[gasps]
"Mice are the same as rats."
No!
Rats will eat mice.
"You can't see a bedbug with your naked eye."
Yes, you can.
"A cockroach needs its head to survive."
You know, a cockroach can survive
for up to a week without a head.
Hi, I'm Jim Skinner. I'm the owner of A&C Pest Management.
It's a third-generation pest-management company
that specializes in green approaches.
I'm also an associate certified entomologist.
I've been doing this for 35 years.
I'm Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann. I'm an entomologist,
and I'm also the coordinator of community IPM
at the New York state IPM program at Cornell.
And I've been in this job for over 20 years,
working with bedbugs and structural pests.
And today, we're going to be debunking myths about pests.
"All mosquitoes bite."
Only female mosquitoes bite.
Female mosquitoes bite humans
because they need the protein
in order to produce their eggs.
Some mosquitoes actually feed on certain leeches,
certain frogs.
There's so many different types of mosquitoes.
There's only a few mosquitoes that actually feed on humans.
So, what would I do to protect myself?
Well, at the very least, you should be wearing
long sleeves and long pants
if the weather's appropriate,
and if not, you should be wearing repellents.
"Mosquitoes keep biting you because you're sweet."
Are you sweet?
I am sweet, but they actually prefer to feed on my wife
more so than they do me.
Mosquitoes are pretty much like we are.
When we pull off a parkway, you'll see a big McDonald's,
you'll see a Burger King, you'll see pizzerias.
Whatever they're in the mood for on that particular day
is what they're going to go after.
And it probably has a lot to do
with what that person has eaten.
True. Everyone puts off a different pheromone,
and those pheromones
are everything that we've ever eaten in our lives,
all the little sicknesses we've had in our lives,
and that's what they're mostly attracted to.
Carbon dioxide and lactic acid are both
components of human breath and animal breath
that attracts mosquitoes, without a doubt.
So if you are breathing and the plume of your breath
goes in a certain direction,
mosquitoes will follow that back to you.
"Head lice jump from one person to another."
OK. Well, head lice are not jumpers the way fleas are.
Head lice can only crawl.
But head lice do transfer from person to person
when there's head-to-head contact or brushes shared,
or even hats shared in the wintertime,
or even in an elementary school
where the coats are all stored together in the wintertime.
With head lice, it's not a pest-control issue
as much as it is a health issue.
The best way to get rid of lice is to use combing.
A lice comb is a fine-toothed comb.
There's really no space between the teeth of the comb,
so when you comb it through hair,
it catches every little thing.
And so it will catch the nits.
It's designed to be small enough to catch the nits.
Just got to make sure you get real close to the scalp
when you use it.
The other treatment for lice is to warm the head,
to actually blow-dry the hair.
They're pretty delicate creatures.
We don't treat the inside of homes for lice
because their life expectancy is so short.
The life expectancy of a louse off of the body
is about 36 hours.
What you'd do in a situation like that: take the bedding,
wrap it up, put it into the dryer.
Most dryers are 140 degrees or hotter,
and they'll just kill them right then.
What's our next one? [gasps]
"Mice are the same as rats."
No!
Absolutely not.
They are definitely different animals,
and they generally don't coexist in the same places,
because rats will eat mice.
Mice are not baby rats, either.
A baby mouse has very big ears for its size,
whereas rats have very tiny ears.
Skinner: Take a look at the back foot, the back leg.
The foot's a lot longer on a rat than it is a mouse.
You take a look at a snout; a rat snout is a lot more blunt.
Gangloff-Kaufmann: Mice can carry diseases like hantavirus,
and they do in this country.
Rats can bite people and have caused deaths of babies.
What's the importance of knowing the difference?
From a pest-control standpoint,
if you want to kill your enemy, you have to know your enemy.
Am I going to use a mouse snap trap,
or am I going to use a rat snap trap?
Because if I use a mouse snap trap,
that rat could probably use it as a ski.
You've got to know the biology in order to conquer them.
"Having cats will keep mice away."
I think it really depends on the kind of cat you have,
because a big, happy, fat house cat
is not probably going to do much about mice.
What I've discovered, though,
is that a cat that is good at chasing mice
will just force the mice to hide from the cat
and be in the walls and places inaccessible to the cat.
So there probably aren't too many good arguments to be made
for having a cat to keep the mice away.
If you have a cat that was born and bred
on feeding on mice and things along those lines,
that's different, but usually those are outside cats.
I would think a rat
would put up a really good fight with a cat.
And it's not the scratching so much, but the biting.
So we do encourage people to keep their cats indoors,
and do not rely on them for mouse control.
No.
Call a professional.
"Cheese is the most effective lure for mice."
[laughing]
Gangloff-Kaufmann: No. Skinner: Not!
So, what is the most effective lure, in your opinion?
Me, I absolutely love peanut butter,
as long as there's no peanut-butter allergies
within that home or the area that I'm treating with.
Sometimes we'll use things like bacon, chocolate, oatmeal.
Sometimes they don't even go after food,
so what we'll do is put in cotton balls.
So we'll tie that right down to the trap,
and what they'll do is they'll go after the cotton ball
and try to use it for nesting material.
It depends upon the environment.
Sometimes you need to use sweets;
sometimes you need to use meats.
"A cockroach needs its head to survive."
You know, a cockroach can survive
for up to a week without a head.
Isn't that remarkable?
I don't wait that long. I just step on them.
Gangloff-Kaufmann: One of the reasons is because
a cockroach's brain is distributed through its body
in little groups of ganglia, or nerves.
But a cockroach will eventually die without its head,
because it can't do what?
Eat.
That's right. It can't eat, it can't drink,
and it will eventually run out of juice.
It'll run out of energy, it will dehydrate,
and it will starve.
Why is it important to get rid of cockroaches?
It's such a health hazard.
They're picking up every little thing
on the hair follicles of their body,
and as they do, they're walking over your food,
and they're sharing it with you.
That's No. 1.
No. 2, it's going to defecate.
And when it defecates, that fecal matter dries up.
And when that dries up, it becomes airborne,
and we get to breathe it in.
How gross is that?
But it's the reason why inner-city kids
have the highest rate of asthma.
Cockroach management in the integrated sense
is to locate their harborages, clean those places,
and then to put out baits that will then kill them,
and then to clean again.
"You can't see a bedbug with your naked eye."
Yes, you can.
Here's a full-grown bedbug, and here's a dime.
Right? So you can definitely see it.
These are adult bedbugs, glued to this dish
so we can demonstrate how big adult bedbugs are.
The adult bedbug is about the size of a lentil.
The smallest bedbug,
and they go through several stages of growth,
but the smallest, newly hatched one
is about the size of a poppy seed.
And we have poppy seeds right here.
That's how tiny baby bedbugs are.
But, unfortunately, they're about the color of the bagel.
Skinner: Same color!
Gangloff-Kaufmann: Instead of the color of the poppy seed.
"You have ants because your house isn't clean."
If you have spills and crumbs and pet food laying around,
you can find ants foraging in your house, definitely.
But, really, people get ants
because the outside environment has ants.
And ants are naturally curious foragers.
They're always looking for water or food.
You might have a clean house with no sugar
and no crumbs around, but they may still appear
looking for those things.
And it also depends upon the type of ant.
In fact, you might have carpenter ants,
well, because you have a moisture leak somewhere.
Might be a window, a doorframe, a soffit.
Gangloff-Kaufmann: The odorous house ant [Skinner groans]
will come in and nest around warm appliances
and around the boiler.
And they like moisture too,
but they really like the warmth, especially in January.
We don't recommend anything like homemade remedies
or vinegar. That's not going to kill ants.
Bleach will not kill ants. Ammonia will not kill ants.
You need a real ant bait.
And some of the ant baits we have today are so good
that they work in tiny doses.
"You can feel a tick bite when it happens."
I got to be honest with you.
I've been bit by ticks multiple times.
I've never once felt a tick bite.
In their saliva, ticks have an anesthetic.
And they also have a blood thinner,
so they can feed on you in a stealth way,
so you don't feel it,
and the blood will not coagulate when they're eating.
However, I think I'm pretty allergic
to lone star tick bites.
Really?
Yeah, I get a big welt.
How would you know if you have a tick on you?
So, the biggest thing is doing a tick inspection.
Feels like a skin tag.
Skinner: You could feel your arms, your legs,
you've got to check in between your toes, in your armpits,
even your groin area you have to check.
Gangloff-Kaufmann: If you get bitten by a tick
and it is embedded in your skin,
we recommend using fine-point tweezers,
like these. They're strong.
And to pull from the base of that tick's mouth
straight up.
And that's as close to the skin as possible
and straight up.
"All ticks will give you Lyme disease."
I'm going to answer this one.
So, we've talked about the black-legged tick,
and that is the only tick
that can transmit Lyme disease.
But it is not the only disease that is important
when it comes to tick bites and tick encounters, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Gangloff-Kaufmann: Black-legged ticks also transmit
babesiosis, anaplasmosis, and a very dangerous virus
called Powassan virus, which has a high mortality rate.
But the other ticks that we have in the United States,
they're not able to transmit Lyme disease.
The lone star tick can make you allergic to red meat
because the lone star tick has a sugar in its saliva
that is present in the tissues
of all mammals except primates.
So we can become allergic to it
because of the tick bite
and then become allergic to it in our diet.
Another myth about ticks is
if they've crawled on you, you're in danger.
That's not true. They have to bite you.
They have to feed for a period of time.
With Powassan, it's only 15 minutes,
but with most things it's more than a day,
and then you might be at risk for catching Lyme.
I've had Lyme disease. It's curable.
The fortunate thing for me was I saw the bull's-eye, right.
Not everybody gets to see the bull's-eye.
So I saw the bull's-eye,
I went to my doctor, I got tested,
they gave me some medication, and all is good.
"We swallow spiders in our sleep"?
Absolutely not.
They're not looking for you,
they're not looking for the moisture
that you have in your mouth,
they're looking for insects to feed on.
The ones you see inside
feed on the littlest things in your house,
flies and mosquitoes.
Spiders are afraid of humans.
And the reason why is we are so big.
And we're not the food that they're looking for.
So if you don't want spiders around, get rid of the insects.
Spiders aren't stupid. They go where the insects are.
"Natural oils like peppermint and spearmint
will keep bugs away."
Sorry, people, but no.
I would say that spearmint and peppermint
really aren't part of that group,
but the wintergreen and geranial,
which comes from geranium flowers, those are legitimate.
From insecticidal standpoint, essential oils,
they're good, but they don't last very long.
They're not like man-made products or synthetic products
that are designed to last for a long period of time.
But I will say peppermint and spearmint
make for a really good gum.
All right, this is my jam.
"Getting rid of flowers will keep wasps away."
Skinner: A wasp is something that's a hunter, right?
It's not a pollinator as much.
So, yeah, I'm going to say no.
The problematic wasps you'll have around a house
or in your yard are yellowjackets.
And they're not particularly crazy about flowers,
they're more interested in hunting other insects,
in particular caterpillars.
They will not be deterred if there are no flowers,
because they're still going to build their nests
in an environment like a suburban yard.
Instead of getting rid of the flowers, you know what?
Have a shorter barbecue, 'cause everyone knows,
this time of the year, around August, September,
the yellowjacket colonies have built up so big,
and they're constantly looking for food.
Ooh.
"Concrete-slab homes are termite-proof."
That is a definite
not! Gangloff-Kaufmann: Myth!
What happens is that concrete, over the years, cracks,
and that's where the termites come in.
As they come across that concrete,
they treat it just like a rock.
So they'll travel around it.
And as they travel around it,
they'll go right up into our house,
and then they're going to look for wood.
The other thing is, with a slab home,
they usually pour the foundation one day
and the slab the next day.
And there's usually what we call a little expansion joint
right where the two meet.
And that's a perfect spot for the termite
to go straight up and right into our home.
1/64th of an inch, that's all they need
to let a 1.2-million colony
just follow right up into your home.
If you have a pest problem, I wouldn't be discouraged.
There's always a way to fix it.
You know, sometimes you might need someone like myself,
a professional, to come in and help you.
Sometimes it could be educating yourself,
like Jody does at Cornell Cooperative Extension service.
And sometimes the solution is more than you expect,
but actually those things end up in long-term control.