September 15, 2020
With winter approaching, you may wonder if or how pests survive the months of brutal cold and food shortage ahead. Insects and rodents have a variety of strategies for coping with the seasons, but because they have fundamentally different physiology, those strategies are quite different. Collectively, rodents have two options for surviving the winter; hibernate […]
August 15, 2020
Springtails have been very abundant this year, with a multitude of calls coming in on springtail infestations. So what are these bizarre little arthropods, what do they do, and what can we do to manage them? First off, let’s highlight the unusual classification of the springtails. Despite having six legs and an exoskeleton, they are […]
October 24, 2019
Recent research has shown that rats are smart enough to learn to operate specially-constructed rat cars. Not only do they learn to drive, but they seem to relieve stress as they learn. But before we bow down to our new automobile-driving rat overlords, we should also acknowledge that other new research shows that monkeys can […]
March 19, 2019
According to a video circulating on social media, New York City is implementing a program that hopes to use feral cats to manage the city’s rodent population. The program will involve capturing the cats, spaying or neutering them, and adopting them out to property owners to keep on their property to deter rodents. The property owners […]
February 19, 2019
With the brutally cold temperatures brought by the polar vortex, it can be hard to imagine how insects could survive until spring. They have tiny bodies without thick insulating coats of fur, feathers, or blubber, so how can they survive the freezing months? And how will the extreme cold brought by this year’s polar vortex […]
August 3, 2018
This week, I got two calls inquiring about wasps. The similarities in the calls were remarkable; in both cases, heavy wasp activity was noted in playgrounds with sand ground covers. The wasps had a very direct flight path, with only a couple seconds’ pause between landing and crawling down a tunnel or leaving a tunnel […]
