National Pest Management Month
Every April, National Pest Management Month honors the men and women of pest control who work tirelessly to bring peace of mind to homeowners and business owners alike. But this year, rather than thinking about all the ways pest control professionals help keep our residential and commercial spaces safe and clean, imagine instead a world in which pest control didn’t exist – at all.
A World Without Pest Control
Imagine this: Every day you wake up and check for bed bugs, terrified of finding even one of the small, oval-shaped wingless insects, because even one bug indicates that an infestation has started; and without pest control, you’ll have to find another home to live in – and new furniture to fill it with. Without heat or liquid treatments, or any way to trap them, before long they’ll spread to every mattress, pillow and cushion, every tablecloth and drape, reaching every square foot of your home.
But if bed bugs are a bad dream, finding a cockroach is a complete nightmare. Not only are they creepier than bed bugs, they spread bacteria and trigger asthma and allergy attacks. Just one cockroach can produce 300-400 offspring, so before long your home becomes a literal roach motel. Unfortunately, there’s no one to call to come take care of your roach problem, so once again you have no choice but to relocate.
Let’s say everything is safe and sound on the home front, so you head to work. As soon as you walk through the door, you start scanning the office floor for mice. No one worries about cleaning up crumbs and spills in the breakroom in a world without pest control, which is a shame. Because once the mice discover the feast awaiting them in the almost-empty donut box that's been sitting out since the day before, there are no traps to set to eliminate them.
Your last company had a rodent problem, but they let it get way out of hand, and several coworkers came down with hantavirus. Thankfully they survived, but the settlement they won against the company bankrupted the business.
On the way home from work you stop at the optometrist and pick up your prescription lenses. Spring is coming on quickly and you don’t want to deal with the anxiety of not being able to tell the difference between citronella ants, carpenter ants and termites. All of them are bad, but at least citronella ants won’t destroy all your wooden structures like carpenter ants and termites will – seemingly overnight, too .
It’s a mild evening, so you grab a drink and head out to the backyard with your family. You look over across the line of hedges at your neighbor’s backyard and shake your head. It was a shame how they couldn’t enjoy last year’s great weather after wasps had settled in above their shed.
Later, you head up to bed, checking once again to make sure you don’t have any bed bugs before crawling under the sheets. You fall asleep and dream of a world where there are people you can call to take care of pest problems, people with real and proven solutions, allowing you to live and work and play without the constant fear of another infestation.
A Dream Delivered
Thanks to the work of the pest control industry’s fearless professionals and the dedicated scientists who study pests in order to develop effective treatments to prevent and eliminate them, that dream is our daily reality.
While too many of us tend to take these efforts for granted, this month serves as an important reminder of the gratitude we should feel each and every day, and the sincere thanks owed to the men and women of the pest control industry.
A special shout-out to the pioneers that made it possible for us to be celebrating our 95th National Pest Management Month this year! Learn more about JP Pest Services’ history here.
