Exterminators swarmed in pandemic
Ants in the kitchen, roaches in the bathroom, spiders in the garage, bats in the, well, attic.
Houstonians are reporting seeing more pests than ever, and exterminators are (grim) reaping the benefits. The uptick in business comes as many expected the pandemic to hurt business.
Like most bosses, BUG-CO manager Jeff Murrell feared he’d have to lay people off when the pandemic hit. Things turned out differently. He’s hired 15 new employees at the Richmond business to meet soaring demand for services: calls for residential treatments are up about 30 percent over last year.
“The growth has been absolutely incredible,” he said.
To be sure, other homerelated vendors have seen business improve during the pandemic as people stuck at home are able to act on all the projects that kept getting postponed. Home Depot reported that sales for the quarter ended Aug. 2 reached $38 billion, up 23 percent from the same period a year ago, and competitor Lowe’s saw sales hit $27.3 billion for its quarter ended July 31, up from 21 billion the year earlier.
The same motivations may be driving business to exterminators. While they are pleased with the swarm of customers, those in the bug business say the calls don’t have anything to do with the changes in pests’ behavior — it has to do with our behavior.
Bugs that went unnoticed while homeowners were out and about are now recognized as unwelcome house guests as people spend more time at
home during the pandemic.
“It’s not that there’s more bugs,” Murrell said. “People are just seeing them more because they’re home more.”
And because people are home more, they’re making more messes that attract insects, said Adrian Lopez, owner of Royal Pest Control.
“You got kids staying home, eating more at home, dropping chips. And of course it brings more insects into their homes,” Lopez said, noting he, too, has seen an uptick in business this summer.
One of his recent customers, Patricia Accavallo, said it’s been years since she’d last called an exterminator. An elementary school teacher, she said it had been difficult before the pandemic to leave work to let a technician in. And she wasn’t home as much to notice the spiders on her property.
Now, she’s home and hosting virtual classrooms. Her son has been home more, too, she said, and “he is deathly afraid of spiders.” Just in case, she also asked Royal Pest Control to spray for cockroaches.
Murrell said BUGCO also scooped up some new commercial business during the pandemic after some of the larger extermination companies decided to stop doing interior treatments while the virus spread.
But it’s a hard job to do without going inside, Murrell said, so PPP-laden technicians head into homes after residents answer questions about any exposure risks within. Some customers are nervous, too, Murrell said, and ask to check their temperatures before entering.
For some, he said an exterminator is the first guest a resident has had in months.
“They might be worried about the pandemic, but they want their pest control,” he said.
Scott Solomon, who works in biosciences at Rice University, said ants, spiders and cockroaches are just doing what they normally do, scuttling inside homes in search of food and water.
“We always have a lot of cockroaches this time of year, and people are just more aware of them,” Solomon said, suggesting Houstonians take this time as “an opportunity to observe and appreciate them.”
Bugs play an important role in the food chain, he said.
“If people are seeing more insects, that might be a good thing,” he said.