Video Transcription
Garik Zikan: Some small insects that are hard to see and come out during the night are frightening many people, especially if you get bitten by one.
Julie Newman: That’s right, we’re talking about bed bugs. They fall into that category. After some of them were found in a Bristol public library, it’s let many people scratching our heads wondering how you get rid of them for good.
Garik Zikan: WCYB’s Lyndsey Price found out the first job is to make sure you find them all, and there is a way of doing that that actually might surprise you. It was surprising to us.
Lyndsey Price: Garik, Julie, I learned that when it comes to bed bugs, they call in some furry friends to help sniff them out. I learned dogs are 95% more effective when it comes to finding bed bugs than people. These creatures are hard to find on any type of furniture. They look just like an apple seed, in color and in size.
Jim Carawan: If it has a unique odor, a canine can be trained to detect it and then let us know that the odor is there. In this case, they’re trained to detect bed bugs.
Lyndsey Price: Jenny is man’s best friend, for more than one reason. But, the main reason she pals around with this pest control worker, she can find bed bugs anywhere.
Jim Carawan: They’re using their nose. The don’t trust their eyes very much, or really anything else. It’s all about odor.
Lyndsey Price: So how can dogs like Jenny know what scent they are looking for?
Jim Carawan: They are first trained to locate a tennis ball, and then eventually during the training that desire to locate the tennis ball is replaced with the odor of the bed bugs.
Lyndsey Price: But bed bugs don’t have a very strong odor. So I put Jenny to the test and hid a bottle of bed bugs in the Bristol public library and turned her loose.
Jim Carawan: If the cushions haven’t been removed from a piece of furniture, they’ll just put their face right in there to try to get the odor out.
Lyndsey Price: Jenny found the bed bugs in no time at all in two different places, a magazine and chair.
Jim Carawan: When the dogs alert, they know that if they’ve found the proper odor they’re going to be rewarded with play and praise.
Lyndsey Price: I learned to figure out which dog will make the best bed bug finder they pull out a tennis ball when they are just puppies and find the ones who drop everything else and only look at the ball. So, how did the library get rid of the bed bugs? Well, unfortunately pest control experts tell me that you just about have to throw everything away. As of now, it looks like the problem is gone at the library.
Garik Zikan: It sounds like Jenny is the kind of dog you want to have around. And we should point out, we pointed this out last week that once the library found out about this, they really jumped on it to take care of the problem.
Lyndsey Price: They took action immediately, got rid of all the furniture that was infested, and had other people come in and check so it seems like it’s gone for now.
Garik Zikan: Okay, thank you Lyndsey.
