Alex Retcofsky, PDQ Pest Control, Erie, Pa., was announced as the winner of PCT’s recent “Tales from the Crawlspace" contest.

ERIE, PA. – Alex Retcofsky, owner and president of PDQ Pest Control in Erie, Pa., was selected as the winner of “Tales of the Crawlspace,” a recent PCT contest in which PMPs submitted their most interesting crawlspace encounters. Retcofsky has been in the industry since he was a young man working for his father’s one-man business, thus the abundance of interesting stories from the job. PDQ has always been a family business; in fact, the name PDQ is after Retcofsky’s family’s abbreviated way of urging people to get tasks done efficiently, or “pretty darn quick.” That later evolved to “professional, dependable, quality pest control.”

Retcofsky took the reins of PDQ in 2021, but he started working for PDQ full-time after he graduated high school in 2006. Even before he worked full-time, Retcofsky helped his father with small jobs.

“I was helping him going on termite jobs, pulling boards out of nails and loading debris into the truck when I was just a teenager,” Retcofsky said. “I remember being a little kid – elementary school aged – and going with my dad after baseball practice to go do some nighttime yellow jacket jobs. All I had to do was stand back and hold a flashlight.”

PDQ has established itself within Erie city limits as well as the surrounding counties and cities. Retcofsky claims that the rural areas are the company’s “bread and butter.” This was his father’s idea of how to grow the company from its conception. Also, PDQ takes great pride in its customer service, and has a very loyal customer base.

PDQ’s customers are their best form of advertising, according to Retcofsky.

“Word-of-mouth referrals from my other customers has been far and away the best way to advertise and the best way to grow our business,” Retcofsky said. “The old saying goes: you make a customer happy, they may tell one or two people. You make a customer mad, they'll tell everybody that'll listen. We do the best we can to make as many customers as we can happy.”

Retcofsky has seen his share of unique pest control situations. Retcofsky’s crawlspace tale exemplifies one of the many bizarre situations that are bound to happen in the exciting world of termite control work:

"Last spring, my crew and I took on a termite job in the city that had a large crawlspace. While quoting the job, I had opened the crawlspace for inspection. Peering around through the small hatchway with my flashlight, I could see the telltale mud tubes going up several of the foundation walls. Alas, the crawl was also full of debris, an all-too-common obstacle for PMPs when dealing with crawlspaces. There was everything in there: concrete rubble, roofing shingles, broken glass, red bricks and other construction debris. I had informed my customer that this debris would need to be removed in order to treat this space properly. The property owner was in no position to do this work herself, so we agreed upon a price wherein my crew would clean out and dispose of the debris prior to the treatment. So, the day of the treatment, we set up an assembly line of guys to remove the rubble and toss it into our utility trailer to be hauled to the dump. Our newest and youngest tech, Marvin, being the proverbial low man on the totem pole, was assigned the job of being the man deep inside the crawl. We outfitted him in a PPE space suit, set up our spotlights and sent him in on his belly. Space was limited in there, but things were going quite efficiently. Marvin was passing junk to my position just inside the crawl door and I was passing them to the guys outside to be hauled to the trailer. Marvin must have had quite the rhythm going, because he soon stopped paying attention to what he was grabbing. This is how Marvin came face to face with a mummified cat. From my viewpoint I actually saw the moment he realized what he was holding. Now, Marv is a strong, young, country-raised guy who does not scare easily, but this horrific carcass was in his hand and inches from his face when the reality hit him. I heard him scream through his respirator and watched as he tossed the cat away like a hot potato while simultaneously recoiling so quickly that he knocked his head on one of the floor joists. The rest of the crew subsequently had way too much fun at Marvin’s expense. They still remind him about “his” cat to this day.” 

A UC Riverside genetic discovery could turn disease-carrying mosquitoes into insect Peter Pans, preventing them from ever maturing or multiplying.

In 2018, UCR entomologist Naoki Yamanaka found, contrary to accepted scientific wisdom, that an important steroid hormone requires transporter proteins to enter or exit fruit fly cells. The hormone, ecdysone, is called the “molting hormone.” Without it, flies will never mature, or reproduce.

Before his discovery, textbooks taught that ecdysone travels freely across cell membranes, slipping past them with ease. “We now know that’s not true,” Yamanaka said.

Every insect species requires ecdysone for some aspect of their journey from egg to offspring-producing adult. And every insect that Yamanaka has tested also possesses the ecdysone transporter that he found in 2018, plus a few more found in a new study. But in this new study, Yamanaka found mosquitoes to be different. 

Mosquitoes have only three of the four transporter proteins that fruit flies possess. They lack the most important, primary ecdysone transporter.

“This primary one is somehow, mysteriously, missing in mosquitoes,” Yamanaka said. 

These findings have now been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The discovery opens the door to a mosquito-specific insecticide that would not harm beneficial bees or other pollinators. It would, however, affect mosquitoes like the ones used in the study, Aedes aegypti, which spread Zika, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and other viruses.

“We can develop chemicals to block the functions of these ecdysone transporters but do not affect the original transporter that is so key for other insects,” Yamanaka said. “The chances for off-target effects would be low.”

A related UC Riverside study, led by cell biologist Sachiko Haga-Yamanaka, is attempting to locate similar hormone transporting machinery in humans.

“Textbooks say that steroid hormones transport freely into and out of human cells, but based on our insect research, we doubt that to be the case,” Yamanaka said.

Yamanaka’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health. His laboratory is now screening for chemicals that can block mosquitoes’ ecdysone importers. He is also investigating ecdysone transporters in other animals.

Other methods do exist of ensuring local populations of mosquitoes cannot breed. Releasing sterile, irradiated male mosquitoes into the wild to mate with females results in eggs that do not hatch, a technique that eliminates the need for insecticides.

Though there are effective methods like this for controlling local populations of mosquitoes, Yamanaka feels it is important to develop additional tools so we can handle mosquito-related issues in many different scenarios.

“It is impossible to make mosquitoes go extinct,” Yamanaka said. “Depending on one tool to control them is dangerous. As the climate heats up, it creates even more favorable conditions for them to multiply, and they’re only likely to become a bigger problem, especially in Southern California.”

To access the UCR story and photos, click here. 

Kurt Vandock, head of public health, Bayer, to present the next Business Growth Webinar “Product Chemistry and Optimizing Wide Area Adulticiding.”

Join Target Specialty Products and Dr. Kurt Vandock, head of public health at Bayer for the interactive session. Attendees will learn why formulations are designed in the manner they are, how the design is as crucial as the active ingredients, and why formulations perform differently than active ingredients alone. Click here to register for the webinar.

Vandock supports government, industry, and research stakeholders in their mission to protect the public from health threats. He has been with Bayer for over nine years and previously was in the research and development division as a senior scientist. He has numerous publications and patents to his name and actively contributes to the academic community. He is a frequent guest speaker for public health and pest control associations.

Formed in 1981 by Ernie Nascimento, SHS Pest Control – standing for Security, Honesty, and Safety – is a full-service pest control provider serving southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

PORTSMOUTH, R.I. –  Connecticut Pest Elimination, a subsidiary of Rollins Inc., has acquired SHS Pest Control based in Portsmouth, R. I. The acquisition was announced The Aust Group, which represented SHS.

Reed will be tasked with helping the service office continue to maintain visibility with the local Orange community as well as instilling the company’s core values throughout his team.

Some of Reed’s new responsibilities will include helping the service office continue to maintain visibility with the local Orange community as well as instilling the company’s core values throughout his team. “I am looking forward to leading my team and helping them be successful in solving our customer’s pest control problems,” said Reed. “My favorite thing about working for Truly Nolen is the family environment; everyone wants to see everyone succeed and are willing to help at any cost.”

“Jimmie was a great asset as the assistant manager for our Orange service office for two months prior to this promotion,” said Lee Blair, operational senior district manager. “He has also embraced our company’s core values and culture, and I look forward to his continued success with our company.”