As the motion picture Mouse Hunt has taught us, pest control can be taken to some extreme and personally catastrophic levels. Sure, bee spray will kill that nest of hornets, but it just doesn't pack the same punch as a hand grenade. However, all too often we find there are jobs that just should be left to the professional – pest control for one. Our previous blog featured common pest control mistakes homeowners make just like the list below. Warning, there is some humor in this post.
#5. Blowing Up Your Apartment
Tone Pina was tired of his children waking up in their beds with roaches crawling all over them. Understandably, Pina decided to use a bug bomb to clear out his apartment. Somewhat less easy to understand is that he set off 18 of them, which as you may notice is about 17 more than he needed, and enough to turn Skywalker Ranch into a concentration camp. A spark from his refrigerator ignited the resulting gas cloud, causing a massive explosion that left him and three other families homeless. The roaches, of course, survived, presumably diving away from the fireball in slow motion.
#4. Electrocuting Yourself
A construction foreman in Germany was frustrated with moles digging up his lawn, so he decided to bury a live 380-volt electrical cable to try to Green Mile the little pests into adorable smoking corpses, because apparently he saw this work in one of his mescaline-laced night terrors. After driving two metal spikes into the ground to complete a circuit and cap off a series of events that cannot begin to be justified by anyone not clutching a bottle, he fatally electrocuted himself instead.
#3. Setting Your House on Fire
Eiliya Maida's backyard was overrun by spiders, presumably as the result of a property dispute with a curse-peddling Gypsy. To combat the infestation, Midaa went out with a blowtorch and started burning every web he saw, because the only way to kill spiders is with the cleansing power of. The blaze in his yard quickly spread to his house, because spiders can control the wind, and Maida was forced to evacuate his entire family and call the fire department, who presumably informed him that Raid is a thing that can be purchased for around $5.
#2. Burning Your Furniture (and Possibly Your Children)
Considering what bedbugs actually do to people, the adorable rhyme that parents sing to their children is not as sweet as it sounds. People routinely set fire to couches, chairs and mattresses infested with the demon parasites, and have even soaked their children in mixtures of gasoline and kerosene to kill any lingering pests they may be carrying, because the risk of immolating yourself like a Tibetan Johnny Storm is preferable to hosting a swarm of terrible insects. Entire homes and apartment complexes have been burned to the ground by amateur bedbug exterminations, and to be honest, we're surprised that there hasn't been an increase in accidental gunshot fatalities related to people discovering infestations and declaring all bets to be off.
#1. Shampooing With Gasoline
Against the advice of her fiancé, Jessica Brooks decided to cure her head lice problem by soaking her hair in gasoline -- presumably she figured that if it didn't kill them outright, they would decide as a group that she was simply too crazy to live on and find a different scalp to eat. Her plan seemed to be working until the pilot light from the water heater ignited the fumes, turning her into the trivia section of Richard Pryor's IMDb page. Although she was taken to the hospital in horrifying condition, she was resoundingly lice-free.
When homeowners try to save money or attempt to put their exterminator hat on by using over the counter or DIY pest control techniques, sometimes it goes wrong. The list above features a few examples where DIY pest control went wrong. Exposing yourself and your family to products that you are unsure of is unhealthy and risky. Thomas Pest Services is a local, family owned pest management company serving Chatham, East Greenbush, Latham, Albany, Clifton Park, Schenectady, Edinburgh, Malta, Queensbury and surrounding towns. Thomas Pest Services is license and certified in pest control to effectively solve your bug or rodent issue. Protect your health, home, family and property with pest removal, contact us via phone at 1-877-518-2847, via web inquiry, Facebook or Twitter!