I’ve never been accused of having a bland imagination. No ones ever said my conclusions or correlations were so obvious that they could see them coming from a mile away. I’m not sure if that’s a real good thing or not but one thing I can say, that at least when it comes to pest control, it seems the mind pictures I conjure up are things most folks agree with – well at least thats what I figure they mean when they don’t ask me to repeat myself. hmmmm.
This ‘revelation’ sorta surfaced in my mind recently when I was, shall we say?, verbally accosted by a woman who saw me treating a home. I guess she had some basic knowledge of different kinds of pest control because she flat out told me that since I wasn’t baiting or using natural sprays, I was poisoning her and everyone in the house. Now this wasn’t my customer, just a guest at a home where I was called out for service so all I could do was smile and continue my work. She didn’t let up of course but eventually went outside where I guess, I could no longer take years off her life with my sprays of death. (probably for a cigarette) This woman and really, anyone in life who wishes to be so ignorant and hostile is barely worth my time but I couldn’t help but chuckle and have what the home owner said was a big Ol ‘sh*% eating grin’ on my face as I handed her the bill and she asked me why?
Affected Early In Life I Guess
She had watched as her house guest berated me and tried to step in but neither of us could get much of anything said and besides, she said I made a lot of sense so if the lady wouldn’t listen to me, what was she going to listen to? I told her the way she attacked me reminded me of a day some 40 years ago in elementary school where a buddy and I were having a, eh-hm, contest in the bathroom. We were trying to see who could step the farthest away from the urinal and still hit our target and that’s when the principle came around the corner. Boy was he mad and you never saw two kids waddle faster to get back up to the wall. You’d of thought that we had started WWII the way this guy got so angry. Our mom’s were called down, reports were written and in the end a big ta do, all over a little pin stream. (anybody need me to repeat anything?;)
Is It All Out Poisoning?
Look, I’m only gonna tackle one side of this issue since it seems to be the one thing that triggers this type of reaction. For over a hundred years I’d say the hand pump sprayer has been the face of the pest control industry. No one ever mistakes it for some other kind of tool and besides maybe your truck itself, nothing else conjures up such heinous visions of death, deformity, disease and the dismantling of mother earth quite like it. I mean, for a one gallon sprayer, that thing is pretty powerful wouldn’t you say?
Now I know in the old days it may have taken a whole ounce or more mixed with a gallon of water to have a mix ready to spray. Yea, a whole ounce. Don’t get me wrong I realize these were a different class of chemicals and according to some, these set our world on a irreversible path of destruction. Such destruction has never come and now most credit pest control at least in part for our non 3rd world status but I digress. But have you ever stopped to think that not even this WHOLE OUNCE, that we mixed with water would ever go into just one home? Shoot, on my route we treat almost all of our homes with hand pump sprays and there are days when I might only use 1/2 of a tank full on 10 to 15 homes. Is that scorched earth? And now in this, the most modern days of pest control- (approx; 20 years past those ancient Neanderthal times) it no longer takes even that full ounce to fill up your sprayer of doom. Most concentrates are down to 6 ml (that’s milliliters) or less- still in that 1 gallon of water. To boot, most actually target only the intended pest and its biology which a human does not even remotely share. ( I will say that lady who attacked did seem to have an exoskeleton though) So again, what crazy carnage have I wrought today? How many children must die before someone stops me from indiscriminately hosing down this planet with untold amounts of vicious, nonselective man made chemicals?
Even Bickering Amongst Ourselves
I don’t know if you’re political at all but it seems to me that our politicians are somewhat cannibalistic of late and mostly, it’s the Republican party. Those guy’s/gals will throw members of their own party under the bus if it furthers their cause even just for that day. This so reminds me of the pest control industry because rather than having a colleague who is strictly green tout the virtues of pest control and the great strides we’ve made. Most (I said “MOST-not all”) call into question the use of liquid sprays from a hand held sprayer. Is there something in that 6 ml’s that I’m missing? Does it leach out of that crack or crevice in the night only to cause harm to humans without me being the wiser?
I don’t know & I’ve probably said enough. But long gone are the days when I’m gonna feel ashamed for using a hand held pump sprayer. No longer will I let someone associate my choice of a perfectly good and accepted tool with some evil 
rendering of a barbaric technique. When you compare exposures, applications, amounts, costs, versatility, risks and over all safety- the hand pump sprayer is everything any green product is and probably more. So I’ll continue using pin stream pest control and I trust my approach won’t leave you seeing red.
