You See, But Do You Observe?

I’m not the only pest professional who sees this analogy. In Kentucky, for example, Ralph Hall owns Bug Detectors and prides himself on the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and pest control by using Sherlock Holmes as his logo on his service vehicles and business cards.

Keith Story, the renowned English entomologist, in 1986 wrote one of the best chapters on pest inspections I’ve ever read. He states, “Good inspections, like criminal detection, requires both an analytical and intuitive ability, together with a strong desire to defeat the pest, and this cannot be achieved by mere equipment.” Bingo.

So how do we apply this lesson of looking vs. observing in the field? Well, let’s examine but a few examples of inspections I have been on recently with technicians. In a mouse-infested restaurant in Chicago last year, the technician placed traps out along several walls, but only in a one-dimensional pattern of a trap about every 10 feet on the floor. Yet, along various other areas both on and off the floor, as well as in several corners, there were mouse urine “pillars” (vertical accumulations of urine) and mouse droppings. Both urine and feces serve mouse communities as important pheromonal cues and, in fact, show us the high-activity pathways of the local population — but only if we are observant. To be better at what we do, we must look a bit deeper for the biological clues the pests sometimes provide us. At a food warehouse last October, the technician was quick to note “rat droppings” inside several exterior bait stations and recorded “rat activity” for each of the stations. Th is certainly got the attention of the warehouse manager. But the droppings were not rat droppings at all.

During a hurried look, the droppings appear similar in size and shape to a rat dropping until one notices, via a better observation, the fragile accumulations of insect fragments characteristic of toad feces.

Responding to “the second callback” on chronic mouse sightings in a high-rise office complex, a service technician visited the area of the sighting and installed traps behind the desk and then left in a hurry to get to the next stop on her route. Unfortunately, she failed to observe where the mouse pressure was originating, which was actually two floors above the sighting. A closer look beyond the sighting and a few analytical questions of the staff put us onto the source of the problem.

As most professionals can attest, inspecting for cockroaches for the first time in a large commercial kitchen can seemingly be overwhelming — but not if you’re observant. Instead of attempting to systematically inspect every wall area and each piece of equipment within the kitchen, it is far more time efficient to start in those areas where you observe warmth, water and good concealment to coincide. If the account has a normally distributed population of cockroaches, they will be found in these areas because they simulate the “tropical settings” cockroaches prefer.

It isn’t much of a mystery: Great inspections require observation. As professionals, we owe it to our clients, and to our businesses, to go beyond merely looking while we inspect. Then, when a client asks you how you are able to deduce so much from your inspection, you could use the same words the great Inspector Holmes used in A Case Of Identity: “It is my business to know things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you consult me?”

On the job ask yourself: Do you see what others overlook? Observe and you will!