At war with gooey rats and invading ants
‘‘One of the dirtiest jobs I’ve come across is what I call the gooey rat.’’
There doesn’t seem to be much Shane Warland hasn’t tackled when it comes to pests, but some jobs still make his stomach turn.
‘‘The gooey rat is something that’s been dead in your ceiling for two to three weeks,’’ Warland said.
‘‘It’s decomposing, it’s stinking, and you’ve got to get up in the ceiling, and follow your nose.’’
Warland said he tackled those jobs in the morning and made sure he didn’t have breakfast.
‘‘Because you could throw it up all over the ceiling. The stink is... well. And there could be maggots...’’
But between rodents, cockroaches, spiders, and wasps, Warland is clear on who his nemesis is.
‘‘He’s my number one enemy, is the Argentine ant,’’ he said.
‘‘He’s aggressive for a start. He’s a biter, and just the sheer numbers [of them].’’
Warland said he tackled Argentine ants with a combination of baiting and spraying.
‘‘I’ve been to old folks homes where they’re sitting back half asleep and dribbling, and the ants will [crawl up the saliva] to the corner of their mouths.’’
He said he’d also treated a home in The Wood where a woman had to shake our her underwear each morning because the ants had gone all through her drawers.
‘‘...Talk about ants in your pants.’’
He said Argentine ants were out of control in Nelson and were so aggressive they’d even take baby birds out of nests.
‘‘It’s on the world’s top 100 pest list, is the Argentine ant, and we’ve got heaps of them. It’s just getting worse and worse.’’
Warland has owned the FlyBusters business for six years and said it was customer satisfaction that kept him going.
‘‘I’m fighting the good fight on pest control, is what it is, because people don’t know how to deal with it,’’ he said.
He said he’d removed as many as 200 wasp nests in the past two weeks and found wasps the most dangerous pest to deal with.
But it was ants that caused the most problems.
‘‘I came across an old lady [who’d] woken up in the middle of the night and Argentine ants had moved in and they were all through her hair and down her arms and in her ears and she rang me and was hysterical, as you would be… you don’t need that at 80.
‘‘But we went and sorted that out for her,’’ Warland said.
He said he also tried to educate people about how to manage critter problems, especially with ants which were a year-round problem.
‘‘The worst thing people do is use fly spray, they see a line of ants and spray it, ‘‘ he said.
‘‘Word gets back to the queen they’re under attack and what she’ll do is split her nest [into two]...Then they breed like crazy...’’
Warland said the ants often just ‘‘moved in’’ to a house. ‘‘Ants don’t care if you’re rich or poor,’’ he said.
‘‘They will hunt around, find some food, and leave a pheromone there, a smell, which makes a trail and say ‘c’mon boys I’ve found a party’.’’ Don’t put ant bait inside your home - put it outside to draw them out of your home
Seek advice on good bait, not all baits work the same and not all ants are drawn to the same bait
Bay leaves in your pantry will help keep moths away
Don’t spray trails of ants with fly spray, you’ll only cause them to breed more
Keep compost bins away from your house