It’s not everyday that you get to ride a conveyor belt straight up through the ceiling with nothing but a small handle to hang onto and a tiny metal step not big enough for your entire foot but there I was going upward through the layers of this huge facility. If your new to my blog first let me say “Welcome and Thanks for reading.” You caught me in the middle of some pest control route stories and to get the full gist you’ll want to click over to part one and then a lot of this will make sense. (that is if I did my job right)
Passing through each surface of this building was like a whole new world as I ascended upwards but the employees didn’t even look twice at this oddity of two men appearing from the floor and then disappearing through the ceiling. I finally reached the top and my temporary instructor was already at the roof door waiting. With our buckets of bird bait in hand we stepped out into the biggest vista I think I have ever seen. Now I’ve been on many mountain tops and seen some beautiful views but something about the magic of riding straight up through the walls like an angel and then stepping out to a sight of tree tops as far as the eye could see and some steeples
sprinkled across the landscape gave me the feeling that I had just arrived at the Pearly Gates. I wanted to take a minute to drink it all in but my short term guide had other ideas.
On the roof were several feeding stations that we were to make sure had plenty of the Avitrol bait for our pigeon control program. It was explained that only 1 in 29 kernels of this corn were actually treated with the chemical but that was more than enough. What happens is the Avitrol would make the unlucky bird who ate it sick and the bird would take flight while in distress and his ‘call’ would warn the other birds of the dangerous roof top and they would leave the area to look for another roosting site. It must have worked 
well that day because we saw no evidence of any recent activity. He also showed me some areas that needed a product called Nixalite that was very sharp and prevented roosting (at least comfortably) on beams or ledges or wherever you attached it. I received a real quick crash course on bird control and simply found it fascinating. We made our way over to the silo tops via a covered walkway and could get to all but one. “You can jump to it if you’re game” he said pointing to the 3 or 4 foot gap that led straight down to certain death. Not much of a jump whatsoever but he had never done it and so I also politely passed as well even though we could see pigeon droppings on the silo roof. (make sure to check back to see if I ever made that jump)
It was time to head back down and finally this heavy bucket that I had to lug around was nearly empty which made my conveyor belt ride much easier. I thought we were finished for the day as we headed to the truck and I was thrilled with my new account. I’ve stated many times that pest control is a great job because no two accounts are alike and there is always something new to see. However my
route at the time mainly consisted of row homes and quite often I’d do 10 or more on one street alone so it could be monotonous at times as well. This job would be the perfect adventure to spice things up and I looked forward to each and every service.
As it turned out there was more to do as we filled the empty buckets with snap traps and headed back towards this behemoth building and I was wondering just what we’d be getting into next.
