The Foxy Guide to Extermination

I used to be an exterminator. A very good exterminator. I could have been on Dirty jobs with Mike Rowe and KILLED IT! It is a very difficult, dirty, thankless, disgusting, dangerous job that I am very grateful I no longer have to get up every morning and do.  But you don't want to hear that you want to hear the dirt, the gross, the real crap that goes into the story, that makes it rich and vibrant, and makes you gag a little....just remember I warned you before you read this.  This is not for the faint of heart, stomach or mind.

First of all let me just state that being an exterminator is indeed a job, just because I'm a girl didn't mean that I was showing up to look cute with my tank of poison, ladders, and various other poisonous accouterments.  I was there to work. And I did indeed. For some reason, though, men seemed to think I was there to lure them under their homes so that they could seduce me, or manhandle me or worse. A 6 cell maglight tended to stop those thoughts in their tracks. Creepers.

And, because I was also a certified inspector, when I went on those calls and had to suffer through countless homeowners acting as if I couldn't possibly know what I was doing because I was a woman, I felt I had something to prove. See, when you are a woman, people assume you can't do a 'man's' job, and when you are a small, relatively attractive woman, people deem it impossible. I even had one lady flat out refuse to believe that I had found termites at her home, and when I came back to her with a handful that I pulled out from beside her home, she told me I had pulled them from my pocket. Really? You got me! I keep 'em in there all the time, just to fool crazy *Bravos* like you!

I had to crawl around on dead mice and rats underneath peoples homes, took down hornets nests out of trees, battled black widows, brown recluses, and multitudinous other spiders, meanwhile maintaining a professional calm. Faked of course. I removed snakes, living and dead, because people are terrified of snakes, even if they are already trapped and dead, people won't go near them. Even the other exterminators wouldn't take the calls, I had to do them and make the guys look like the pansy ass little bitches that they were.

Raccoons in attics? Squirrels? No problem. I even treated a church out in the middle of nowhere that honestly had bats in the bellfry. No lie.... Bats. In. The. Bellfry. Bats are cool as hell! At night, when they swoop down, and you throw a piece of bread up for them, and they catch it! That's cool! During, the day, when they are sleeping, and you disturb them and hundreds of beady eyes swing around at you? Not so much.

The worst though.. The gross crap I warned you about in the beginning, that you have been cringing for... Roaches.. Roaches are the foulest, most disgusting creature on Earth. What's worse? The people whose homes we treated who had the worst roach problems. I'm not talking about a small roach problem. everyone may have had a little roach problem at one time or another. Maybe it came from  a neighbor or the grocery store, maybe someone visited and left the little mothers behind as a parting gift.

No, I'm talking ROACHES.... Thousands of roaches, so many that it sounded like it was raining inside of the worst house that we were trying to treat. So many roaches that every surface of the home was covered in a thin greasy black film. Do you know what that film was? Roach feces, greasy food debris, smoke,  and we never did figure out what else. There was rustling in the corners under piles of trash and clothes that we didn't have the guts to investigate. We assumed they were rats, and left lock traps heavily loaded with poison inside. We flushed behind every thing we could reach with air cans and watched as hundreds of more roaches came pouring out. And we sprayed more poison with our cans. Those giant metal pump cans.. We refilled twice. There were areas in the home, we didn't even dare to go in, or we were just too scared to disturb because we didn't know what would come out of there. Roaches were on the ceiling, hence the raining sound, they were falling off and hitting the ground to scurry back to their hidey holes. They were in the cabinets, the drawers.. the phone....In the phone....Just ewww.

Finally.. We bombed. We had to explain very carefully, and repeatedly to the homeowners that they had to evacuate the property so that we could bomb, then they all stood on the lawn with us and watched slackjawed as we threw the bombs in the front door and slammed it shut. Then.. we joined them in utter slackjawed amazement as we all watched thousands of cockroaches come out in waves from under the crack of the door and scurry up the front of it. I still maintain that they had bred for so long in there that they had advanced in their thinking and civilization.

My partner that day was a really nice guy, but one whom I had only known a total of three days. Usually you do all of your jobs alone, but our boss had been told in advance that this was a really nasty job, and so she sent both of us. We wasted no time getting the hell out of there once we saw the roaches escape. Then drove a few blocks up the street, parked in front of a closed store in a strip mall, jumped out of the truck, stripped in broad daylight and checked each other for bugs. Not caring at all that we were buck ass naked in front of each other, and the whole world. Then got dressed and drove back to our office and flat out refused to ever go back there again.

I've seen other nasty stuff, too. But NOTHING prepared me for that house! Roaches will eat anything. 50 can live off of one small smear of grease for a month. They will eat hair. They carry polio. Imagine thousands! That's some sick stuff. I know what you are thinking.. What the foxtrotting foxtrot Kelly?!! You're scared of them now, too, huh? Good. Welcome to my world. Pull up a comfy chair!
Wanna know how to get rid of them if you ever get them? Call a professional immediately when you see the first one. Not, a cheap fly by service to save a buck either. A Pro. One that will use a baiting gel system AND spray. Then don't let them say "OH! It's safe!" No. It's not. It's poison. Don't be stupid. Exterminators use poison that work as toxic nerve agents, dessicants, and various other ways to cause bugs to croak on contact. It's poison. Go away for the day, come home, and air your home out.

Ants though? Ants are easy, they hate cinnamon. Spray some cinnamon spray, and they'll leave. Easy, cheap, and no poison. Mice? Cotton balls or chocolate in the trap. Feel the trap isn't humane? Get a humane trap, and still put the cotton balls and chocolate in there. They can't resist it. They want to nest with the cotton, and LUURV the chocolate. Snakes hate moth balls, throw some around the house, or under the crawl space, etc. You can spray ammonia in the attic to keep small animals out of there.

Look how freaking helpful I am! I don't see Mike Rowe's butt tossing out helful hints!