Video Transcription
Jim Carawan: Well, bed bugs is a growing problem. It’s been a growing problem in the United States for probably the last fifteen years or more. In our company, we have a scent detection canine team that really helps us to zero in and find bed bugs and figure out where they are in a home or residence, and where they are not. It’s just as important to figure out where they are not as it is to figure out where they are, so that a proper treatment schedule can be set up for that customer.
It doesn’t matter the type of structure or the type of place, it doesn’t matter if it’s a high end hotel or an apartment, bed bugs really don’t discriminate and cleanliness really doesn’t have a great deal to do with it. They hide so very well, they could be just about anywhere where people are. They could be in your condo, they could be in a home, and they’re great hitchhikers. That’s one of the primary ways they spread from one place to another is by hitching a ride in our luggage or in our belongings or in our backpacks or bookbags.
So, the canines really save us a lot of time, can save the customer a lot of money in the long run and help us to just do a better inspection and a better service for our customers.
Well, bed bugs prefer to hide wherever people spend the most time. That’s going to be be beds and sofas and chairs, wherever you spend a lot of time and possibly sleep, that’s where they’re going to prefer. They locate us as a food source by our body heat, but probably more importantly by the carbon dioxide that we exhale every time we breathe.
This is their home away from home, they’re very comfortable in there as you can tell. We travel here, they don’t sleep here, they do stay with me in the room at nights when we are in hotels, and they have their own quarters at my house when we’re at home. And we log over 50,000 miles a year in this van. It’s their van, I’m just the driver. I’m kind of like the tour manager, I do the driving and I do the scheduling, they do the work.
