another question that I always like to ask my customers. I have another customer who I’ve been servicing now for a little while. And I said, How many cut how many companies have you had before us? And they said, I think it was like two or three? And I said How long have you had the problem? And they said, probably about a year and a half, two years now we’ve been fighting and dealing with them. And my next question, and I already knew the answer. But I had to ask anyway, as I said, after the other companies left, was the problem better? Or did it get worse? And they answered like I thought they said the problem actually got worse. I said, Did it move from your kitchen to your laundry room and your bedroom and your bed? And they said yes. So, you know, I’m not gonna say that every professional is trained in that every professional that works for a company out there, you know, has pinpointed exactly the right method to do it. I just know that I have never seen a problem get worse after we’ve taken over with the method that we use. And that that exact customer I was referring to told me after I’d come back for believe it was the second actual official treatment. And they told me, I don’t know what you did. But nothing’s ever been this good. Like it’s actually gotten better. And that’s just because that that with products they used or with products from other companies that other companies used, they ended up just pushing them around the house.
Michael Wienecke
Well, and I’ll say this, I had a customer about a month ago call us when they’re, you know, did the inspection found out Sherman roaches. Always ask for a list. Like if they’ve had a company come in, I want to see what they’ve been treating with because unfortunately nine times out of 10 it’s the wrong product. It’s the wrong combination. You know, we’ve done a lot of work to build our program or German Roach program to solve the problem. And they were using the same products we use, they bought the same products online. They just weren’t using it right. It’s, you know, having the tool and not know how to use the tool is not going to it’s not going to solve the problem.
Travis McGowin
Definitely application is is a huge part of it. So not just knowing what to get but definitely knowing how to use it. 100%
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
