Magic Exterminating

Why is Winter Pest Control so Important?

2012-01-31T12:02:00.006-05:00

Why is Winter Pest Control so Important?

I often hear "It's winter. The bugs are all dead. I don't need my workplace or home serviced." This is a very common misconception.

First, our homes and business' create false environments; they are heated during the winter and cooled during the summer. These false environments allow many common pests such as Termites, Carpenter Ants, the various Tramp Ants, Roaches and many other invaders to set up shop within the walls, attic, basement and storage areas of our homes or business'.

Next, rodents, who live in burrows, actively scavenge throughout the winter. If they are able to exploit our homes they most definitely will.

Lastly, winters vary in their intensity. The winter of 2010-2011 has been wet and fairly mild, with temperatures reaching into the 50's. The combination of moisture and moderate temperatures trigger most pests into activity.

Here are some ways to deter Winter Pests:

* Seal off holes on the outside of the structure, where insects may gain entry. Smaller holes can be patched with silicone caulk or spackle, while larger ones may require concrete to fill.

* Check around baseboards and inside cabinets for cracks and crevices that could hide pests, and fill holes accordingly.

* Remove sources of food and water, which include dishes in the sink and crumbs inside cabinets and desks at your business.

* Outside, mulch and firewood hold moisture, making them popular hiding places for rodents. Store these items at least two feet from exterior walls.

* Outdoors, trim hedges and trees that are in close proximity to the structure. The branches provide an easy path inside for insects & squirrels.

* To prevent squirrels and other animals from roosting in the eaves or attic, repair and patch any holes or other damage.

* Clean out gutters and overhangs, where rodents can also build their nests.

* Store yard waste ,like leaves and moss, away from the structure prior to disposal. These materials are popular nesting materials.

* Keep birdseed in a sealed metal container. Mice can gnaw through plastic and eat seeds.

* Common entry points are around pipes, where small cracks are frequently just large enough for a mouse to squeeze through. Block holes with copper meshing.

* Inside, eradicate clutter that can hide mice and rat nests, and provide material for the nests themselves.

At Magic Exterminating we practice Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Our technicians inspect for the above conditions, treat when necessary, and inform you of required corrections that will keep your business and home pest free.

For a free estimate please contact us through our website at www.magicexterminating.com or by calling any of the phone numbers listed above.

In the News Mouse at McDonald's, Cyborg Rats & Washington DC's new Pest Law

2012-01-17T10:41:00.003-05:00

Mouse in Bag of McDonald's Buns

Magic Exterminating can help prevent this from happening at your Restaurant or Food Preparation Business.

Our Technicians are highly trained by our 3 Entomologists to find the source of the Rodent problem, eliminate present populations and prevent future infestations.

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New Washington D.C. law forces exterminators to capture and relocate rats, and critters

http://www.wdbj7.com/news/wtvr-mark-on-d.c.-rat-law-20120116,0,1815294.premiumvideo

Mark Holmberg wdbj7.com

11:19 p.m. EST, January 16, 2012

Ken Cuccinelli, the man who interprets and enforces Virginia law, said a year-old Washington D.C. law could cause a flood of rats and mice across the Potomac into Virginia from the nation’s capital.

During a recent interview with WMAL radio in the Washington area about the rat infestation in Occupy D.C. parks, Cuccinelli said, “Last year, in its finite wisdom, the D.C. City Council passed a law, a triumph of animal rights over human health, where those pest control people you suggested they bring in aren’t allowed to kill the rats. They have to relocate the rats. And not only that – that’s really not the worst part – they can’t break of the families of the rats . . . it’s worse than our immigration policy.” Really, sir?

We read the law, the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 (B18-498). There’s no doubt it is very animal-friendly. Pests like raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks and pigeons have to be humanely trapped – no more snap traps or glue traps. And all the humane traps must be checked every 24 hours, at the least.

If possible, the critter must be relocated, humanely, which is a tough job in D.C. because it’s mostly all city. And every effort must be made to move the whole family of animals.

But right there on page one of the Wildlife Protection Act it said “commensal rodents” are exempted – they’re still fair game for extermination. That’s your Norway rat, roof rat and common house mouse.

Also, there’s plenty of wiggle room in the law. If relocation options are not feasible, it’s okay to euthanize the animals.

We asked Cuccinelli’s office about this, and his press secretary said the rice rat and deer mouse are not exempt, and they’re also concerned about infections like Lyme disease being spread by rodents and other animals relocated to Virginia.

Here’s the entire statement:

“The attorney general says he was afraid that the D.C. law might encourage transporting rats from DC, as it encourages catch-and-release technique.” (if you read this article, you will see that wildlife experts said the same thing: http://www.arlnow.com/2012/01/12/cuccinelli-smells-a-rat-in-d-c/).

The word from wildlife control experts is that to be effective in that method, animals should be released far from their catch point -- perhaps across the Potomac in Virginia -- so they do not return. The law exempts some types of rats, but not all.

While certain "commensal rodents" (which include two species of rats) are exempted from the law, the rice rat and the deer mouse are species that wildlife control experts note are within the District that are NOT defined as commensal rodents, so they would appear not to be exempt from the law (ie. - they would be required to be caught and released, etc.)

In addition to these particular rats and mice, raccoons, squirrels, skunks and other animals known to carry rabies, Lyme Disease, and other diseases are not exempt from the law.

While rats were one example the attorney general gave, there are many other examples of wildlife that he could have used. The point he was making is that certain rats, mice, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, and other animals known to carry rabies, Lyme Disease, and other diseases have the possibility of being transported to Virginia, where they could infect humans. That is why he has been concerned about this issue.”

But since it’s against the law to transport wildlife across state lines, it is doubtful there’s going to be a flood of rabid or tick-infested raccoons any time soon.

That said, the law is going to make pest control more expensive and difficult in D.C.

Commonly used snap and glue traps for rats and mice appear to be out because they could catch non-exempt animals, like chipmunks and squirrels.

Clyde Wilson, with Anytime Pest Control in the Richmond area, said snap traps (like mousetraps) and particularly glue traps are effective tools in fighting rat and mice infestations.

And that the mandate requires traps be checked every 24-hours will add to the cost of many extermination jobs, he said.

But what the Wildlife Protection Act doesn’t address is the use of junkets, PAC money and sweet stock deals to bait and trap the rats that roam the halls of Congress in our nation’s capitol.

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Controversial cyborg rat tests target brain treatments

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16305299

By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC News

A researcher monitors a sedated rat as part of the research project at Tel Aviv University

A rat lies motionless on a sterile, spotless table. It is alive, but heavily sedated. Closer inspection reveals that this is no ordinary rodent. Electrodes are being used to stimulate its brain, creating waveform readings on a nearby computer screen.

The rat is part of a research project at Israel's Tel Aviv University psychology department. Scientists are attempting to replace part of this and other rats' brains with digital equipment, effectively turning them into cyborgs.

Anti-vivisection campaigners have described the tests as "grotesque" but the researchers claim the work will eventually help them make repairs to what is possibly the world's most complex computer - the human brain.

Mending malfunctions

The work aims to help people with diseases such as Parkinson's or those who have suffered a stroke. It involves swapping impaired brain tissue with a microchip that is wired to the brain, allowing it to carry out the tasks that the healthy tissue would have performed.

"Imagine there's a small area in the brain that is malfunctioning, and imagine that we understand the architecture of this damaged area," says Prof Matti Mintz, a psychobiologist at Tel Aviv University who is involved in the international project.

Prof Mintz discusses the ethics of developing a human 'memory chip' "So we try to replicate this part of the brain with electronics." To do it, the researchers insert sets of electrodes up to 1cm deep inside a rat's brain and then connect them to a microchip embedded just under the skin of the rodent's skull.

The chip then receives and interprets sensory information from the brainstem - the lower area of the brain - and analyses it as the original biological part would, before transmitting the information back to motor centres in the brainstem.

"For example, there's a region of the brain that controls one simple motor movement - breathing," says Prof Mintz.

"Right now, if a patient loses this area, there's no way to recover. But if we're able in the future to replace such an area that is responsible for very discrete but extremely essential movement, it will be great.

"And it is on the horizon."

Bionic rats

To demonstrate that its idea works, the team applied the principle of classical conditioning, first demonstrated by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov in 1927.

He noticed that his dogs began salivating when they saw the person who fed them. So he used a bell to let them know that their meal was ready - and after just a few repetitions, he found out that the animals started to salivate when they heard the bell, even if the food was not there.

Prof Mintz's team did something similar with rats.

The researchers decided to work on an area of the brain called the cerebellum, which is responsible for controlling and timing motor movements, such as learning how to blink in response to a stimulus.

They took advantage of the fact that if a rat hears a particular sound before it gets hit with a jet of air, it will eventually blink when the sound is played ahead of the puff reaching its eyes.

Prof Mintz offered the BBC a tour of his lab at Tel Aviv University "We know how to blink. Currently, I'm blinking very freely," says Prof Mintz.

"We also know how to record that the animals are learning to respond to a stimulus - we plant electrodes around the eye, and record the muscle activity to see when the rat actually closes its eye.

"And we know that when we damage the biological structure [the cerebellum] the animal cannot learn this simple motor response any more, never again, and nothing in the brain can replace this learning.

"So after having studied this brain region, we constructed a simulation that works in a similar way to the original biological system - and when we see some recovery of the lost movement, it is clear that it is coming from our synthetic device and not from any other area of the brain."

Science amalgam

Science fiction helped the researchers come up with the idea of replicating a specific brain function with a microchip.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
Lives are [being]wasted on dubious and ego-driven experiments.”
End Quote
National Anti-Vivisection Society
The genre has long been populated by cyborgs and other related creatures, from Terminator and Robocop to Isaac Asimov's bionic robots and Blade Runner's bioengineered "replicants".

Although neuroscientists have quite literally been picking at the brain for decades, it is only recently that there have been significant breakthroughs in the area.

One instance is a brain-computer interface which allows a person with disabilities to control a computer cursor through the power of thought alone. It works via electrodes attached to their brain which read specific signals.

Prosthetic limbs function through brain implants, too, but they also only work one way, receiving signals and interpreting them into physical actions.

Getting the artificial portion of the cerebellum to receive one set of signals and send out an entirely different set of commands proved especially challenging.

A computer model of the chip that is attached to the rat "The only way to for such a project to succeed is by combining different disciplines - and this is where 'nano-bio-info-cogno' comes in - uniting nanotechnology, biology, informatics and cognitive science," says Prof Mira Marcus-Kalish of Tel Aviv University, who is also taking part in the project.

"We take nanoelectrodes into a biology application, try to analyse everything through informatics, and then also use cognition."

The next step will be getting the rats to perform not just one, but several physical actions, says Prof Mintz.

"Let's imagine a person loses a big chunk of cerebellum, due to a haemorrhage, or a lesion, or due to ageing. Cerebellum ages very fast, and that's why we lose tiny motor functions," he says.

"So we need to find how to recover motor functions consistent of longer sequence of movements."

Future cyborgs?

"The more replacement parts we have for our body, the more people are not just alive, but healthy.”

Once the trials with rats are over and successful, the researchers plan to move to human subjects.

They say they hope to help people and save lives. However, animal rights activists describe the research as "disgraceful" and "abhorrent".

"This type of research raises enormous ethical concerns, let alone the poor animals whose lives are wasted on dubious and ego-driven experiments," says Jan Creamer, chief executive of the UK-based National Anti-Vivisection Society.

"The NAVS is totally opposed to all forms of animal experimentation and advocates the use of sophisticated non-animal techniques, which this clearly is not. As an example, we are currently funding a long-term project concerned with the human brain and its functions and our research uses cutting edge technology, not the outmoded animal model."

As the researchers replace bigger parts of the brain with electronics other questions are also likely to be raised: how far the research should be taken and how many neurons can be replaced before our bodies become controlled by a machine, rather than the other way round.

Prof Mintz says that 'brain enhancement' is a 'taboo' subject Although some may argue that we already interfere with nature when we implant a pacemaker or transplant a heart, the brain is viewed differently because it is the organ that controls everything in the human body.

"It's fascinating how people get worried when it comes to their brain, there's this fear that some alien intruder will take over ourselves," says psychologist Prof Carlo Strenger from Tel Aviv University, who is not involved in the study.

"But think of the many people who have suffered brain damages because of accidents, of the people with degenerative diseases - the more replacement parts we have for our body, the more people are not just alive, but healthy.

"One philosophical question could arise once we'll be able to download a person's whole brain onto a chip and then implant the chip into someone else's body.

"This is a problem we don't yet know how to solve. But we're not there yet."

New York Magazine Talks about Rats & Rat Busters NYC

2011-11-22T16:00:00.002-05:00

Big Scary Ugly Dirty Rats

They’re everywhere — but they always were.

By Mark Jacobson Published Oct 30, 2011

In this city, even a dead rat can draw a crowd.

If the rat were scurrying between garbage cans, or running down a 4-train track, some yahoo would have said it was “giant, as big as a cat, ten pounds or more.” But being dead, its greasy fur splayed out on First Avenue near 6th Street, the rat’s dimensions were clear. It was about seven inches from tapered, beady-eyed head to the base of its ropy tail and probably weighed no more than a pound, average size for a mature individual of the species Rattus norvegicus, the brown or Norway rat. In other words, it was a typical New York City rat, the sort that arrived on these shores in the late-eighteenth century, beginning its inexorable colonization of the waterfront, tenement buildings, sewers, subway stations, and vacant lots—thriving to the point where it has become no less a symbol of the metropolis than the Empire State Building or a Katz’s pastrami sandwich. As such, the dead rat on First Avenue was just one more tourist attraction, and half a dozen smartphone paparazzi were ardently documenting its fallen state.

That would have been that except for the arrival on the scene of a couple of boisterous young men who whipped beer bottles from brown paper bags and, in a leering act of frat-boy street libation, spilled some Stella Artois on the bestilled rodent. The synaptical reaction took a moment to kick in, but then the formerly dead rat appeared to levitate, spinning a full 180 degrees above the sidewalk and sending stunned bystanders shrieking into the night.

One of evolution’s more triumphant guilty pleasures, the New York rat, whose precursors waged bio-guerrilla war against the post-dinosaur reptilian rear guard 50 million years ago, comes to the table sporting a dossier of astounding and sobering attributes. Female brown rats are sexually mature at eight-to-ten weeks and can produce a litter within 21 days of impregnation. They can mate again within eighteen hours of giving birth and routinely turn out more than 50 offspring per year. Rats can swim for more than half a mile, tread water for three days, sometimes even emerging in the bathroom bowl. They can gnaw through concrete and lead, collapse their skeletons to fit through a hole no bigger than a quarter. They can go for two weeks without sleeping, utilizing this extended wakefulness to devour everything in sight. According to an estimate, rats and their rodent allies eat and otherwise despoil up to one fifth of the world’s food supply. This is to say nothing of their role in wiping out half of Europe during the Black Death plague of the mid-1300s. The plague also killed many rats, but the rodent proved its staying power when several were found to have survived the atomic-bomb testing on the Eniwetok Atoll in 1945.

When it comes to who and what will be left standing following Armageddon, the rat has a compelling résumé. Yet it wasn’t until that late-summer evening in the East Village that the Rattus norvegicus added resurrection-by-beer to its vita. It mattered little that the rat staggered barely a few feet before keeling over again, likely succumbing to some exterminator’s slow-death dose of rodenticide. He had proved his point.

We are apparently in the midst of one of New York’s periodic rat outbreaks. If there are 8 million stories in the Naked City, maybe half of them are rat stories; uptown and down, everyone seems to have one. Rats have been reported overrunning playgrounds, burrowing in children’s sandboxes, dropping from trees in Tompkins Square Park. On the Upper West Side, residents say rats have “formed a conga line” in Verdi Square (née Needle Park) on 72nd Street. Local TV crews have run outraged exclusives about rats living across from the Plaza Hotel. Rats were even threatening celebrity homes in Greenwich Village, menacing luminaries like Michael Cera and Rupert Everett, forcing Gisele Bündchen to raise her skirt in fear. At one downtown firehouse, rats were getting into the FDNY cars and eating away the wires under the dashboards. Knowing that rodent gnawing is responsible for an estimated quarter of electrical failures in the city, the firefighters employed infrared cameras to locate the rats, which they attempted to beat to death with hockey sticks. Perhaps even more vivid was the action taken in August by Jose Rivera, a city employee at the Marcy projects in Bed-Stuy, who used a pitchfork to kill a three-foot-long rat (possibly an alien rat from Africa, an escaped pet). Asked by a reporter if Jay-Z, Marcy’s most famous alum, would rap about Rivera’s feat, a project resident said, “He ought to … ‘Pitchfork, bitchfork, Marcy with the monster rat, sometime it be like that.’ ”

Vermin videos have gone viral, collected by sites like Gothamist, which specializes in the rats-on-subway genre. Callow suburbanites seem to never get enough of the rat crawling on the face of the homeless guy, but the less heartless may prefer “Rat With Full Slice of Pizza.” “Rat on the A Train” isn’t bad either. In this climate, exterminators, now generally referred to as pest-management professionals (PMPs), are reality-show stars. Animal Planet’s Rat Busters NYC tracks the undeniably amusing peregrinations of Jimmy Tallman and Michael Morales, who in their quest to become the most famous rat-catchers since Hamelin are photographed crawling around Queens attics saying things like “Holy cow! Look at those droppings.”

The ongoing rodent scare has proved a headache for the Bloomberg administration, especially since the announced layoff of 57 (out of 185) Health Department pest-control workers last year. “You don’t slash the ranks of public-health workers on the front lines of an epidemic,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer at a protest in Mitchell Square Park in Washington Heights, where locals claimed the rats had “taken over.” Last month, members of the subway-workers union circulated a petition against the cutbacks, shouting, “If you smell something, sign something.” For his part, Mayor Bloomberg has pooh-poohed the outbreak as just one more thing the 99 percent of us will have to put up with in these austere times. “Rats are a problem in every big city,” a peevish mayor told a TV reporter. This was in sharp contrast to the reaction of then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani when faced with a “Rat Summit” during a similar rodent panic in 2000.

Giuliani (who once famously told a ferret-keeping citizen to get help for his “excessive concern for little weasels”) declared, “We make unprecedented efforts to kill rats. We probably lead the country in rat killing.”

All of this brings up a number of questions, ones that have vexed city health officials at least since the rodent scare of the twenties, when scientists proposed to build a wall around the rat-infested waterfront area. For instance, just how many New York rats are there in New York? For decades, the rule of thumb was one rat for every human, i.e., 8 million rats, an iconic yet mind-boggling number. Following the Second World War, David E. Davis (called “the founding father of modern rat studies” by Robert Sullivan in his esteemed 2004 book, Rats) challenged the one-to-one ratio. After much field work, Davis concluded there were no more than 250,000 rats in New York, or one rodent for every 36 people.

Since then, however, there seems little doubt that the rat population, spurred by ever more garbage for the rodents to eat, has increased, perhaps dramatically. You hear all sorts of numbers. One PMP told me there were “three, maybe four” rats for every person. “Thirty-two million rats?” I asked. “Well, at least 20 million,” the PMP replied. No one knows for sure, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how many rats you see.

That is because, as Steven Bruce of the Superb Pest Control company of the Bronx says, “one rat is a lot to see … because they’re rats.”

It was true, Bruce said, that the Great Bedbug Panic had kept him busy over the past couple of years. This is largely because, as many PMPs allow, “paranoia is good for business.” Pictured as a creeping army of microscopic vampires capable of lurking in even Bloomingdale’s-bought 1,000-thread-count sheets, bedbugs, or even a rumor of them, are enough to make whole neighborhoods scratch through their skin and throw bedroom sets onto the street. But when it came down to it, a high percentage of people driven crazy by tiny demons had no bedbugs at all. “One of the hardest parts of my job is convincing them they don’t have them,” says Lee Browning of Discovery Dogs, a firm that uses pint-size terriers to sniff out the insects. A good PMP often had to turn psychologist, nudge people down from the ledge. Bedbugs were the perfect post-9/11 pest; they carried an alien, unknowable claustrophobia of dread, but since they were predictably wiped out by the application of 115-degree heat, many vermin-hunters found them dull, offering little intellectual challenge.

That was why there was “something about a rat job,” Bruce said as he walked through a midtown basement with his flashlight looking for “rub marks,” the dark smudges greasy-furred rats leave on walls. Unlike the faceless struggle against the bedbug, a rat job was “a battle of wits and wills. A turf war, because where they live is where we live.” Going against the rat was personal, a measure of the man, a pride fight between species.

It was something about the rat itself, the nature of the beast, the way thousands of years of proximity have produced a highly nuanced historical and cultural bond with humanity. Would any parent think of taking children to a performance of The Nutcracker featuring a Bedbug King? Is it any wonder Michael Jackson’s first No. 1 hit as a solo artist was “Ben,” theme from a movie about a telepathic, homicidal alpha rat? Rat lit is a staple of the New York writer, with this graph from Joseph Mitchell more or less summing it up. “Rats are almost as fecund as germs … a rat at four is older than a man at ninety. ‘Rats that survive to the age of four are the wisest and the most cynical beasts on earth,’ one exterminator says. ‘A trap means nothing to them, no matter how skillfully set. They just kick it around until it snaps; then they eat the bait … I believe some of them can read.’ ”

One could become obsessional about rats, I thought, thumbing through a scholarly article by the noted urban rodentologist Bobby Corrigan. A pioneer of “green” pest management and adviser to the City Health Department with a Ph.D. in rodent control from Purdue University, Corrigan did not put much credence in the suggestion that the uptick in rat sightings was a result of projects like the Second Avenue subway and the aptly named Bruce Ratner’s Barclays Center. “A rat isn’t going to leave his burrow unless it is directly impacted,” said the Brooklyn-born Corrigan. “Vibrations do not bother them. They are not leaving home because someone has a jackhammer.”

Corrigan called the present hysteria “understandable but idiotic.” The recent outbreak, he said, may only be little more than the unsettling of a few rat colonies, involving no more than 200 or 300 individuals. So this whole uproar was over a handful of rats? “It very well could be,” said Corrigan.

His point was that people are confused about rats. The fact was man “was more indebted to the Norway rat than any other species on Earth” with all those lab experiments and the lives they saved.

That was the conundrum; humans and rats were inextricably linked by time and space. History taught there was no getting rid of them. It was a Cold War, mutually-assured-destruction situation; wiping out the rats would wipe us out, too. What was needed was distance, Corrigan said. “Rats are diabolically clever animals. By that I don’t mean they’re controlled by the devil. It is just that they are very smart, very single-minded, very determined. One thing they want to do is be close to us, which is the problem, because if you allow a rat to get close to you, he will get very, very close. Closer than you want. That’s what we do, manage the distance.”

Iwas thinking about distance while wandering around looking for rats. This was embarrassing, since there are plenty of people in New York who don’t need to go out to find rats. The rats come to them. Right into their babies’ cribs. Not that I didn’t have rat stories of my own. For instance, in the winter of 1972, I was living in a storefront apartment with my sister on 6th Street between Avenues A and B. Bimbo Rivas, Loisaida poet and playwright, was my sister’s boyfriend and was around a lot. One day, Bim, a man with a sense of flair, used the five-foot-long steel-pole “police lock” to spear a scurrying Rattus norvegicus right through the belly. Toshiro Mifune couldn’t have done it better. The rat squealed a bit, but that subsided soon after Bim, with a quick flick of the pole, tossed the body out into an air shaft and closed the window.

Corrigan was right. Rats like to be close. They hug walls, seek warmth, want to be near you, if only to burrow into the subconscious, as in Freud’s famous “Rat Man” case, in which the patient was possessed by a fantasy of a chamber pot full of rodents attached to a man’s buttocks (which dovetails with the urban nightmare of the rat crawling through a toilet; check YouTube, if you want to throw up). Rats were parasites, living off human imperfection. Humanity was a race of profligate slobs who threw Doritos out the car window and were too lazy to fasten the lids on $100 pestproof trash cans. New York had more garbage than anywhere else, so we had more rats. They existed to mock us for our grandiosity and our sloth. They were our mirror, unwanted but true.

It was about then, as I sat near Collect Pond Park, that a rat appeared. I figured one would, sooner or later. Collect Pond, down the block from the Tombs, was a flash point in the rat scare. “Holy bleep, it is like a rat zoo in there,” exclaimed one video blogger. The rat approached, got within six feet of me, and stopped. This was fine. Six feet was an acceptable distance. But then the rat zigzagged around, moving closer by six inches or so. It was now within my zone.

I don’t like it when city animals act funny; it makes me think they might be rabid. But for all the diseases they spread, rats don’t get rabies. It was then I saw the Reese’s wrapper near my foot. Inside was a bit of peanut-butter cup. Rats can’t see for shit but can smell anything, and they’re crazy about peanut butter. It is like crack to them. I could see it: the rat decision-making process. Would he chance it? Make his move? It would be a mistake, because that peanut-butter cup was in my space. Lines had to be drawn. The rat, realizing I was serious, soon ran off. But he’d be back; two residents of the city, we were stuck with each other.

Read the full article here: http://nymag.com/news/features/rats-2011-11/

NY XPO for Business 11-16-11 at NYC's Jacob Javits Center

2011-11-07T15:34:00.001-05:00

NY XPO for Business 11-16-11 at NYC's Jacob Javits Center

Come visit Magic Exterminating at both 534

meet Ralph Maestre BCE author of "The Bed Bug Book"

&
Jimmy & Michael of Rat Busters NYC seen on Animal Planet

New York's largest Small Business Expo

Is that a Jumping Spider... nope... it's a Cave Cricket

2011-10-27T16:51:00.000-04:00

Cave or Camel Back Cricket

Every fall we begin to get calls from people about Jumping Spiders. Our immediate response is "Those are just Cave Crickets".

Here in New York, especially on Long Island, Cave Crickets are a prevalent pest that invade our homes with the cool damp fall weather.

They find their way into our homes through cracks & crevices in the foundation, broken dryer vents, faulty door sweeps, broken windows or under our feet as we enter our homes.

Unlike the common cricket, Cave Crickets do not make an audible chirp. They are nocturnal and only come out when the lights are out. They can go unnoticed for some time. They usually set up shop in our basements were it is cool and damp. If they find a food source (any decaying matter) they will begin to breed at a very fast pace and become an annoyance.

Luckily Cave Crickets are susceptible to standard pest control protocols and are easily eliminated.

Community Associations Institute Expo & Trade Show 10-15-11 9am-2pm Huntington Hilton 598 Broadhollow Road Melville, NY 11747

2011-10-07T12:39:00.002-04:00

Magic Exterminaing is a proud supporter of CAI Long Island.

Along with our sister company Suburban Exteriminting we cover all of Long Island including Brooklyn & Queens. We are a family owned business founded in 1960. Our staff includes four (4) Entomologists who oversee our service protocols.

Magic & Suburban are full service pest control companies providing:

Green Shield Certified Services
Termite protection using Sentricon Termite Colony Elmination System
Bird Abatement Services
Bed Bug Services

Treatments
Dog Inspections
Heat Chamber & Vault Fumigation

Rodent, Cockroach, Bees, Crickets & Ant Control

To register online click here

Magic at New Green City Expo October 5th

2011-10-03T11:08:00.008-04:00

Magic at New Green City Expo

October 5th 10am to 6pm

Union Square Park - South Plaza

come talk to us about

Integrated Pest Management,
Green Shield Certified Services and
Advise on common Pests

Highlights for New Green City 2011:

•Kick-off ceremony featuring Ted Allen, Host of "Chopped"

•Kids Corner w/Birdie, Scribble Town, Super Earth, The Green Man
•Union Square Partnership Walking Tours

•Meet Your Recycler Panel with Q&A
•Union Square Scavenger Hunt
•Union Square Greenmarket
•Rainwater Harvesting
•Interactive Exhibits
•DIY Tutorials

Magic Exterminating at NYARM Trade Show 9-21-11

2011-09-19T13:02:00.000-04:00

New York Association of Realty Managers

REAL ESTATE EXPO

Hotel Pennsylvania

7th Ave & 33rd St, NYC

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

8am to 4pm

Come meet the author of"The Bed Bug Book"Ralph H.Maestre BCE

and Stars of the Animal Planet series

"Rat Busters NYC" Jimmy & Michael

WPIX 11 interviews Magic Exterminating's Jimmy & Michael of Rat busters NYC

2011-09-09T09:55:00.003-04:00

New Video Clips of Rat Busters NYC airing on Animal Planet

2011-09-07T14:29:00.000-04:00

Daily News & Newsday articles on Rat Busters NYC Magic Exterminating's TV Series on Animal Planet

2011-08-24T15:57:00.000-04:00

New York Daily News gives Magic Exterminating's TV series Rat Busters NYC Critics Choice designation. Tune in on Animal Planet Fridays at 10pm

2011-08-22T13:58:00.001-04:00

Rat Busters NYC air times featuring Magic Exterminating's Jimmy & Michael

2011-08-22T10:24:00.001-04:00

Jimmy & Michael kick off the first episode "It's Raining Rats" dealing with infestations in a convienience store and a private home.

Check here for upcoming Air Times

Bed Bug Apocalypse Tonight 8-17-11 at 8pm on Animal Planet

2011-08-17T14:37:00.002-04:00

Bed bugs have descended upon the United States, creating a pandemic. These critters can infiltrate our businesses, movie theaters and homes. Entomologists, pest control companies, and victims detail the creepiest and most obscene bed bug stories ever.

Featuring commentary by Ralph Maestre BCE author of "The Bed Bug Book" and Anthony DeVito ACE of Magic Exterminating

Magic Exterminating the Company & Employees behind Rat Buster NYC

2011-08-17T14:17:00.001-04:00

MEET THE RAT BUSTER of NEW YORK CITY

Jimmy Tallman, Service Manager for Magic Exterminating“To be a pest expert, you have to have a strong will, a strong stomach and the determination to help people.” Jimmy is a 25-year veteran of the pest control trade and has rescued thousands of homes from pests over the years. This Brooklyn-born Irish-American started his career at the age of 18 purely because he needed work and fell in love with the business. He’s a jokester, but takes his job seriously and means business when it comes to getting the job done. Jimmy currently lives in Long Island, NY with his wife of 20 years and they have two daughters ages 15 and 18.

Michael Morales, Service Manager for Magic Exterminating“As an exterminator, I have to deal with the dirtiest areas and the pests themselves – it takes thick skin.” After 22 years in pest control, Michael is a true expert in the field and particularly enjoys the science behind his work. Prior to working in pest control, he was a corrections officer. Michael is known for his outgoing personality and knack for charming customers, although his partner Jimmy thinks he spends more time talking than working! Michael, of Puerto Rican heritage, was born in Flushing, Queens and grew up in Brooklyn, NY, where he still lives today. He has three children, daughters aged 12 and 13 and a 17-year-old son.

YOU'VE MET THE TEAM, NOW MEET THE COMPANY

Magic Exterminating has been providing pest control service to the 5 Boroughs of New York and Nassau County in Long Island since 1960.

In the early 70’s Suburban Exterminating was purchased to expand our service area into Suffolk County to now service all of Long Island. To this day Magic and Suburban Exterminating are still sister companies. Magic is a second generation family owned and operated business, committed to providing superior service to our clients as we pride ourselves in being the best exterminators in the business.

Our staff provides courteous and personalized service to each and every one of our customers. Many of our employees have over 25 years experience in the complex field of pest control. Our experience includes all areas of Pest Control: Private Homes, Restaurants, Hotels, Bed Bugs, Office and Apartment buildings, Hospitals, All Commercial, All Residential, All Industrial, Warehouses, Termite Control, Bird Control etc. There is no job our exterminators can’t handle.

Magic is Committed to IPM (Integrated Pest Management), we Inspect, Identify, Recommend Structural Repairs &; Sanitation Programs, Treat, and Continually Evaluate Results. These objectives are cost effective and minimize the risk or hazard to humans and non-target organisms. This holistic approach creates an environment that infringes on the pests’ ability to develop and reproduce by eliminating factors that encourage survival, such as, food, water, and harborage and does not rely upon pesticides for results. This approach is paramount in effectively controlling pests.

These practices lead Magic to submit our services to the scrutiny of the IPM Institute of North America as well as being designated Green Shield Certified. Magic Exterminating is one of the select few authorized operators of the Sentricon Termite Colony Elimination System® which won the Presidential Green Chemistry Award. This award is presented by the EPA on behalf of President of United States of America. Magic employs a Board Certified Entomologist who oversees training and technical direction of the company and two (2) Associate Certified Entomologists. Our Pest Management professionals review and evaluate documentation from the field and oversee our Quality Assurance Program.

Our trained technicians receive continued education on the latest advancements made in Pest Control. In an industry where change is constant, we feel it is a comfort to our customers to know that we utilize the most effective methods available while adhering to the ever changing government regulations regarding safety and efficiency.

Magic stands by its mission statement “we endeavor to exemplify quality, professionalism, and respect for all our customers and teams members in all our daily functions. Our objective is to instill value in our services through quality and support by working as a team with a single goal… CUSTOMER SATISFACTION”

Animal Planet Publishes Rat Busters NYC Website

2011-08-16T11:31:00.001-04:00

courtesy Animal Planet/Discovery

CHECK IT OUT!!!

Set your DVR/Tivos to our Animal Planet Shows Rat Busters NYC & Bed Bug Apocalypse

2011-08-11T15:40:00.010-04:00

Magic's new series Rat Busters NYC on Animal Planet

Show Times:

- Sneak Peek Friday 8-19 at 11pm

- Premiers Friday 8-26 at 10pm

- New episodes every Friday at 10pm

Jimmy & Michael of Rat Buster NYC - See Animal Planet for Showtimes

See Animal Planet for Showtimes

MAGIC EXTERMINATING IN THE NEWS

Daily News

Multichannel

Newsday

Gothamist

Metro 1

Metro 2

HotFix

Hollywood Reporter

Futon Critic

RealScreen

ViaMedia

Rat Busters NYC on Animal Planet featuring Magic Exterminating's Jimmy & Michael Sneek Peek 8-19-11 at 11pm Premier 8-26-11 at 10pm

2011-08-01T16:22:00.001-04:00

courtesy of Animal Planet/Discovery

Happy Rat Catcher's Day

2011-07-22T12:37:00.000-04:00

Rat Catcher's Day is celebrated on June 26 in German or 22 July in the USA, it commemorating the myth of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Brothers Grimm cite 26 June 1284 as the date the Pied Piper led the children out of the town, while the poem by Robert Browning gives it as 22 July 1376 hence the confusion over the date. It is a holiday remembering rat-catchers, similar to Secretary's Day.

The fairtale states that the residents of the Hamelin hired a strangely dressed man to rid their village of rats by playing his pipe. But when he finished the task, the townsfolk refused to pay. The Pied Piper returned while they were in church and disappeared with their children.

The Ferret Meister - Ferrets were probably introduced into this country in the eighteen century via ships that carried them as ratters. In addition, some colonists brought them over as hunting companions.

By the early 1900′s ferrets were being imported by the tens of thousands to be used as “vermin” exterminators. They were used to destroy rabbits, raccoons, gophers, rats and mice. Prey animals will usually flee in the presence of the “scent of a ferret” and so a few ferrets were needed to protect barns, warehouses and granaries.

The USDA promoted the use of ferrets for rodent control. If your farm was infested you could call the ferretmeister to come and release ferrets on your property. The ferrets went on a search and destroy mission and then humans and dogs, usually terriers, placed around the area would kill the vermin as they tried to escape. Some establishments simply maintained their own colony of ferrets for this purpose.

When chemical rodenticides became available there was no further need for the “ferret patrol” and this practice died out.

108 Stores with Senior Discounts

2011-07-14T12:04:00.003-04:00

Just a little something to help out all the senior we know and love.

As our baby boomers reach retirement age, hundreds of retailers are featuring new and improved discounts exclusively for the 60 and older crowd. We have composed a list of senior savings that will help you keep more cash in your pocket. Whoever said getting older was a bad thing, obviously didn’t know about these fantastic senior discounts!

Since many senior discounts are not advertised to the public, our advice to men and women over 55 is to ALWAYS ask a sales associate if that store provides a senior discount. That way, you can be sure to get the most bang for you buck.

Restaurants
• Applebee’s: 15% off with Golden Apple Card (60+)
• Arby’s: 10% off (55+)
• Ben & Jerry’s: 10% off (60+)
• Bennigan’s: discount varies by location
• Bob’s Big Boy: discount varies by location (60+)
• Boston Market: 10% off (65+)
• Burger King: 10% off (60+)
• Captain D’s Seafood: discount varies on location (62+)
• Chick-Fil-A: 10% off or free small drink or coffee (55+)
• Chili’s: 10% off (55+)
• CiCi’s Pizza: 10% off (60+)
• Culver’s: 10% off (60+)
• Denny’s: 10% off, 20% off for AARP members (55+)
• Dunkin’ Donuts: 10% off or free coffee (55+)
• Einstein’s Bagels: 10% off baker’s dozen of bagels (60+)
• Fuddrucker’s: 10% off any senior platter (55+)
• Gatti’s Pizza: 10% off (60+)
• Golden Corral: 10% off (60+)
• Hardee’s: $0.33 beverages everyday (65+)
• IHOP: 10% off (55+)
• Jack in the Box: up to 20% off (55+)
• KFC: free small drink with any meal (55+)
• Krispy Kreme: 10% off (50+)
• Long John Silver’s: various discounts at participating locations (55+)
• McDonald’s: discounts on coffee everyday (55+)
• Mrs. Fields: 10% off at participating locations (60+)
• Shoney’s: 10% off
• Sonic: 10% off or free beverage (60+)
• Steak ‘n Shake: 10% off every Monday & Tuesday (50+)
• Subway: 10% off (60+)
• Sweet Tomatoes 10% off (62+)
• Taco Bell: 5% off; free beverages for seniors (65+)
• TCBY: 10% off (55+)
• Tea Room Cafe: 10% off (50+)
• Village Inn: 10% off (60+)
• Waffle House: 10% off every Monday (60+)
• Wendy’s: 10% off (55+)
• White Castle: 10% off (62+)

Retail and Apparel
• Banana Republic: 10% off (50+)
• Bealls: 20% off first Tuesday of each month (50+)
• Belk’s: 15% off first Tuesday of every month (55+)
• Bon-Ton Department Stores: 15% off on senior discount days (55+)
• C.J. Banks: 10% off every Wednesday (60+)
• Clarks: 10% off (62+)
• Dress Barn: 10% off (55+)
• Goodwill: 10% off one day a week (date varies by location)
• Hallmark: 10% off one day a week (date varies by location)
• Kmart: 20% off (50+)
• Kohl’s: 15% off (60+)
• Modell’s Sporting Goods: 10% off
• Rite Aid: 10% off on Tuesdays & 10% off prescriptions
• Ross Stores: 10% off every Tuesday (55+)
• The Salvation Army Thrift Stores: up to 50% off (55+)
• Stein Mart: 20% off red dot/clearance items first Monday of every month (55+)

Grocery
• Albertson’s: 10% off first Wednesday of each month (55+)
• American Discount Stores: 10% off every Monday (50+)
• Compare Foods Supermarket: 10% off every Wednesday (60+)
• DeCicco Family Markets: 5% off every Wednesday (60+)
• Food Lion: 6% off every Monday (60+)
• Fry’s Supermarket: free Fry’s VIP Club Membership & 10% off every Monday (55+)
• Great Valu Food Store: 5% off every Tuesday (60+)
• Gristedes Supermarket: 10% off every Tuesday (60+)
• Harris Teeter: 5% off every Tuesday (60+)
• Hy-Vee: 5% off one day a week (date varies by location)
• Kroger: 10% off (date varies by location)
• Morton Williams Supermarket: 5% off every Tuesday (60+)
• The Plant Shed: 10% off every Tuesday (50+)
• Publix: 5% off every Wednesday (55+)
• Rogers Marketplace: 5% off every Thursday (60+)
• Uncle Guiseppe’s Marketplace: 5% off (62+)

Travel
• Alaska Airlines: 10% off (65+)
• Alamo: up to 25% off for AARP members
• American Airlines: various discounts for 65 and up (call before booking for discount)
• Amtrak: 15% off (62+)
• Avis: up to 25% off for AARP members
• Best Western: 10% off (55+)
• Budget Rental Cars: 10% off; up to 20% off for AARP members (50+)
• Cambria Suites: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Clarion: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Comfort Inn: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Comfort Suites: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Continental Airlines: no initiation fee for Continental Presidents Club & special fares for select destinations
• Dollar Rent-A-Car: 10% off (50+)
• Econo Lodge: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Enterprise Rent-A-Car: 5% off for AARP members
• Greyhound: 5% off (62+)
• Hampton Inns & Suites: 10% off when booked 72 hours in advance
• Hertz: up t0 25% off for AARP members
• Holiday Inn: 10%-30% off depending on location (62+)
• Hyatt Hotels: 25%-50% off (62+)
• InterContinental Hotels Group: various discounts at all hotels (65+)
• Mainstay Suites: 10% off with Mature Traveler’s Discount (50+); 20%-30% off (60+)
• Marriott Hotels: 15% off (62+)
• Motel 6: 10% off (60+)
• Myrtle Beach Resort: 10% off (55+)
• National Rent-A-Car: up to 30% off for AARP members
• Quality Inn: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Rodeway Inn: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Sleep Inn: 20%-30% off (60+)
• Southwest Airlines: various discounts for ages 65 and up (call before booking for discount)
• Trailways Transportation System: various discounts for ages 50 and up
• United Airlines: various discounts for ages 65 and up (call before booking for discount)
• U.S. Airways: various discounts for ages 65 and up (call before booking for discount)

Activities & Entertainment
• AMC Theaters: up to 30% off (55+)
• Bally Total Fitness: up to $100 off memberships (62+)
• Busch Gardens Tampa: $3 off one-day tickets (50+)
• Carmike Cinemas: 35% off (65+)
• Cinemark/Century Theaters: up to 35% off
• U.S. National Parks: $10 lifetime pass; 50% off additional services including camping (62+)
• Regal Cinemas: 30% off
• Ripley’s Believe it or Not: @ off one-day ticket (55+)
• SeaWorld Orlando: $3 off one-day tickets (50+)

Cell Phone Discounts
• AT&T: Special Senior Nation 200 Plan $29.99/month (65+)
• Jitterbug: $10/month cell phone service (50+)
• Verizon Wireless: Verizon Nationwide 65 Plus Plan $29.99/month (65+)
*Check out our Secret Cell Phone Discounts to view all cell phone discounts available to you!

Miscellaneous
• Great Clips: $3 off hair cuts (60+)
• Super Cuts: $2 off haircuts (60+)

Information courtesy of http://www.bradsdeals.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/108StoreswithSeniorDiscounts-BradsDeals.com_.pdf

Bed Bug Infestation Facts

2011-07-01T16:33:00.003-04:00

Bees are Good in the Garden but Trouble around your Home

2011-06-21T18:23:00.008-04:00

Let us make no mistake bees are one of the most beneficial insects on the planet. Bee species pollinate around 80% of the fruits vegetables and flowers on the planet. We must consider this before eradicating them.

Honey Bees (see top right) handle the majority of the pollinating work but a hive within the wall of your home (see right) can be destructive and physically dangerous. If possible a Bee Keeper should be called for safe removal

Carpenter Bees are large and aggressive but hardly ever bite. People commonly mistake them for Bumble Bees. The shiny dark abdomen of the Carpenter Bee makes it easy to identify.

Carpenter Bees bore into wood and raise their family within the chambers. Sawdust or frass is often visible and mistaken for Termite or Carpenter Ants.

Stains (see image) are a dead giveaway of a Carpenter Bee infestation. As they enter the hole to the nest they release excrement.

Bold Face Hornets are bigger than Yellow Jackets and mostly black. They like to set up their hive under eaves to protect it from rain. As they hive and population grow they can become very aggressive.

Paper Wasps are very similar to Yellow Jackets. They set up little hanging hives from window frames and roof eaves allowing them to access our homes easily.

Yellow Jackets are one of the biggest nuisances at backyard parties. In the spring they feed on sweets but in the late summer and fall they feed on protein like my hot dog on the BBQ Grill.

Mud Daubers set up a little mud nest on just about any type of structural wall.

Magic's three (3) Entomologist have trained our Technicians to identify and eradicate them.

Make sure to check out our upcoming TV show Rat Busters NYC on Animal Planet.

Here an Ant there an Ant everywhere Ants

2011-06-06T10:25:00.002-04:00

It looks like Ants are going to be very active this year. Everyone I talk to is complaining about the buggers and asking what needs to be done.

There are many different types of ants that invade our homes Carpenter Ants, Pavement Ants, Odorous House Ants, Acrobat Ants, Little Black Ants, and Pharaoh Ants. Treatment for these various ants share similar methods to help suppress them but require specific treatment methods to eradicate them.

First, all Ant infestation begin outside the home. Growing Ant colonies forage and explore continuously in search of food, water and nesting areas. Ants are three dimensional and can travel over tree limbs, power, phone & cable wires, up walls and barriers made of any material. They are also small and can exploit any openings or cracks in the foundation and poorly sealed door & window frames. Tree limbs must be cut back off roofs and bushes must be trimmed back away from the foundation. The foundation must be checked for cracks, holes around water spigot and utility service entry points and sealed with cement or appropriate patching material. Door and window frames must be properly caulked with silicon.

Next, an exterior treatment around the entire foundation of the home is required. This will halt foraging ants from wondering into your home in the future.

The last phase of the treatment will be varied depending on the type of Ant and the severity of the infestation. Many of these Ants set up colonies within our homes these colonies can grow rapidly and divide into multiple colonies. Treatment can be as simple as applying baits, topical spray or as complicated as deep treatment into wall voids.

Magic's three (3) Entomologist can easily identify the type of Ant and prescribe a treatment plan to eradicate them.

Spring Follow-up Termites

2011-05-09T15:30:00.001-04:00

Termites are attacking our homes right under our noses.

I found these videos by the National Pest Control Association that explain the problem & how to determine if you have termites.

Magic Exterminating offers both conventional termite treatments and highly recommends the Sentricon Termite Colony Elimination System.

Sentricon is the only method proven to eliminate Termite Colonies. Sentricon is also green and won the Presidential Green Chemical Award. For more information view the videos and visit our website and learn about our Termite Treatment Methods.

Basic Facts of Termites

Termite Prevention and Detection

Spring Time Advice on Pest Control

2011-04-28T14:45:00.001-04:00

Spring is here and so are those Pesky Pests.

Magic Exterminating's three (3) Entomologists have designed a viarity of services to help keep pests under control.

For NYC Termites we offer both The Sentricon Termite Colony Elimination System, winner of the Presidential Green Chemistry Award & Convention Liquid Treatments.

Our Annual Service Agreements include Emergency Service so you are always protected against the most common pests. Including: all types of Ants & Bees, Roaches, Crickets, and Mice & Rats to name a few.

We also perform inspections to help determine the cause of infestations (see images).

Magic is also there for year round pests like Bed Bugs offering low cost Bed Bug Monitoring, Dog Inspections, Heat Chamber Remediation, Educational Services and Treatments.

Remember to look for our upcoming TV series Rat Busters NYC on Animal Planet.

Press Release Animal Planet announces Magic Exterminating TV Series

2011-04-18T09:38:00.000-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 14, 2011 Contacts: Tahli Kouperstein: 240-662-2221 Tahli_Kouperstein@discovery.com or Patricia Kollappallil: 240-338-4027 Patricia_Kollappallil@discovery.com
Discovery Communications 2011 Press Release for Their Upcoming Programming

ANIMAL PLANET UNLEASHES ENTERTAINMENT SLATE FOR THE 2011-12 SEASON
New York, NY) — Animal Planet, the “Surprisingly Human” network, announces an entertainment roster of new series, specials and returning hit shows this season.

“Animal Planet tells bold stories at the electrifying intersection of humans and animals,” says Marjorie Kaplan, president and general manager of Animal Planet. “Whether through mysterious trips out into the wild, laugh-out-loud adventures with big characters, or moving and deeply affecting dramas, animals are a terrific accelerant to the wide range of raw, real, big entertainment audiences can expect from us.”

A new show, "Rat Busters," starring Jimmy Tallman and Michael Morales of Magic Exterminating, is one of several new series that network officials announced today before potential advertisers in Manhattan. "These are two New York guys, with big New York accents, and they're Brooklyn natives who go out and go after the rats in New York City, and bedbugs and pests," says Kaplan. "They really are strong, outrageous characters. You laugh and at the same time are stunned. Rats are pretty stunning TV."

"We're trying to elbow our way out of the old Animal Planet niche," Kaplan says. "This is a channel that for over 10 years meant animal content for animal lovers." That wasn't the wrong strategy, she says, but it created a narrow market. Now the focus is on finding "ideas that are raw and real." Animals are still a big part of the network, but now the critters are an "accelerant" to the stories.

The Planet’s new season has lots of larger than life characters. Highlights of Animal Planet’s programs include the new series:

RAT BUSTERS NYC (working title) New York City is made up of more than 300 square miles and is populated by more than eight million people and so many rats it's impossible to count them. In RAT BUSTERS NYC, New York’s toughest exterminators Jimmy Tallman and Michael Morales of Magic Pest Control scour the corners of the city, responding to calls involving unwanted pests and unearthing the most traumatic cases of rat infestations in the Big Apple. Each hour-long episode follows Brooklyn-born fellas Jimmy and Michael as they comb through the boroughs and get down and dirty fighting the city’s most notorious pests including rats, roaches, mice, bedbugs and other creepy crawlies. From the roughest streets of the Bronx to even the wealthiest parts of Manhattan, viewers witness Jimmy and Michael up close and personal with vermin and unwanted rodents. But it isn’t all work for these New York natives – the series also showcases Jimmy and Michael's lives away from the rat race.

"There's a lot of range under the [Animal Planet] brand. We need our audience to understand what that range is. We still have beautiful nature documentaries, and we still have 'Dogs' and 'Pets 101,'" Kaplan says. "Animal Planet is the whole frickin' Earth," she says. "There is no animal planet separate from the human planet. We don't live side-by-side with them, we share this planet."

Animal Planet finished 2010 with the highest audience delivery in its history and with its average median age down again to 44 years. With all original content, the Planet’s 2011-12 programming slate builds on the success of the network’s Surprisingly Human brand direction with new character-driven series as well as a lineup that explores the transformative power of animals to heal, discovers a new face of conservation, travels uncharted waters into legend, and continues the network’s dominance in the pet and natural history genres.

Animal Planet Media (APM), a multi-media business unit of Discovery Communications, is the world's only entertainment brand that immerses viewers in the full range of life in the animal kingdom with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for immersive, engaging, high-quality entertainment, information and enrichment. APM consists of the Animal Planet television network, available in more than 97 million homes in the US; online assets www.animalplanet.com, the ultimate online destination for all things animal; the 24/7 broadband channel, Animal Planet Beyond; Petfinder.com, the #1 pet-related Web property globally that facilitates pet adoption; and other media platforms including a robust Video-on-Demand (VOD) service; mobile content; and merchandising extensions.

For photography and additional press materials, visit http://press.discovery.com/us/apl/press-releases/2011/animal-planet-unleashes-entertainment-slate-2-1239/

Magic's upcoming TV series on Animal Planet in The Hollywood Reporter

2011-04-15T16:07:00.000-04:00

Animal Planet Picks Up 14 New Series and Specials. The Discovery network also renews 12 series including "Whale Wars," "Animal Hoarding" and top-rated "River Monsters."

NEW YORK – Animal Planet announced 14 new series and specials as well as 12 returning series for the network’s most robust original slate yet.

Returning series for the 2011-12 season include Pit Bulls & Parolees, Whale Wars, River Monsters, the network’s top-rated series, and the controversial Confessions: Animal Hoarding. REVIEW: Animal Planet's Killer Outbreaks. The network had its best audience delivery ever in 2010. And new series will continue to mine Animal Planet’s “Surprisingly Human” tagline, rolled out last year, by introducing viewers to the people behind the animals. Ned Bruha: Skunk Whisperer is about Tulsa, Oklahoma wildlife control expert Bruha, whom the network describes as “a cross between Ace Ventura and Crocodile Dundee.” Rat Busters NYC centers on Jimmy Tallman and Michael Morales, Service Managers* of Magic Exterminating. Swamp City chronicles the work of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue’s Venom One unit, who are trained to deal with Florida’s dangerous wildlife (Africanized bees, Tegu lizards and dozens of species of snakes) while also administering life-saving anti-venoms. My Extreme Animal Phobia follows psychologist Dr. Robin Zaso as she helps patients overcome fear of animals. And Sweet Avenger centers on vegan bakery owner and animal lover Danielle Konya, who is converting carnivores one egg- and butter-less cupcake at a time.

“There are a lot of people who talk about changing things,” says Konya. “But there are few people who actually do.”

The series will focus on Konya’s Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based bakery, Vegan Treats, which she runs with the help of her mom (who she says is “not been 100 percent vegan — yet”) and her best friend.

“This is a woman who is not going to take no for an answer,” says Animal Planet president Marjorie Kaplan, adding that in their first meeting, Konya told her one of the people she most admires is Paul Watson, the founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the anti-whaling organization featured in Whale Wars.

“It’s the same desire to change the world, just different tools.”

*corrected

Animal Planet series to feature Magic Exterminating

2011-04-14T09:29:00.001-04:00

Animal Planet migrates toward shows about people dealing with animals, like new 'Rat Busters'
BY Richard Huff - Daily News TV Editor
Thursday, April 14th 2011, 4:00 AM
Two outspoken city exterminators are part of a continuing makeover at Animal Planet.
The cable network is moving away from just animals to being more about people dealing with animals.
A new show, "Rat Busters," starring Jimmy Tallman and Michael Morales of Magic Exterminating, a New York based company, is one of several new series that network officials will announce today before potential advertisers in Manhattan.
"These are two New York guys, with big New York accents, and they're Brooklyn natives who go out and go after the rats in New York City, and bedbugs and pests," says Animal Planet president Marjorie Kaplan.
"They really are strong, outrageous characters. You laugh and at the same time are stunned. Rats are pretty stunning TV."
... Kaplan says. "Animal Planet is the whole frickin' Earth," she says. "There is no animal planet separate from the human planet. We don't live side-by-side with them, we share this planet."
Read the full Article here

Magic celebrates Earth Day 4-22-11 w/Green Shield Services & Sentricon Termite System

2011-04-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

Magic has been on the cutting edge of the green movement from it's inception. Magic's conventional services use Integrated Pest Management in an effort to reduce the use of pest control products by relying on eliminating harborage areas and food sources.

Magic also was one of the first pest control companies to seek Green Certification of our services. We went outside our industry to The IPM Institute of America and obtained the education and credentials to perform Green Shield Certified Services.

Magic also led the way with the deployment of the Sentricon Termite Elimination System. Sentricon is the only proven product the eradicates termite colonies. Additional, Sentricon won the Presidential Green Chemistry Award Challenge and is registered with the EPA as a reduced risk pest control product. This distinction was based on its low impact on human health, low toxicity to non target organisms (birds, fish and plants) and low potential for groundwater contamination when compared with other commercially available termite treatments.

For more information on Earth Day events in New York City visit their website at http://www.blogger.com/www.earthdayny.org

Meet the Author at Co-op & Condo Expo

2011-04-11T14:13:00.000-04:00

Meet Ralph H. Maestre author of "The Bed Bug Book" between 10am-2pm at booth 311 at the Co-op & Condo Expo, the leading real estate trade show in New York.

Join board members, shareholders and property managers and meet building service companies, attend educational seminares and get your questions answered.

New York's 24th Annual Co-op & Condo Expo
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 from 9am to 5pm
Hilton New York 53rd Street Avenue of Americas

Magic Pest Management is a family owned business founded in 1960.

Magic handles all phases of pest control.

No matter the problem Rodents, Roaches, Termites or Bed Bugs. No matter the situation Mutli-Family Dwellings, Commercial office or Retail Space, Industrial, Commercial Kitchen or Residential.

At Magic we believe in Integrated Pest Managment and offer Green Shield Certified Services

For more information call one of our three Entomologists at 718-961-9000.

NYC announces new Bed Bug Rules for Landlords

2011-03-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

New York City unveiled their new Bed Bug Portal. The new website (click here) is well organized, offers new brochures & updated information and guidelines for homeowners, renters, travelers, schools, commercial spaces, group homes, landlords and pest control professionals.

The city also amended Section §151.02 of New York City's Health Code. The amended Code effects Landlords and deals specifically with persistent Bed Bug problems where the City has already issued a Violation and has been called back and found the problem still exists. This second Violation calls for:

Retain a pest management professional certified and registered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) to employ all measures necessary to remove bed bug infestation in such unit(s).

Inspect and treat all units adjacent to, above and below infested unit(s) as well as all common areas as necessary to eliminate and prevent the spread of bed bugs.

Keep a record of all actions taken in compliance with this Order and correct and properly certify as corrected the violation(s).

Develop a pest management plan pursuant to Health Code §151.02 (c), in accordance with the attached guidance, to assist tenants in preventing and controlling bed bugs and other pests.

An affidavit from the a NYSDEC licensed Pest Management Professional signed and completed indicating the dates on which inspections were conducted and the treatment(s) provided in the affected unit(s).

Notify all occupants of these premises of such bed bug infestation, and actions to be taken by occupants in helping to control such pests.

Failure to comply can lead to fines up to $4,600.00 (additional info).

Magic's Bed Bug Protocols meet & exceed New York City's guidelines.

Magic continues to develop new innovative Bed Bug Services including:

Low Cost Scalable Monitoring Program - read more

Heat Chamber Remediation & Vault Fumigation - read more

Educational Seminars taught by our 3 Entomologists - read more

Bed Bug Dog Inspections - read more

Bed Bug Treatments - read more

Weather Strikes Again by Noe’l Thoman

2011-03-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

On December 27th 2010 Magic encountered its first snow storm of the season. Dropping anywhere up to 2 feet of snow, the storm crippled New York City and forced Magic to be closed for the day. The roads were really bad, making it nearly impossible for anyone to go anywhere. While some of us enjoyed the day off, other such as Jimmy, John Pabon, Michael Velsor, Todd and PC were here hard at work making sure we would not have a big mess to come back to (thanks guys!).

The days following the storm were especially difficult for us here at Magic since the basis of our business requires that our technicians are able to travel to our customers and the streets were not yet plowed. Several of our technicians had problems getting their trucks out of the snow and some of us had a difficult time making it into the office. However like always we managed to recover thanks to everyone who lent a hand either by shoveling, helping someone dig out, or by picking up other employees.

Here we are almost a month since the storm has hit and still there is plenty of snow left on the ground. Not to mention that we’ve had two more storms since then, which added to the existing mess. While our most recent storm was definitely not as bad as the first one, New York City was declared to be in a state of emergency and once again Magic was closed for the day.

I don’t know about you but with the wacky weather we have been having I find myself wondering what is next…

Green Bed Bug Products Released

2011-03-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

I traveled into the City last week to attend a little Expo about Bed Bugs. One of the event sponsors, EcoSmart, has released several green products to help fight the Bed Bug Epidemic.

EcoSmart is leading the way in the development of pest control products that are derived from essential plant oils. The EcoSmart difference is their extensive research and testing to prove that their products actually perform.

I had the opportunity to meet one of the scientists who does some of this research and testing, Gretchen Palich Ph.D. of EcoSmart and Iowa State University, at the event. Gretchen had several tables with the actual plants used in EcoSmart products such as Rosemary & Peppermint along with vials of the extracted oils.

Gretchen went into great detail about how EcoSmart not only tests the effect on the target organism but on non-target organisms in an attempt to limit the effect on them since they are beneficial. Gretchen is also doing research into the attractant nature of these essential oils and the application of that technology.

Magic has been using EcoSmart products as part of our Green Shield Certified Pest Control Services for many years. Magic looks forward to incorporating these new EcoSmart products into our Bed Bug Protocol.

Bed Bug Tool Box

2011-02-21T12:26:00.000-05:00

Magic would like to recognize Lynn Frank BCE Technical Director at Suburban Exterminating for co-writing an article in this months Pest Management Professional magazine.

The article is written to help Pest Management Professionals with Bed Bug detection & eradication.

The article highlights include:
•When, where and how these tenacious pests are occurring
•Practical Bed Bug Tips for pest control technicians
Great article Lynn and congratulations.

The full article can be read here Pest Management Professional

How not to let the bedbugs bite

2011-02-18T16:08:00.000-05:00

by Barbara Turnbull Reprinted from The Toronto Star February 18, 2011

bedbug is in a class of its own. They’re tiny, tenacious and love to travel.

Humans have been tormented by insects since we first entered caves — but the (released this week by Skyhorse Publishing). The New York-based entomologist makes a strong argument that we shouldn’t let sleeping arthropods lie — even if our own sleeping quarters aren’t infested. He wrote the book, he says, to “intrigue, horrify, entertain and be useful.” It is chock-full of the history of the bedbug, its life cycle and its current place in our ecosystem. Most importantly, it is a useful guide to prevention and treatment.

The key, he says, is vigilance — and to make simple changes to thwart them. He says one reason our forebears put legs on beds is to keep our bedding off the ground and away from the bugs. We’ve forgotten that, and today often put bedskirts under our mattresses — providing a perfect ladder for bedbugs to climb up and move in.

What follows is an edited version of the Star’s recent telephone interview with Maestre.

You say there is no other pest like the bedbug?

Because of the fear it induces in the human psyche. Even when an infestation is gone, there’s a lingering psychological recovery period of up to six months. It brings a lot of deep nightmares to the forefront.

Maybe it’s because they’re in our beds while we’re sleeping?

It’s also how we perceive the bedbug. If you have them you feel shame — because at some level you think it means you’re dirty or you’re poor or you’re not a good housekeeper. And if you have an allergic reaction it can feel like you’re being bitten again and again.

These were long periods when they went under the radar and you didn’t hear much about bedbugs.

There’s many reasons for that. Many people thought that DDT wiped them out, and that’s not necessarily the case. Our appreciation of the importance of sanitation and the proper disposal of garbage helped. We changed — our furniture changed, our lifestyle changed, the way we did things changed. Then when they went away, we changed back. Now that this pest has returned we have to start thinking along those lines yet again.

Is pest management busier now than ever?

It’s a growing industry because the population continues to grow. But world travel is also allowing all sorts of new invasive species to enter the country, and bedbugs are just one.

So what are we doing wrong and what are we doing right?

What we’re doing wrong is panicking. There is absolutely no need. What we’re doing right (and it’s started in this past year) is that there are many people in the pest-control industry and government who are performing the research necessary to control these pests and educate the public. It’s vigilance that’s going to be the key to all of this: education, learning what they are, what they look like. Slowly but steadily, government is coming into the picture and realizing what steps are going to be needed to really help society.

You recommend checking for bedbugs everywhere. Do you really check every seam of your coat and every seat before you plant your butt?

I’m not talking about taking 15 minutes, but as you’re putting your coat on take a look-see on the outside, on the inside, stick your hands in the pockets and pull them inside out. And just that little bit, which takes maybe 10 to15 seconds is probably going to be enough. If you know the location has had a bedbug problem then you want to be more thorough. If you’re staying in a hotel absolutely go through everything. If you go into a movie theatre, go through everything a little more thoroughly than you normally would. If you’re taking the train or the bus, take just a quick look-see.

Travel seems to be a big culprit.

One person may introduce the bedbug into a hotel room and then the next person is in the hotel room the next night. They may pick up one or two of them and then leave. Then a third person checks in. The exposure becomes exponential. That’s why vigilance in that situation is so important. It may take several days before the hotel itself becomes aware that there’s a problem in the room and reacts to it.

So there’s still much to learn about these guys.

They’re doing so at university levels all the time, learning about the behaviour. One example: There are 10 to 12 different pheromones that will attract bedbugs. Most males and nymphs (young ones) will congregate in and around that area, and so do females that aren’t pregnant. But for those females already pregnant, it acts as a repellent. That’s why no one has been able to come up with some sort of trap, like a roach motel, to attract bedbugs. You’ll catch some, but you you’re not going to catch all of them.

First Termite Swarm of 2011

2011-02-11T13:50:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, Chuck, one of our salespeople, dropped by my home with a sample he collected from a home on the North Shore of Long Island. He wanted me to confirm his identification of the insect. He had about a dozen live winged specimens which meant they were reproductives of some sort. Upon closer inspection I immediately noticed the four equal sized wings and under a magnifying glass I could see that the body only had two segments.

Termites I responded. Let me bring them into Ralph our Board Certified Entomologist for confirmation. Ralph slid them under his digital computerized microscope and sure enough Termites. Ralph told me that the earth is water saturated due to the melting snow and the sunshine Monday and Tuesday combined with the radiant heat of a homes foundation tricked the Queen into believing it was spring and sending out the swarm of reproductives.

I was excited because this was the earliest Termite swarm I had ever heard of.

Be on the lookout... Termite season will probably come early this year.

Magic offers the Sentricon Termite Bait System and conventional liquid treatments.

THE BED BUG BOOK

2011-02-01T17:01:00.000-05:00

The Complete Guide to Prevention and Extermination
By Certified Entomologist Ralph H. Maestre

Magic is proud to announce that our very own Technical Director Ralph H. Meastre BCE has published his first book. All of us have benefited by Ralph's expertise in Termites, Rodents, Ants, and especially Bed Bugs.

In the book Ralph goes through Bed Bug case studies detailing how people got them, how Magic eradicated them and the advice given to prevent the return of Bed Bugs.

Ralph will be appearing on Good Morning America February 23, 2011 and will be interviewed around the country on an ABC Satellite Radio Tour February 24, 2011.

Below is the official press release from Skyhorse Publishing:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Esther Bochner
ebochner@skyhorsepublishing.com
212 643 6816 x 224

ARE YOU SAFE FROM BED BUGS?
EXTERMINATOR RALPH MAESTRE SHOWS YOU HOW TO PROTECT YOUR HOME AND YOUR FAMILY!

THE BED BUG BOOK
The Complete Guide to Prevention and Extermination
By Certified Entomologist Ralph H. Maestre

“They were everywhere. The bed bugs were in the dentures, toothbrush, dressers, ceiling, walls, baseboards, sofa, dining room table, inside groceries, and in a picture frame of The Last Supper.”
- From a cast study in The Bed Bug Book

Bed bugs were believed to have been eradicated in the 1940s and ‘50s, but after a 1972 ban on the use of DDT, the dreaded insects are now reaching epidemic levels! Recent high-profile infestations include the Empire State Building, apartments at the University of Texas at Dallas, the New York City Department of Health, and the Victoria’s Secret and Elle Magazine headquarters. Outbreaks have occurred in Cincinnati, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and hundreds of other cities throughout the country. No tourist attraction, department store, or home is safe from these creepy, crawly, pesky vermin. Are you prepared?

In The Bed Bug Book, board certified entomologist and practicing exterminator Ralph Maestre provides answers that will protect you, your home, and your family from catching bed bugs, and educate you about how to get rid of them and prevent them from coming back if you’ve already gotten them.

Some of the vital advice that you will read inside includes:
• There is no silver bullet for bed bugs. Despite public wishes, there is no one pesticide that is easy to apply, needs only one application, is safe for the environment, and has no ill health effects on humans. It is important to constantly be alert to signs of bed bugs, and educate yourself about how to maintain a bed bug-free home, spot them if they do appear, and find an extermination method that is safe for you and your family.
• Throwing out your mattress does not solve the problem. This is an extremely common misconception. Bed bugs migrate off the bed and hide in cracks and crevices in the room.
• The importance of being alert while traveling. One of the most common places for families to get bed bugs is on vacation. Practical things that you can do to prevent this from happening to you are: inspect your luggage on every step of the trip, inspect your hotel room before use, and launder all clothing as soon as you get home.
• Picking the right pest management company is key. Choosing the right exterminator for you is the best way to make sure that the bed bugs are really gone. Pick an exterminator that has been around for a while. Make sure their personnel are certified and have insurance. Ask if they have an entomologist on staff or on retainer for consultations.
• The government needs to step in and help. With the bed bug situation in this country getting worse by the day, the government needs to step in and help its citizens learn about and solve the problem. They should provide education on identification and common treatment methods. They should provide grant money for research and support individuals in need of assistance who can’t take care of the problem, such as the elderly. It is only with steps like this that we will begin to see a real change in the state of bed bug infestation.

In The Bed Bug Book, based on years of pest control experience, Maestre provides real case studies of people and places where he found bed bugs including: why the people he describes got them, how he exterminated them, and the advice he gave the residents to make sure they didn’t come back.

It is absolutely VITAL that the American public read this book and begin making smarter, more educated choices that will begin minimizing the extent to which bed bugs plague this country! With Maestre’s help, we can all take comfort and pride in living bed bug-free lives!

About the Author:
RALPH H. MAESTRE is a board certified entomologist in urban and industrial entomology. He received his BA in environmental science with a minor in biology. Maestre has been a New York State certified commercial pesticide applicator since 1987. He is currently supervisor of pest control technicians at Magic Exterminating in New York City.

To schedule an interview with Ralph Maestre or excerpt some of the tips inside please contact: Esther Bochner / 212 643 6816 x 224 / ebochner@skyhorsepublishing.com

The Bed Bug Book
The Complete Guide to Prevention and Extermination
By Ralph H. Maestre, board certified entomologist
Skyhorse Publishing Paperback Original
On Sale: February 23rd, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-61608-299-4
Price: $12.95

Center for Biological Diversity files Endangered Species Lawsuit

2011-01-26T10:04:00.000-05:00

At Magic Exterminating we take the Environment seriously.

Our services are performed using Integrated Pest Management Protocols (IPM) and we offer Green Shield Certified Services.

IPM is a necessity to eradicate pest problems and deter the excessive use of pest control products. Our staff is trained to spot sanitation and structural conditions that are allowing pests to thrive.

Along with the correction of the conducive conditions, and a responsible treatment plan, infestations are brought under control quickly.

Additionally, Magic has sought Green Shield Certification by the IPM Institute of North America (IPMINA). The IPMINA is not associated with the Pest Control Industry and audits our protocols. Green Shield Certified Services prohibit the use of any products banned by the States of New York & California, and New York City's Local Law 37.

Magic's Entomologists have developed a Heat Chamber which kills Bed Bugs without the use of chemicals and an Economical Bed Bug Monitoring System.

I remember visiting the Oceanside Marine Study Area on a school trip. I was amazed at the flock of Roseate Terns sweeping back and forth along the shoreline.

I discovering that a bat inhabited the garden courtyard area of an apartment I lived in. At dusk I would hear his tweeting and step outside and catch him darting just over the shrubs and trees feasting on insects.

I have a friend that is a clam digger and another that is a fishing boat captain and my mother lovers butterflies so I planted a butterfly garden in my backyard.

Everyone at Magic has experiences like this and we are all concerned about our environment and understand our responsibilities.

All of us at Magic want future generations to have the same opportunities to experiences the beauty of nature as we have.

You can read more about the lawsuit here click

Bed Bugs Harder to Kill

2011-01-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal has reported on the release of the newest Bed Bug research. It confirms that Bed Bugs are developing resistance to some of the most common pest control products.

Magic's NYC Entomologists have been aware of these developments for years. They continually review and change our Bed Bug Protocol and Magic believes our protocol is the best in the industry.

Our Entomologists have also developed a Heat Chamber which is a Non-Chemical methods to eradicate Bed Bugs and have created an affordable Bed Bug Monitoring System.

For more information visit our website for New York City Bed Bugs.

How to Identify a Bed Bug Infestation in your Home

2011-01-19T17:26:00.000-05:00

I came across this great video that features Dr. Louis Sorkin of the Museum of Natural History.

I have attended seminars given by Dr. Sorkin. After one meeting I was invited into the bowels of the Museum and given a jar with some paper towels stuffed in it to hold. Dr. Sorkin told me to rub it and warm the glass up. Within several minutes the paper was swarming with hundreds of Bed Bugs looking to feed. It was a surreal experience.

This video is very informative and contains most of the information I pass along to our clients. Please give it a moment to load.

How to know if you have bedbugs

Cleaning specialists' tips for evading bedbugs

2011-01-10T11:35:00.000-05:00

I had to publish this article By Kitty Bean Yancey of USA TODAY.

I am asked this question all the time and this is some great advise.

New year, new travels.
Bedbugs can hide in seams of mattresses and in luggage in hotel rooms.

Among travelers, bedbugs are a growing concern, since the hitchhiking, blood-sucking critters have proliferated (whether because certain strong pesticides have been banned or because more of us are on the move is a matter of debate).

You don't want to get bitten in a hotel room, even though bites are not lethal. And you certainly don't want to bring bedbugs home, where eradication can cost thousands of dollars, and bedbugs can lie dormant before reappearing to feed.

Here are some travelers' tips from The Maids, a franchise cleaning company in the USA and Canada.

•First, put your luggage in the bathtub or on the toilet seat while you inspect a hotel room. "Apparently bedbugs can't get a decent grip on porcelain" and climb up, says Tamara Moller of The Maids.

•Keep luggage on the luggage rack, off the floor. Hard-sided luggage kept closed also makes it harder for bedbugs to hide in your bags. Safest of all is to keep your luggage inside tightly closed plastic bags. Trash bags or giant zippered bags are used by some travelers, including Moller.

• Check the mattress and bed frame and wall behind the bed for black spots (fecal material) or blood stains that indicate bedbugs have been present. Pull back sheets, inspect the mattress and seams, plus upholstered furniture and nightstand and dresser. Bedbugs are large enough to see, but they often hide and are active in the dark.

• When leaving, place luggage in plastic bags and seal securely. Once home, wash clothing on the hottest temperature setting you can. Bedbugs die at high heat. Dry on high for at least 30 minutes. (Some travelers store their bags in sealed plastic to be sure no hitchhikers came back home.)

Doing all this "can be tedious," Moller admits. Bedbug "bites can be bothersome. And it's hard to get rid of (bedbugs) when you get them home. They don't respond to typical household chemicals. You need a professional" exterminator. Treatment often means tossing mattresses and furnishings.

Those who haven't encountered bedbugs may scoff (I haven't seen one yet, but itch every time I write about them). However, I know people who went through horrible times trying to eliminate them and lost treasured possessions in the process.

The Bedbug Registry is a useful tool to see whether a hotel you plan to visit may have been infested. It contains more than 20,000 reports on hotels and apartment buildings in the USA and Canada. You can post anonymously, which can invite false reports, but it's an interesting tool. Hotels can respond, and some do. What surprised me was that a few luxury properties that I've stayed at in New York City have reports of bedbugs. New York is a hive of bedbug activity.

I also have learned that big hotels and major hotel chains are likely these days to use regular detection and extermination services, which lessens the chance of meeting up with one of the little pests. Readers, have any of you encountered bedbugs and how did you get rid of them? I have never heard much about bedbugs on planes or trains; anyone know anything about this?

Posted Jan 10 2011 4:30AM

You can see the entire article here http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2011/01/cleaning-specialists-tips-on-evading-bedbugs/137029/1

Magic Exterminating Awarded Angie's List Super Service Award AGAIN !!!

2011-01-03T15:23:00.000-05:00

Magic Exterminating is proud to announce winning Angie's List Super Service Award for the second consecutive year. 2009 Angie's List Super Service Award

This awarded is determined by customer reviews of our services. Magic must receive an "A" in all categories for the entire year to be eligible.

We want to thank all of our Customers for their reviews and congratulate our Staff for performing at a such a high level of excellence.

Magic Exterminating has been in business since 1960 and services Manhattan (NYC), Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Long Island. Magic is a full service Pest Control Company servicing Residential, Commercial, Restaurants, Hotels, Schools, Hospitals, Construction and Industrial clients for Bed Bugs, Termites, Rats, Mice, Roaches and a myriad of other pests.

Entomology Society of America holds 58th Annual Meeting

2010-12-21T12:57:00.000-05:00

Over 5000 Entomologists & Students converged on San Diego for five days earlier this month.

The ESA meet annual to give out awards and disperse new scientific information on all types of insects.

One of the hot topics this year was Bed Bugs of course.

Ralph H. Maestre BCE one of our three (3) Certified Entomologists attended.

He was impressed by the studies done on the Bed Bugs resistance to various pest control products.

Several studies discussed the use of Heat, Steam & Freezing techniques. The studies found Heat & Steam as the preferred method of eradication over freezing which was found to be less effective.

Magic has always believed that Steam & Heat were more effective than freezing. We been using industrial steamers and portable Heat Bags in the field since the beginning of the Bed Bug Epidemic.

Magic has also constructed a Heat Chamber at one of our facilities which is used to eradicated both Bed Bugs and Wood Destroying Insects.

The ESA also released there first journal in 39 years, The Journal of Integrated Pest Management which is free to view online.

To see photos of the event check out ESA on Face Book

Here is a video of the 2010 Linnaen Games Finals

How Do I Detect a Bed Bug Infestation

2010-12-14T14:16:00.000-05:00

So many people ask me "HOW DO I PREVENT GETTING BED BUGS???"

There are some precautionary measures to take in attempting to prevent a Bed Bug infestation (Magic consults business' and offers educational seminars on the topic) but total prevention might be impossible.

Why you my ask? Bed bugs transport themselves from one place to another in our personal belongings like purses, brief cases, book bags, luggage & our coats.

People with Bed Bug infestations go through their daily routines going to work, the doctors office, the movies, taking a cab, bus or train, visit friends homes & go on vacation. Bed bugs can get off at anyone of those places.

This is the problem because we are going about our daily routines also. How can you with certainty check the seats of a movie theatre or bus, the conference room chairs at a business meeting or at your doctors office.

The precautions can be drastic and inconvenient. Fortunately, there is a simple product that can help detect a bed bug infestation in your home. A product called ClimbUp Insect Interceptor which can be easily placed under the legs of beds, sofas chairs and dressers. The concentric rings catch Bed Bugs as the attempt to climb up and feed.

If a Bed Bug infestation is detected a Professional Pest Control Company like Magic Exterminating should be contact immediately to eradicate the infestation.

Click here to learn more about ClimbUP

To Combat Bed Bugs, Sanitation Sets New Rules for Disposing of Mattresses and Box Springs

2010-11-24T10:34:00.001-05:00

Beginning December 3rd, 2010, the New York City Department of Sanitation will require all City residents to fully encase within a sealed plastic bag all mattresses or box springs being discarded for DSNY collection. This new rule will help prevent an increase in bed bug activity, with bed bugs being found in homes and apartments. Bed bugs are generally nocturnal and tend to live in bedding, such as mattresses and box springs, hiding in their crevices until they are ready to feed.

Under the new rule, failure to place a mattress or box spring out in a proper bag can result in a $100 fine. The Department will delay enforcing the new set-out rule for 30 days, followed by full enforcement beginning January 3rd, 2011.

"There has been a rise in bed bug-related complaints within the City, and bedding is the prime nesting place for most bed bugs," said Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty. "With this new rule, and thanks to the support of Councilmember Gale Brewer, we will safeguard our workers and help to mitigate the spread of bed bugs throughout the City. We also suggest that the plastic mattress bags be placed around the bedding before it is removed from the room out to the curb to further limit bed bugs from infesting other parts of the home or apartment."

Councilmember Gale Brewer said: "I appreciate the efforts made by the Department of Sanitation to address the bed bug epidemic that our city has been grappling with, an issue I have been working on since 2006. In 2008, I introduced a bill, Intro 0872-2008, that would require all bedding and furniture set out for collection to be both completely contained inside a sealed plastic bag, and labeled with a sticker or decal indicating that it may contain bed bugs. I believe the rules promulgated by DSNY are a step in the right direction towards curtailing mattresses and box springs as a vehicle of spreading bed bugs. In our shared concern for the health and safety of city employees, I look forward to working with the Department to ensure that these rules are as effective as possible."

Plastic bags to contain the bedding are available at department stores, home improvement centers, at other home supply businesses, and online, at a modest cost. Bedding stores also provide removal options with purchases.

For further information, go to www.nyc.gov/sanitation, or call 311.

Batten Down the Hatches here comes Winter

2010-11-03T10:58:00.000-04:00

Today my front lawn was covered with glistening frost. I realized daylight savings was this weekend and I have a lot of chores to prepare my home for winter.

These things will help your save money and keep your home pest free during the winter months.

1) Heating
•Have your Furnace Inspected and cleaned.
•Clean & Cap your Fireplace\Chimney to keep out birds and rodents.
•Change any filters in your forced air heating system.
•Consider a programmable thermostat.
•If you have Hot-water radiator bleed the valves.

2) Foundation - Mice can slip through space as thin as a dime.
•Use weatherstripping around doors and caulk windows.

•Inspect interior sill plates for dry rot or pest infestation.
•Check that Dryer Vent is properly installed and working.
•Secure crawlspace entrances.
•Inspect exterior for cracks and exposed entry points around pipes & seal them.
•Switch out summer screens with glass replacements from storage. If you have storm windows, install them.

3) Roof, Gutters & Downspouts
•Clean gutters and check the downspouts.
•Installing leaf guards on the gutters.

•Use downspouts extenders to direct water away from the home.

4) Weather-Specific Equipment
•Drain gas from lawnmowers.
•Service or tune-up snow blowers.
•Replace worn rakes and snow shovels.
•Clean, dry and store summer gardening equipment.
•Sharpen ice choppers and buy bags of ice-melt / sand.

5) Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detectors
•Install carbon monoxide detector near the furnace & water heater.
•Test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and replace batteries.
•Buy a fire extinguisher.

6) Plumbing Freeze Overs
•Drain all garden hoses.
•Insulate exposed plumbing pipes.
•Drain air conditioner pipes and Sprinkler Systems.

7) Landscaping & Outdoor Surfaces
•Trim trees if branches hang too close to the house or electrical wires.
•Seal driveways, brick patios and wood decks.

8) Emergency Kit
•Buy indoor candles and matches / lighter for use during a power shortage.
•Prepare a list of Emergency Phone Number and tape them by the phone.
•Buy a battery back-up to protect your computer and sensitive electronic equipment. •Store extra bottled water and non-perishable food supplies (including pet food), blankets and a first-aid kit in a dry and easy-to-access location.
•Prepare an evacuation plan in the event of an emergency.

Twister hits Queens by Noel Thoman

2010-10-14T13:17:00.000-04:00

On September 17th 2010 for the first time since 1985 a tornado touched down and hit Queens. Those of us working until close that night got to experience this first hand and I am sure it is something we will never forget.

While others were aware of the tornado warnings, everyone in the office had no idea of what was going on other than the fact that it was raining. I was trying to get my work done because it was starting to rain and I did not want to get soaked walking home.

Right before I started packing my things a the end of the of the day a co-worker walked into the management office to discuss a customer with me. About one minute into our conversation I heard a lot of noise coming from outside, it sounded like a bunch of bowling pins falling and the rain drops sounded as if they were golf balls falling from the sky.

It was at this point that most of us decided to get up and walk over to entrance to see what was going on because all the gates were down already and we could not see out the other windows. As we walked over to the window someone walked in from outside to get away from the rain. The gates started knocking against the windows and the doors were swinging open and then the power went out.

All of us were standing in a circle when another co-worker came running into the front door soaked. It was so bad outside that she left her car in the middle of 59th ave and later on found out that her car had an electric pole going through the roof.

Power lines started to fall and spark, there was a flash of light and then it went pitch black. It looked like a huge cloud went down 59th ave and then light started to break. When we all stepped outside we could not believe what we were seeing, trees and power lines were down everywhere.

The Facilities Manager pulled up to our rescue, asked if everyone was ok and like always took charge of the situation. It was not until about a half hour later until everyone decided to leave, One of the Managers and Technician drove everyone home and I started on my way home. As I was walking home there were trees down everywhere and traffic

was almost stopped, it was like a scene out of a movie.

Magic went without power through Friday night. Fortunately for the great staff we have, we were able to pull through even without power. I am personally thankful that everyone here at Magic made it safely through the storm.

On a lighter note I would like to thank Mother Nature for the beautiful new window by my desk.

Magic receives New York State Employer Recognition Award

2010-10-04T10:45:00.000-04:00

As Marketing Director for Magic I am out at seminars and events promoting my company and seeking out strategic alliances that would move forward our business. The last two years we have had to tighten our buckle while maintaining a high level of service to our customers and employees. We were out sourcing our cleaning services, their performance was poor and cost high.

I ran into Iris Allen of VESID at an event and the idea struck me that we could do the right thing by hiring a disabled person, maintain the office work space at a higher standard and have the opportunity to grow as individuals… in sourcing... what a concept.

I ran the idea by our Facilities Manager Jimmy Tallman who got on the band wagon and then we presented the idea to ownership. The idea got their attention and within a few months Evie Torres our Office Manager started interviewing candidates for the position.

Evie’s told me about her experience, Working with VESID has been such a rewarding experience. When we agreed to work with the program I was not sure what to expect. The interview process was interesting and I could not believe some of the responses from the members of VESID interviewing for the position. When I asked several of the interviewees why they had arrived thirty to forty minutes prior to their scheduled interview, the general response was that they did not want to arrive late by missing the bus or getting lost on the way here. I knew then that the candidates interviewing meant business.

After a few interviews I met with David, I asked him about his previous work experience and his reasons for leaving. One of the things he expressed was that sometimes he’d be close to a job site and they would call him to let him know there was no more work for him and that he should go home. I felt terrible that anyone would take advantage of an employee and their time by not giving them sufficient notice. David interviewed really well, he has performed well on every task given to him and continues to learn the industry. At this time my only hope is that in the future we can hire someone else through VESID since our experience with David has been such a positive one.

The experience I believe is all about David. He is intelligent, highly motivated, a fast learner and takes constructive criticism well. He mastered his job duties so well that I sought to expand his duties states Jimmy the Facilities Manager. In addition to his maintenance duties I put David in charge of the paper room (office storage) and our chemical storage facility. He maintains the stock and process chemical requests from our thirty technicians. I was able to rewarded David with a raise and expand his hours. I wish I could clone David, we really hit one out of the park by hiring him says a smiling Jimmy.

Dogs and Bed Bug Detection

2010-09-08T14:56:00.000-04:00

Magic Pest Management started using dogs in 1990 (the first in New York) to locate termites within structures. Magic continues this long history by now offering Bed Bug Sniffing Dogs.

Magic services homes, condominiums, apartments, cooperative living and business units, office buildings, colleges, hotels and motels, local, state and federal buildings, nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living centers, furniture and mattress companies, cruise liners, bus companies, etc.

Human Inspections
 Trained pest professional are only able to detect visible signs of bed bugs with an accuracy rate of about 30%.
 Bed Bugs like to hide inside walls, baseboards and under carpets. These areas are beyond the scope of a visual inspection

The Nose Knows! Bed Bug Canines are 96% accurate in the detection of bed bugs.

According to the Institute for Biological Detection Systems (IBDS) dogs have the following capabilities:

 Sensitivity: Can detect odors diluted to 500 parts per trillion.
 Discrimination: Dogs can differentiate a target vapor from non-target vapors even at relatively high concentrations of non-target odors.
 Odor Signatures: Dogs are trained to detect only one or two of the target odors most abundant vapor compounds.
 Multiple Odor Discriminations: Dogs easily learn to differentiate between ten distinct odors.

Why Use a Bed Bug Dog?
 Less Expensive
 Quicker and more accurate results
 Proven and Trusted. "Man's best friend" is used by the military and law enforcement
 Dogs are Honest
 Greater Peace of Mind. If the dog doesn't find bedbugs your probable safe from bedbugs.

The Truth about Bug Bites

2010-08-27T12:52:00.000-04:00

Today because of the media publicity around Bed Bugs many people jump to the conclusion that the bites they discover are caused by bed bugs. Bug bites do not always form into a bump immediately after the bite and can go unnoticed until the next day. The truth may have a much simpler explanation.

Were you outside early morning or evenings?
Do you sleep with your windows open?
Do you have a pet that partially lives outside?
Were you sitting out on a lawn or at a park?
Have you been hiking through the woods?
Were you gardening?
Did you discover a bird’s nest by a window?
Do you have a lot of dust and lint in your home?

We are exposed to the insects listed below during these activities.

Bed bugs are wingless biting insects that feed at night. Often associated with bedrooms and motel/hotel rooms. Infested rooms often have a distinctive odor.

Bed Bugs Facts:
Bed bugs bite every 3-5 days
One bite is not indicative of a bed beg infestation
As the infestation grows biting will increase to daily
Bed Bugs cause no known health risk
They are not caused by dirt but clutter helps them hide

Mosquitoes are small, delicate flies. Female mosquitoes need a blood meal in order to successfully lay eggs. A number of important diseases are transmitted by mosquitoes.

Fleas are small, wingless insects that bite people and pets in order to draw a blood meal. New medications make flea control relatively easy.

Ticks are eight legged, wingless arthropods. Ticks are a type of mite that bite to get a blood meal. Ticks can transmit diseases like Lyme disease .

Bird mites (rodent/nest mites) are tiny mites that live in the nests of their animal hosts. These mites occasionally invade homes and bite people as well.

Head lice or Pubic lice are small, wingless insects that bite in order to draw a blood meal. Bites result in itchy lesions. Seek medical attention.

Dust mites are tiny mites that inhabit the dust in our homes and may cause allergies.

Spiders are related to ticks and mites. While most spiders are harmless and even beneficial. Spiders only bite humans in defense.

Outdoor & Garden Pests

Yellowjacket wasps are medium-large stinging wasps. Most Yellowjackets are yellow with black markings; some are all black with white markings. Wasps are not clothed in fine hairs as are honey bees.

Africanized "killer" bees are a highly aggressive strain of honey bee that has moved into the southern states (US). Great care should be taken when these dangerous insects are encountered.

European paper wasp (Polistes dominulus) has become a pest in many parts of the US in recent years. Close in appearance to yellowjacket.

Chigger mites are tiny, extremely annoying biting mites. They produce an intensely itchy bite that can drive gardeners from their gardens. Found only in the southern states.

Fire ants (Solenopsis spp.) inflict extremely painful stings with any encounter. Currently, there is a highly invasive species (Solenopsis invicta) making inroads in the southern US and Australia.

Horse & deer flies are large, biting flies. These flies breed in moist areas around ponds, ditches, etc. and can be very persistent and annoying. Their large, dark or multi-color eyes make these flies easy to identify.

Biting midges are tiny, biting flies sometimes called "no-see-ums" or "punkies". These midges breed in salt marshes, mud flats, and shallow freshwater. Bites can be extremely irritating.

Black flies are biting flies whose larvae are aquatic, found in shallow, fast-flowing streams. These flies bite during daylight hours. Found mostly in Northern NY and New England.

Centipedes are medium to large arthropods with many pairs of legs, one pair per body segment. Like their spider relatives, centipedes are predators, whereas millipedes, with two legs per segment, are mainly scavengers. Centipedes may bite producing a painful but localized reaction. Centipedes are rarely a problem, however.

Mange is a condition in dogs, cats and other mammals caused by tiny mites. Sarcoptic mange is closely related to human scabies. Seek the help of a veterinarian.

Scabies mites are tiny mites that burrow into the skin causing a condition called scabies. Seek medical attention.

Unknown or mysterious bug bites can sometimes be traced to real insects or mites but often have another explanation.

Individual description credited to Jack DeAngelis, PhD OSU Ext. Entomologist (ret.) edited by Ralph H. Maestre BCE

In letter grades, McDonald's trumps Jean Georges

2010-08-10T09:48:00.000-04:00

August 09, 2010 3:25 PM By Lisa Fickenscher

Popeye's Chicken in Flushing, Queens, receives an A grade, as does a White Castle in Manhattan, while some high-profile restaurants are threatened with B's and C's.

Image by Buck Ennis

If New Yorkers assumed that fast-food eateries, chains or lesser known delis and cafés would rate poorly, they will be surprised to learn that many of the As given out so far went to such places as a Popeye's Chicken in Flushing, Queens, a McDonald's at 405 Sixth Ave. and a White Castle on East 103rd Street in Manhattan.

Since July 27, when the city's health department began issuing letter grades evaluating restaurants' cleanliness, 443 eateries have been visited by an inspector and just 16% of them received an A, the highest mark.

The rest are waiting for a second inspection before their final grade is posted, probably within the next few weeks. If they don't improve, 209 of them could get a B and 164 could be slapped with a C grade. A health department spokeswoman said that by early September the first Bs and Cs will start to be posted prominently in restaurant windows.

If New Yorkers assumed that fast-food eateries, chains or lesser known delis and cafés would rate poorly, they will be surprised to learn that many of the As given out so far went to such places as a Popeye's Chicken in Flushing, Queens, a McDonald's at 405 Sixth Ave. and a White Castle on East 103rd Street in Manhattan.

The T.G.I. Friday's at 1 Penn Plaza, which was inspected last Wednesday, was found to be spotless. It had zero violations.

More surprising are some of the celebrated restaurants and hotels that were inspected last week and received enough violations to earn a B or C, though they have an opportunity to improve their score when they are re-inspected.

Restaurants that receive 0 to 13 points qualify for an A; while 14 to 27 points equal a B; and 28 or more points equal a C.

Jean Georges restaurant received 15 violations and was faulted for holding cold food above 41 degrees and smoked fish above 38 degrees Fahrenheit, while The Palm at 837 Second Ave. received 20 violations. The Four Seasons Hotel earned 17 violations, and SoHo Grand Hotel racked up 25. Balthazar restaurant in SoHo received 18 points, Amy's Bread bakery on Ninth Avenue was hit with 29, and Tony's Di Napoli on Second Avenue and East 83rd Street received a whopping 39 points.

At least one celebrity chef who will likely come out of the new grading system looking like a hero is Thomas Keller, whose Per Se in the Time Warner Center has been inspected four times since 2008 with inspectors continually finding zero infractions. The restaurant was last inspected on April 13 this year.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100809/SMALLBIZ/100809841

New York City Bed Bug Advisory Report Published

2010-08-03T09:03:00.000-04:00

The long awaited NYC Bed Bug Panel Report has been published (full report here). I remember attending the public hearing with Ralph Maestre BCE Magic's Board Certified Entomologist.

Like so many of us in the Pest Control industry the Bed Bug Epidemic came fast and furious. Mr. Maestre along with our field managers and advise from other leading Entomologists (Dr. Austin Frishman, Dr. Bobby Corrigan & Dr. Louis Sorkin etal.) began to develop a treatment plan for the eradication of Bed Bugs.

Magic's Treatment Plan has been deployed in the field for over three (3) years with a 97% Success Rate after only one (1) treatment:

Inspection of the property (If an infestation is found Magic always advises to treat the entire premises and/or apartments.)
Educational Material and Lectures as the situation requires.
Do Not Throw Anything Out - Magic's Heat Chamber and Vault Fumigation options provide Green eradication of all pests.
Steam Treatments.
HEPA Vacuums.
Strict Preparation Guidelines.
Certified Bed Bug Covers.
Alcohol based application.
Non repellent pest control products.
Dusting of electrical outlets, wall voids, cracks & crevices.
a 60 Day re-treatment option.

Magic's Bed Bug Treatment Plan meets and exceeds the guidelines outlined in the Advisory Report (click here). For more information feel free to contact us.

Remember no matter the problem Bed Bugs, Rats, Mice, Roaches, bees Magic is ready to assist you.

NYC Health Dept.'s first Grade A bestowed

2010-07-30T16:08:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to the Restaurant Owner.

As reported earlier this, New York City has joined Los Angeles in grading restaurants using a letter system of either an A, B or C. (Please see the Crain article below)

Magic Pest Management demands in using Integrated Pest Management (IPM) protocols assist Restaurant Owners in complying.

First, Integrated Pest Management IPM address Sanitation and Structural Issue that are the cause of infestations. These methods help control Rats, Mice, Flies, German & American Cockroaches and other common pest.

Secondly, Integrated Pest Management relays heavily on monitoring and inspecting. This has a two fold effect. During the inspection process small problems like leaking plumbing is noted and can be correct before disaster strikes but even more importantly monitoring allows for the targeting of pest control reducing the application of pest control products.

Lastly, Magic services meet the follow protocols: Green Shield Certified Service, American Institute of Baking (AIB), HASSP & SQF.

Please feel free to contact us for a free estimate.

July 28, 2010 11:04 AM CrainsNewYorkBusiness.com

NYC Health Dept.'s first Grade A bestowed
A small deli in Long Island City, Queens, gets the distinction as the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene rolls out its controversial letter-grade system.

A small deli in Long Island City, Queens, will go down in local history as being the first business to earn a Grade A from the city's health department, which implemented its new restaurant inspection grading system on Tuesday.
The agency is holding a press conference Wednesday morning at Spark's Deli on 2831 Borden Ave., where health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley will laud the small business's accomplishment.

Co-owner Jose Araujo was low-key about his new fame. “We serve a lot of hard-working people, construction crews and mechanics,” he said. “And now they'll know for sure that I provide good food.” On Tuesday an inspector visited his business, awarding him with a score of 10. According to the new letter grading system, in which restaurants receive either an A, B or C grade (or fail the inspection altogether), a score of 0 to 13 qualifies as an A.

Later that evening, an official from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene called Mr. Araujo to ask whether the agency could hold a press conference at his place of business Wednesday.

Other restaurants were inspected on Tuesday and earned A's, but Spark's was the first, according to health department officials.

The agency will post the results of yesterday's inspection on its website today. Any business that received a grade lower than an A has the opportunity to appeal the inspection findings and will not be subject to public scrutiny—at least initially.

Spark's Deli has been in business for 20 years, and Mr. Araujo has owned it for the past five with his cousin Tony Araujo. It's located in a commercial section of Long Island City.
“We've done well in past inspections,” said Jose Araujo. “There's always something to fix or be done better, but we've never failed an inspection.”

The deli serves hot platters such as chicken marsala and barbecued meats, as well as traditional deli fare like sandwiches and heroes. “We're most well known in this area for our grilled chicken,” Tony Araujo added.

Restaurants like Spark's that receive an A will be inspected once a year, while those receiving a lower grade will get more frequent visits from inspectors.

When do Bed Bug Bites Stop Itching? By Ralph H. Maestre BCE

2010-07-26T16:39:00.000-04:00

I recently read an article by Stuart E. Mitchell, DO, PhD, MPH, CMI, BCE on the medical view of bed bug bites. I thought it would be important for all of us to understand what he was trying to say. “As a blood-feeding parasite, the bed bug has re-emerged as a medically significant issue”.

The bed bug is known in the entomological word as Cimex lectularis and the bites as Cimicosis. “These are lesions produced by the repetitive feeding of bed bugs. Reactions to insect bites and stings are common and a frequent cause for a visit to a physician. Bite reactions grouped or in a linear fashion experience after waking up in the morning are more recently suspected to be bed bug bites. Reactions itch intensively and persist over several days”.

We know this already, what we haven’t seen as often is the “bullous or blister or fluid-containing, elevated lesion of the skin”. This has an appearance similar to poison ivy reactions.

It appear the more study in this area is needed. The bed bug bite may indicate a “hypersensitivity reaction”. This indicates a reaction by repetitive bite and the body is over-reacting to the bite.

“It has been identified that a bullous allergic hypersensitivity results from bed bugs bite mediated by Immunoglobulin E (IgE) against bed bug salivary nitrophrin”. OK so we now know that the reaction is from the saliva. What we need to learn is that the “reactions or skin inflammation occurs as an immediate as;

> An immediate reaction (minutes) or
> A late-phase reaction (6-12 hour)

Immediate reactions are from the activity of histamine, prostaglandins, and others that cause an increase in vascular permeability leading to inflammation”.

After the initial reaction a delayed reaction occurs by the release of “leukotrienes and chemokines. Such mediators recruit other leukocytes to the site of the inflammation, causing a late-phase reaction. In bed bugs bites, late-phase reactions are causal for illness due to the development of sustained edema (swelling), vesicles, blisters, and intense pruritus (itching)”

Besides this there is another delayed reaction, type-IV hypersensitivity reactions which take one to three days to manifest. This explains why in several cases, individuals think they are still getting bites days after the pest management treatment has been performed. I suffer from this type of hypersensitivity when I get bitten by mosquitoes. I will rip into my skin days and weeks after the bite. I am not getting new bites, just reacting to the original bite again. Poison ivy acts in a similar fashion by not appearing for days after the exposure making the infected individual think they are spreading the oils all over.

To review and clarify;
> When bed bugs bite the saliva causes an immediate reaction (minutes)
> A late-phase reactions (6-12 hours) and
> A type –IV reactions (one-three days)

This occurs because of our allergic hypersensitivity. A doctor may prescribe medication to alleviate the itching.

Reference: Stuart E. Mitchell. “Cimicosis? I thought these were Bed Bug Bites!” July/August 2010. Pest Word Magazine.

Magic Exterminating specializes in getting rid of bed bugs in New York City. Our pest control professionals can eliminate bed bugs from your NYC apartment or business.

New Trade Shows

2010-06-03T09:45:00.000-04:00

Magic is upping the ante this year and will have booths at NY Association of Realty Managers at the Hotel Pennsylvania on 9/22/10 and The NY Business Expo at the Javits Center 10/20/2010. These two events boast a total of 20,000+ attendees.

These events are added to our fervent supporter of the local Chamber's of Commerce events in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and The Bronx supporting their Business and Green Trade Shows. Magic also does the Coop & Condo Expo at the NY Hilton which had approximately 5000 attendees this year.

Magic believes that our pest control services are superior to our competitors. Our Board Certified Entomologist Ralph Maestre and two Associate Certified Entomologist Anthony DeVito and Michael Morales bring over 50 years of education and experience to the tasks of eradicating Bed Bugs, Rodents, Roaches, Termites and all other common pests.

We offer our services to clientele from all segments of the market place including Homeowners, Renters, Property Managers, Coop & Condo Boards, Restaurants & Commercial Kitchens, Industrial Complexes, Schools, Government Projects & Construction Jobs.

We offer Green Shield Certified Services, meet AIB, HACCP & SQF standards. We are members of the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and can help LEED Projects with 2-4 points for Interior & Exterior Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Innovation Credits by implementing solutions above standard practices.

Magic will be one of the most highly visible exterminating companies in the New York Metro area by adding these shows.

We hope to see you at our next event.

Queens Business Expo at Citi Field

2010-05-10T09:35:00.000-04:00

Magic Exterminating is proud to once again be a part of the Queens Business Expo. We will be available to answer questions regarding Bed Bugs, Rodents, Roaches and other common pest problems. Magic can help at your restaurant, food processing plant, commercial property, multiple family residence or home.

Queens Business Expo

May 13, 2010 at Citi Field

from 9 am – 3 pm

Free Admission!
100 + Exhibitors
Meet New Contacts
Cultivate New Business
Attract New Customers

More info at Queens Chamber

City to cut pest control jobs by 70 percent

2010-04-08T14:13:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK POST STAFF REPORT
Posted: 4:07 PM, March 31, 2010

Rats!

In the latest round of budget cuts, the New York City Health Department is slashing the number of pest control aides by nearly 70 percent.

The number of full-time workers who clean up trash on properties where rodents have been reported will drop from 84 to 27.

“It’s going to affect quality of life directly, giving more harbor to rodents, lowering property values,” Fritz Reid, head of the union that represents the workers, told amNewYork. “These people are cleaning up our neighborhoods.”

The city predicts the cuts will save $1.5 million next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

Magic Exterminating can help with Rodent Control. We currently service all types of properties from Hi-Rise Commercial & Residential properties to Single Family homes.

Estimates are always free! Contact us Today

Magic Interviewed in The New York Enterprise Report

2010-04-01T12:39:00.000-04:00

First a little about The New York Enterprise Report, I think this quote says it best:

NY Enterprise Report is more than an event, magazine or information source. It strives to tie together the interests of forward-moving business owners and creates a real sense of community. For this reason the connections made through NY Report and the events have proved to be invaluable in expanding my network of CEOs and building my CEO groups. – Phil Liebman, Vistage / Strat4: Strategies for Growing Companies

Anthony DeVito, Associate Certified Entomologist and General Manger of Magic, gives some insight into the obstacles and Benefits of Going Green. He explains how Magic is Green Shield Certified by The IPM Institute of NA which is independent organization not directly associated with the pest control industry. Anthony also describes the importance of the IPM process during all types of pest control treatments.

You can read the article online CLICK HERE

Brooklyn Business Expo

2010-03-22T14:06:00.000-04:00

We are extremely excited about the upcoming expo.

The show is completely sold out and we are expecting a fantastic turnout.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Commissioner Walsh are both expected to make appearances at the expo.

For More Information Click Here

Spring is Here and so are those Troublesome Pests

2010-03-19T14:08:00.000-04:00

As we enter spring and the weather grows warmer many of the most common pests become active. Magic believes in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and offers Green Shield Certified Services which are preventative in nature. Our technicians inspect the exterior and/or interior of your property looking for conducive conditions and report them to you. Let's take a look at some of the common pests of the season.

Subterranean Termites are the most destructive insect pests of wood in the United States. They cause more than $2 billion in damage each year, that is more damage than caused by fire and windstorm combined. They live underground and build tunnels, referred to as mud tubes, to reach food sources.

Subterranean termites swarm in the spring. The swarmers, hundreds of them, emerge from the ground or are forced into homes through cracks and crevices in the foundation. This is a sign that your home is under attack. Termite swarmers are easy to identify, they body is norrow with two (2) segments, about 3/8 of an inch in lenght, with four wings of equal lenght.

Magic utilizes the Sentricon Termite Colony Elimination System. Sentricon is the only termite system proven to eliminate termite colonies. It is also the winner of the Presidential Green Chemical Award do to the reduced amount and focused use of the control agent.

Carpenter Ants are another pest that attack your home. They excavate chambers inside the wood beams of your house were the colony nests.

They also swarm in the spring. Once again, if there are a large amount of swarmers within your home it is a bad sign and you may have a nest within the structure. Carpenter Ants range from 3/8 to 1/2 inch in size, they body has three (3) segments and the wings are of unequal lenght.

Carpenter Bees resemble bumblebees in both size and appearance, but are not social insects. They construct their nests in trees or in frame buildings. Most of the top of the abdomen of carpenter bees is without hairs and is shiny black in color. By contrast, the abdomen of bumblebees is fully clothed with hairs, many of them yellow in color. If you see a number of large bees hovering near the eaves of the house or drilling in wood, you have carpenter bees.

Carpenter bees begin their nest by drilling a nearly perfectly round entrance hole (about 1/2 inch diameter) into the wood and bore chambers were they deposit eggs. They hibernate in the tunnels during the winter, emerging in the spring to mate and enlarge the old tunnels creating more brood chambers for their young.

City will Required Restuarants to Post Cleanliness Grades

2010-03-17T14:21:00.000-04:00

When I was living in California, Los Angeles implemented a similar rating system. I remember how seeing an "A" or "B" in a restaurant window I was try for the first time made taking the risk much easier. I also remember driving right on by restaurants with a "C" in the window.

Magic Pest Management has been servicing the New York Restaurant Industry since 1960. We have staff members trained by the American Institute of Baking that can help you.

Sanitation is pest control. When trying to control and prevent infestations of rodents, cockroaches, ants and flies it is imperative. During a typical service our technician inspects and reports on any sanitation problems allowing you to become proactive in your approach avoiding severe Heath Department inspections.

We also provide Green Shield Certified Services which show your concern for your patrons, workers and the environment.

Magic can only be a success if we keep your restaurant success. Call for a free inspection and estimate today and let us help you post an "A" grade

For more information see the NY Times article here

New York Department of Health Press Release

Dow Announces New Sentricon Termite Bait

2010-02-25T09:25:00.000-05:00

Dow AgroSciences has announced their latest innovation to the Sentricon® Termite Colony Elimination System — Recruit™ HD termite bait. This bait is a cartridge that allows for the removal of the wood insert and contains a much more durable bait that can last up to one year.

The product is scheduled to be available in New York in 2011.

For more information watch this video

Going Green in Queens 2010

2010-02-24T12:06:00.000-05:00

Come see Magic at the Going Green in Queens 2010 Conference. We will have information about Green Pest Control and be able to answer questions about Bed Bugs, Rodents, Roaches, Termites and most other common pests.

Saturday March 27, 2010
9:30am to 3:30pm
Al Oerter Recreational Center
Flushing, NY 11355

Free Admission, Worshops, Giveaways, Food & Fun

More Info Contact Herr281761@aol.com

More Info at IOBY.COM

Magic joins NYPD Project Nexus

2010-02-23T17:07:00.000-05:00

The New York City Police Department’s Operation Nexus is a nationwide network of businesses and enterprises joined in an effort to prevent another terrorist attack against our citizens. Our detectives have conducted over 25,000 visits to firms that have joined us in this mutual effort. Members of Operation Nexus are committed to reporting suspicious business encounters that they believe may have possible links to terrorism.

The NYPD believes terrorists may portray themselves as legitimate customers in order to purchase or lease certain materials or equipment, or to undergo certain formalized training to acquire important skills or licenses. There is also a concern that these individuals may simply steal certain types of vehicles, equipment or materials from the inventory of legitimate businesses. Whatever the method, once appropriated these items could then be used to facilitate a terrorist plot.

Through Operation Nexus, the NYPD actively encourages business owners, operators and their employees to apply their particular business and industry knowledge and experience against each customer transaction or encounter to discern anything unusual or suspicious and to report such instances to authorities.

Magic Builds Heat Chamber to Combat Bed Bugs by Angel Avila

2010-02-09T12:21:00.000-05:00

Well let me begin by saying, for those who do not know Peter and myself are the carpenters for the company as well as licensed exterminator with full knowledge and hands on experience in both professions. Magic realizes that carpentry and pest control work hand in hand and they are aware of the talent out there among there employees.

OK a few months ago me and Peter were approach by management (Anthony, Mike, Ralph and Jimmy) to build a heat chamber for green exterminating. Our first reaction was this is great! We have another opportunity to show our capabilities. It was a challenge set before us which was a opportunity to stimulate the mind. So we started off with the question to management what should the dimension be and its height as well as the size of the door opening (Jim T had a great idea as to what type of door should be built) and what would be place inside the chamber so we can determine the size.

These question and the answer to them were very important because we had to make shore that we had the space to build the Heat Chamber in the work space that was available, after careful inspection and a few measurements we told management that there idea was tangible.

The Purpose of the Heat Camber: Management believes the industry should work towards going green in every thing they do, as well as looking for a better way to kill Bed Bugs and wood destroying insects in furniture and other house hold items, the Heat Chamber made a lot of sense.

Why? First) it’s safe and it’s an all natural why to destroy these pest without the use of chemicals Second) air is able to penetrate cracks and craves a lot better then chemical or dust in a safe and no staining manner Third) the objective is to have the air heat up to the temperature of 120 degrees for several hours and circulate in the chamber to kill all types of insects and bugs by drying there bodies out. It has been proven this is the temperature needed to accomplishment this goal.

Managements Idea Brought Into Fruition Although the room was fairly square and had no real complicated angels or measurements there were still many questing that needed to be answer while we were building, like how do we protect it from water damage, from fire damage and the surrounding areas adjacent to it. Questing also arose were should the door be place to the right or left of the chamber, this would determine how long and large a piece of furniture could be place in the chamber to far to the right the objects would hit other structures to far to the left and you could not place a long piece of furniture into the chamber as we went back and forth with management ( Mr. DeVito and his team ) all the question were finally answer so me and Peter now had the clarity to proceeded forward .

One of the key factor of the project was to have the right insulation, insulation was put in the wall, ceiling and floor (type R-19/R-30 used) (left)

Water issue addressed before construction the walls and floor were seal with a special tar to prevent condensation on the inside of the wall and floor. (right)

With the understanding that heavy object would be place into the Chamber the floor was brace to the ground. (left)

Inside the chamber are 5/8 fire sheet rock walls and insulated heat absorbing wall panels with all corner sealed with a heat resistant tape. (right)

Materials: 72 # 2x4 22# piece of sheet rock 4# piece of ¾ plywood 9# rolls of insulation 2# box of 2 ½ crews 88” feet of track 15# piece of insulated heat panels 2# rolls of heat resident type 1# can of tar.

74th Purdue Pest Management Conference

2010-01-20T16:13:00.000-05:00

Anthony DeVito ACE, General Manager of Magic attended the 74th Purdue Pest Management Conference.

The event has been ongoing since 1936 and has grown into an international event. "It is imperative for a pest control company to attend events like this, " stated Anthony DeVito "Information is the key to success in any business, the science of pest management is moving faster and faster, Magic has been able to deliver superior service and develop programs to eliminate resilient pests like Bed Bugs, Rodents and Cockroaches by continuing to seek out the newest information, techniques, products and implement them into our pest control programs.

Conference organizers are committed each year to providing the information needed for the urban and industrial pest management profession to move forward. Outstanding speakers and industry leaders give training seminars, research and regulatory updates, product development, marketing and management hints, and additional information vital to promoting innovative and environmentally sensitive approaches to pest management. This four day conference held on the Purdue University campus is a great opportunity for pest management professionals to gain certification credits and to keep abreast of changes in technology.

Magic Goes Wireless & Paperless

2009-12-31T14:49:00.000-05:00

Going wireless means Going Green. Magic will be expanding our use of hand held devices to our technicians and sales force. This technological leap forward will help our clientele and Magic Pest Management by reducing paperwork and allowing immediate access to the collected data.

Paper Saved: Appointment Lists, Contracts, Brochures, Preparation Sheets, Service Tickets, and Quality Control Reports will be immediately generated into an electronic document that can be emailed or sent via facsimile to the client.

Service Enhancements: The hand held logs time in and out with GPS verification. Technicians must complete the task list generated for each service location, service tickets will be not be hand written or illegible.

Time Saving: Sales people and technician no longer have to drive to the office to pick up/ drop off paperwork. Automated filing and no more scanning . No more data entry of contracts and service tickets.

Bottom Line better Customer Service.

Magic offers Green Shield Certified Pest Control Services which guidelines are set by the IPM Institute of North America but Green Services is not enough at Magic we look to Green the way operate our business and deliver services.

Queens Green Business Summit

2009-12-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

Magic is proud to participate in the 2nd Annual Queens Green Business Summit. Come by our booth or the Facility Manager Forum for information on what Green Pest Control means and how it benefits your business, clients and the environment.

The Queens Green Business Summit will both challenge and identify ways to innovate in a green economy. Attendees will include those seeking to do business in Queens while embracing an emerging green economy.

The summit will consist of exhibitors, speakers, and informative panel discussions. Exhibitors and sponsors will gain exceptional exposure in the press and community and an unprecedented networking opportunity.

The Entomological Society of America's 57th Annual Meeting

2009-12-28T15:07:00.000-05:00

Magic was represented by our Board Certified Entomologist Ralph H. Maestre at the 2009 ESA Annual Meeting. You can see a video of Marlin Rice, President of the ESA, speaking about the event here Marlin Rice Talks about the ESA 2009 Annual Meeting.

I asked Mr. Maestre a few questions upon his return:

Question: Why is it important to attend events like the ESA Annual Meeting.

Mr. Maestre: "This meeting is attended by entomologist, educators, students, government officials and employees from around the country do discuss the most current concerns dealing with insects and anthropoids. Researchers from the leading laboratories and universities present the latest finding relating to crop protection, pest control, invasive species (see image of Brown Marmorated Stink Bug from China) and environmental issues."

Question: What did you find most interesting?

Mr. Maestre: "The next generation of pest control products that will be introduced over the next five (5) years which are being developed to target specific organisms like Bed Bugs, Termites, Ants, and Flies."

You can read Mr. Meastre blog at http://www.pest-of-the-month.blogspot.com/

Angie's List Users Award Magic 2009 Super Service Award

2009-12-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

Angie's list Super Service Award is presented to a company that maintains an "A" rating in all catagrories for an entire year. The award is very prestigous and out of the 100+ pest control companies in the New York area Magic was one of only two (2) that received the award.

Thank You Angie's List Users. Your reviews confirm Magic is the Best.

Magic wants to congratulate our employees. Our success is a direct result of our employees applying the core value expressed in our mission statement "Total Customer Satisfaction is our Goal."

Magic services Manhattan (NYC), Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Long Island. Magic is a full service Pest Control Company servicing Residential, Commercial, Restuarants, Hotels, Schools, Hospitals, Cunstruction and Industrial clients for Bed Bugs, Termites, Rats, Mice, Roaches and a mirade of other pests.

Bedbugs Equal Big Business

2009-12-18T17:17:00.001-05:00

Ralph H. Maestre BCE interviewed by Connor Boals of Columbia University on Vimeo.

Read the full article her CLICK

Bed Bugs vs. Rodents a Day with Dr. Bobby Corrigan

2009-12-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

I am a graduate of the New York City Rodent Control Academy so spending a day with Dr. Bobby Corrigan being educated on the latest information on rodent control was like receiving a piano lesson from a virtuous. Bobby covered numerous topics quoting scientific studies with a passion that kept me at the edge of my seat. The seminar, part of Magic's employee educational program, was attended by members of the NYS DEC, the NYC DOH and the Nassau & Suffolk County DOH.

One of the most interesting topics Bobby spoke to was about the economics of our industry. Bobby used the example of Bed Bugs vs. Rodents. Consumers are willing to pay big money for the eradication of Bed Bugs which at this present time do not transfer diseases but have a societal stigmatism attached to them and minor psychological side effects.

Yet give a consumer the cost of eradicating a Rodent infestation and their immediate response is “That’s a lot of money”. What consumers do not realize is that a Rodent deficates between 60-100 times a day and each piece of fecal matter carries 5 million different viruses. Rodents also urinate, which cannot be seen, over 3,000 times a day and the urine carries a protein that is one of the main causes of asthma. Additional, Rodents also carry Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis which symptoms mimic a very extreme case of the flu.

To make matters worse Rodent infestations usually require some form of Rodent Proofing to the structure. Rodents always invade a property in search of warmth and food. Structural repairs can become costly especially in multiple family dwellings.

The bottom line is that if consumers were properly informed of the health risks of Rodents they would understand that it is imperative to eradicate them from our homes, offices and our schools and the cost would be justified.

Magic believes in educating our clientele on all the issues surrounding there Pest Control needs allowing them to make educated decisions.

Bobby's credentials and history can be found at numerous places on the internet. Check:
Pest Management Professional article on Bobby
Pest Control Technology video footage of Rats filmed by Bobby

Magic Joins the U.S. Green Building Council

2009-11-02T10:25:00.000-05:00

Magic Pest Management has joined the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The USGBC developed the LEED Certification System to verify that a building is designed and built taking into account its environmental impact during its entire life cycle including construction, occupancy and decommissioning.

"We look forward to being involved in the design and planning stages of construction and renovation projects" stated Ralph Maestre BCE, "We often are called into a building that by design is enabling pests to flourish within the structure. As a Pest Control Professional and Board Certified Entomologist, I can provide advise to prevent such flaws in a buildings design and reduce the possibility of exposure to pest born diseases while limiting the use of pest control products. In addition, Magic's Green Shield Certified Services help both to limit exposure to non-target organisms around the exterior of a building, and reduce the impact to Indoor Air Quality."

Two employees will seek LEED Green Associate status and eventually LEED AP accreditation.

For more information visit our website at http://www.magicexterminating.com/ or the USGBC website at http://www.usgbc.org/

Green Brooklyn Green City Fair & Symposium 2009

2009-10-28T14:58:00.000-04:00

For the second year Magic Pest Management participated in the Green Brooklyn Green City Fair and Symposium.

This year CENYC did a wonderful job enlarging the range of attendees at the event. We found ourselves surrounded by groups of students from K-12 asking us about our Green Shield Certified Services.

"It made the event special" said Ralph H. Maestre Board Certified Entomologist who maned the both along with Anthony DeVito ACE "We both enjoy educating people and especially young people about what modern pest management is and that we no longer indiscriminately spray pest control products."

Today we use Integrated Pest Management (IPM) which looks at conducive conditions first and after correcting any of these issues we than focus on eliminating the invading pests.

We also have a myriad of Green Pest Control Products at our disposal that allow us to effectively treat for rodents, roaches, bed bugs, ants, bees and just about any other insect that might be found in our homes or offices.

Magic hopes this event continues to grow and looks forward to supporting CENYC efforts and the Green movement in the future.

Go Green! Anyone can be Conventional

SL Green, Tishman & Hard Rock Proposal for Aqueduct Redevelopment

2009-09-29T13:12:00.000-04:00

Magic Pest Management was invited to the Queens Chamber of Commerce for a presentation regarding the development of Aqueduct Racetrack. The presentation was given by Marc Holliday CEO & Edward V. Piccinich Executive VP of SL Green, Jay Badame President & CEO of Tishman and the Hard Rock.

The development team went over the extensive work they have done towards making this project a success. Jay Badame made assurances that Tishman will continue with its long record of hiring local subcontract and use as many renewable resources as possible to keep the project green. Marc Holliday laid out the vision of the future for the site which would include a possible convention center, hotel and entertainment / commercial mall that would bring thousands of jobs to the area.

Magic was very impressed and hope that the Sl Green, Tishman & Hard Rock team win this bid.

Additional reading at:

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090901/FREE/909019962

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3601/is_43_54/ai_n27894917/

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3601/is_36_54/ai_n25431440/

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080428005740&newsLang=en

Magic at Citi Field thanks to the Queens Chamber of Commerce

2009-09-29T10:25:00.000-04:00

About 20 employees of Magic Pest Management were the guests of the Queens Chamber of Commerce at the Mets last home stand. We want to thanks the Chamber and the Mets.

All of the employees said it was a great experience especially to getting away from the office and and the shop talk of Bed Bugs and the upcoming rodent and cave cricket season. Here are a few comments and pictures from the park.

Livia Machin - As my family and I were walking to Citi Field, we did not know what to expect. The last time we were at Shea Stadium, I did not feel like coming back. I was not a baseball fan but seeing how beautiful Citi Field is I am now. My family and I got excited with all the new features it has. The view was amazing and I can honestly say we enjoyed the game. My Kids had fun at the wiffle ball field and my husband was amazed with the way Citi Filed was set up. I loved Citi Field so much because it is very family oriented. and my whole family cannot wait to come back again. Thanks for the wonderful experience.

Ravi Joshi - My experience at Mets game was a great one, since this was my first time at Citi Field. I went with my mother, sister and cousin and all of them enjoyed themselves. The stadium had a modern look to it, there were a wide variety of food vendors and the facilities were very clean. We were all impressed. The best part of this experience was that the Mets won, the weather was beautiful and we had good seats located at the Pepsi Porch. We all thank The Queens Chamber and the Mets for there generosity.

Magic hits the streets of New York City

2009-09-15T11:30:00.000-04:00

3rd Ave Street Fair

Magic is a family owned business that understands what is really important, our children. This event gave Michele and Lexi a chance to hand out hundreds of insect themed coloring books and crayons to all the the kids passing by. They in turn gave us a big smile and thank you.

It seemed like everyone wanted to share a tale about their battle against Bed Bugs, Rodents or some other scurrying pest. Information regarding Integrated Pest Management, our Green Pest Control or Conventional Pest Control Services was provide with an invitation for a no cost estimate which made Mom and Dad Happy.

Hopefully you got to enjoy the beautiful day, unique vendors, food and entertainment offered.

We hope to see you at our next event "The Green Brooklyn... Green City Fair & Symposium" Thursday, September 24, 2009, Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn Opening remarks at 11:30am, fair 12pm-6pm, Free and open to the public! 40 interactive exhibitor booths featuring hands-on activities for kids and adults alike!

Image courtesy of Brandon Remler

Brooklyn Green Business Summit 2009

2009-09-01T10:55:00.000-04:00

Magic Pest Mgmt will participate at our 2nd Brooklyn Green Business Summit.
October 15, 2009 from 9 am - 5 pm.

Magic staff had a wonderful experience at this event last year. We fielded questions all day from the attendees regarding our Green Shield Certified Pest Control Services.

The Summit will help identify easy to implement and affordable ways to green your business, monitor and track your efforts, and of course report back to your customers. The summit gives you an opportunity to network with like-minded participants who know how to engage borough’s economic, social and environmental landscapes to grow their businesses and their lives.

See you all there.

2009-08-12T10:31:00.000-04:00

2009 ANNUAL MCC
3rd AVENUE COMMUNITY BENEFIT STREET FAIR
September13, 2009 Third Avenue from 66th to 86th Street NYC

Bring the family by MAGIC PEST MANAGEMENTS booth* at the upcoming "Third Avenue Street Fair" one of New York's oldest, largest & most exciting annual street festivals. This 32 year-old festival presented by the 3rd Ave. Community Benefit Fund will be held on Third Ave from 66th Street to 86th Street in Manhattan on Sunday September 13th from 11am to 5:30pm.

Magic is a family owned business founded in 1960. Magic an industry leader provides Green Shield Certified Pest Control Service.

The Festival is managed by The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce.There will be over 800 vendors selling crafts, clothing and ethnic foods.Three stages of entertainment are planned: one stage with children’s programming, Concert stage and the third stage will be live musical numbers performed by Off-Broadway and Broadway stars.

ONE MILLION PEOPLE ARE EXPECTED TO ATTEND!!!

SO COME ON OUT AND JOIN IN THE FESTIVITIES!!!

*Children will recieve a small gift while supplies last.

Magic to participate in 7th Annual Seniors Appreciation Week

2009-08-08T10:05:00.000-04:00

Magic was happy to receive an invitation to the 7th Annual Senior Appreciation Luncheon. The event is sponsored by New York State Senator Shirley L. Huntley.

Magic is a family owned business founded in 1960. Owner Hal Byer (a senior) is the heart and soul of the company. Hal strives to pass on his values which is expressed in the staff's commitment to customer satisfaction. He is always there with a word of advise or support often sharing a person experience that he learnt a lesson from.

Hal's visionary leadership led Magic to become one of the countries first Green Shield Certified Pest Management Companies. Changing peoples perspective on "What Pest Management is?" has become a major goal at Magic. True Pest Control is a cooperative effort incorporating actions required by the client in conjunction with the service of a Pest Management Professional.

We hope to talk to you at the event.

Magic in "The New Yorker" magazine

2009-06-29T14:46:00.000-04:00

Magic Pest Management in “The New Yorker” Rebecca Mead Onward and Upward with the Arts “The Art Doctor” The New Yorker, May 11, 2009, p. 58 excerpt from page 61.

... The meeting was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell, notifying Sheidemann of the arrival of an expert whom he had called in for a more pressing case. This was “Sister Perpetua’s Lie” an installation by Ree Morton, the late conceptual artist... The work, which included several tree stumps, had been in storage since 1995. When it was un-crated, It was discovered on of the stumps had started to rot... Sheidemann had been charged with finding and preparing a replacement. ...A member of the team had identified the kind of tree the stump came from: a White Oak. ...we painted it and stained it and then we realized that it is contaminated with bugs...

The expert consultant was Jimmy Tallman, From a company called Magic Exterminating, the name of which was embroidered upon the breast pocket of his blue work shirt. Tallman frowned as he looked at the stump. “It’s not dry-wood termites,” he said thoughtfully. “it’s some kind of bore beetle.” He made a call on his cell phone to his boss. “Hey Lou, How are you?” he said. “ I am with some customers in an art gallery with some white oak that is going to be part of a display. There are pebbles. It could be bore, right?” Lou apparently agreed that the piece need to come into the shop for fumigation, which would take place in a heated chamber the size of Scheidemann’s studio. The remain question was whether the stump needed to be shipped to the shop, which would take up precious time, or whether Tallman could transport it himself, in his van. “What’s the value?” with a note of uncertainty in his voice. “Ten dollars,” Sheidemann said. Tallman looked relieved. “That’s good,” good he said “Because I had one lady, a customer, and I took her antique table out with me, and it turned out to be worth twenty thousand dollars.”

“This will eventually be part of an invaluable installation,” Scheidemann said. “But I think we gave ten dollars for the cutting. So right now it’s worth ten dollars.”

Evolver Town Hall: Beyond Survive - We Thrive!

2009-06-01T14:12:00.000-04:00

Magic Pest Management (MPM) was happy to participate in the first Evolvor Town Hall event held on May 31 2009 at historical St. Marks Church on 10th Street & Second Avenue.

The event featured workshops, panels, music, art, food, info tables, and more. Speakers specifically addressed how YOU can make a direct impact in their area of expertise. Topics include: Renewable Energy & Efficiency, Green Jobs, Food Justice, Conscious Health and Living, Locally Supported Agriculture, Climate Change, DIY ART, Rooftop & Community Gardens, Media Activism, Resilient Neighborhoods & Communities, Local/Alternative Currency, and more.

Magic is one of New York's few Green Shield Certified Pest Management Companies. "As a leader in our industry we take ever opportunity to educate the public on the science of Green Pest Control" states Hal Byer President of MPM. Sanitation & Structural issues must be addressed to eliminate pests. Our staff's trained eyes observe problems a lay person may miss. Once identified these issues can usually be correct by the client. If an application is required we use Botanical or Food Grade Level products.

Magic Pest Mgmt Partcipates in Job Fair

2009-06-01T13:40:00.000-04:00

Magic Pest Management (MPM) participated in a Job Fiar sponsored by Council Member Elizabeth S. Crowley held at P.S. 88 in Ridgewood on May 30, 2009.

Magic has been providing quality pest control to the Queens Community since 1960 and is always anxious to give back to the community. "Our business is based on value added services. Due to this we have been able to retain our client base through the economic downturn and have posted a modest gain" states Hal Byer President of MPM "Because of this we are always looking for service oriented, professionally minded individuals to fill out our customer service and sales support staff." Evelissa Torres pictured with Council Member Crowley.

Mr. Met drafted by Magic Team to pitch Green Pest Management

2009-05-23T15:57:00.001-04:00

Queens Business Summit

The Magic Team made an appearance at Citi Field. Mr. Met joined us to help pitch our Green Services. The event was sponsored by the Queens Chamber of Commerce and the stadium was sold out. We all took a turn at the plate and we definitely hit a few Home Runs.

Evolver Town Hall Beyond Survive - We Thrive!

Magic continues to support grass root Green movements by signing on to participate in http://www.evolver.net/ launch event. On Sunday, May 31, join a city-wide gathering of innovative individuals, local groups, nonprofits, government organizations, and local businesses who are transforming today’s challenges into visionary opportunities. Discover new ways we New Yorkers can re-imagine our beloved Big Apple, making it resilient, thriving, funky, healthy, and green.

Magic will be present to distribute information on Green Pest Management.

May 31, 2009 - 1:30-5:30 PM

St. Marks Church in the Bowery, corner of 10th St. and 2nd Ave.

Admission $5.00
RSVP: EvolverTownHall@gmail.com

http://evolver.net/event/townhall

Trade Show Updates

2009-04-23T10:04:00.000-04:00

Upcoming Shows

If you haven't been to Citi Field come join us on May 21st for the Queens Business Expo at Citi Filed. The event is sponsored by the Queens Chamber of Commerce.

Admission is free and will feature local and nationally based business' that service our community.

Stop by our booth and say hello.

Past Shows
The Coop & Condo Expo which was held at the New York Hilton on April 7th was an impressive event. The stream of attendees was endless during this day long event. Our new booth brought a professional to our presence that was evidenced by the comments of passing attendees. It was especially nice to hear the praise of existing clients as they shuffled by. Our management team introduced our services to hundreds of potential new clients and made follow up appointments that has kept me busy running around inspecting properties.

Going Green in Queens 2009 Expo

2009-03-27T09:24:00.000-04:00

Join us for our Green Note Speaker, Susan LaCerte from the Queens Botanical Gardens
and over 50 groups including Urban Park Rangers, Citizens Committee for NYC, New York
League of Conservation Voters, New Yorkers for Parks, LIC Boathouse, GreenShores NYC,
Flushing Meadows Corona Park Conservancy, Friends of Gantry Parks, Queens Civic Congress,
Recycle Queens, NYC Department of Environmental Conservation, Trees NY, Alley Pond
Environmental Center, and over 40 other groups as we exchange ideas and network in a beautiful venue packed with displays, exhibits and lots of fun.

Magic Pest Management is proud of our continued commitment to educating the community on Green Pest Management. Come by our booth and ask what Green Pest Management means and how it is accomplished.

GOING GREEN IN QUEENS 2009
Greening, Educational and Networking Conference
Saturday, March 28, 2009
11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
at the
Al Oerter Recreational Center
131-40 Fowler Avenue
Flushing NY 11355

Ralph Maestre BCE lectures at The Museum of Natural History

2009-03-19T18:39:00.000-04:00

Ralph Maestre BCE lectured at the monthly meeting of the New York Entomological Society held at the American Museum of Natural History. Attending was Dr. Louis Sorkin BCE staff Entomologist at the Museum.

The lecture was on Advanced Termite Biology and Infestation Control. After the 45 minute lecture Mr. Maestre answered a wide range of questions and was given a round of applause.

Dr. Sorkin than led us out of the museum via his office, we passed rows of cabinets containing hundreds of preserved butterflies, several tanks containing various live tarantulas and were shown Dr. Sorkin's captive bed bug specimens.

The exchange of ideas continued over a wonderful dinner leaving my stomach full and my mind crammed with new information.

Magic Staff
Ralph Maestre BCE
Anthony DeVito
Andrew De Luca
Not Pictured in Attendance
Hal Byer
Todd DeGennaro

Magic Pest Management Invests in the Future

2009-03-15T02:00:00.000-04:00

Magic Pest Management moves forward assuring its place as an industry leader. Magic has a new logo that projects our philosophy on pest management and the place of the Pest Management Professional in today's world. We are stewards of not only the people who ask for our help, but of our environment and our planet. The symbol of a man in green holding a green planet encapsulates these thoughts.

Magic has been striving to educate the public about Green Pest Control through appearance at trade shows. Our new Trade Show Booth will help us project the professionalism and commitment of ownership, the management team and our employees to the public. Magic has appeared at the Queens Green Business Summit and the Green Brooklyn Expo. Magic's upcoming trade shows are Going Green in Queens March 28 2009, COOP & CONDO EXPO April 7 2009, and the Brooklyn Green Business Summit October 15 2009. We are moving forward as new Green Events are announced.

Magic is also sponsoring education seminars given by our Board Certified Entomologist Ralph H. Meastre. Mr. Meastre most recently spoke at the Queens Chamber of Commerce and has upcoming speaking engagements at the Museum of Natural History and for Ricochet Public Relations.

Magic is hopeful that we will be entering into several new partnerships and projects that will give back to the community and green the way our business functions.

Invitation to COOP & CONDO EXPO

2009-03-03T16:28:00.000-05:00

Magic Pest Managment would like to invite you to the COOP & CONDO EXPO being held at The Hilton New York on April 7th 2009.

Magic performs both Conventional and Green Services.

Magic's Green Standards are independently Certified by the IPM Institute of North America.

Contact me to be entered into the MP4 Giveaway.

Magic Pest Mgmt Attends NYC Council Meeting on Bed Bugs

2009-02-25T13:19:00.000-05:00

On February 24, 2009 the NYC City Council (meeting details) met for the second time to discuss three new proposed laws to control the increasing bed bug problem in NYC New York Daily News Article.

I attended the meeting along with Ralph Maestre BCE our Board Certified Entomologist (pictured with Kitty Lee of Residex, Dr. Bobby Corigan of the Dept. of Health and Walter Blohm of NYC PPCA). The experts that testified all agreed that a task force should be formed to study the procedures required to combat this fast spreading epdemic.

Magic Pest Mgmt is leading the fight against Bed Bugs. Ralph Maestre BCE uses all of the scientific data he collects and has formulated a treatment plan using cutting edge technologies. See CBS New Article Featuring Magic Pest Management perfroming a Bed Bug Treatment.

Queens Green Business Summit

2009-02-20T08:39:00.000-05:00

It was another inspiring day. When you work in a profession that most perceive as having a negative impact on our environment it is wonderful to see people become quickly fascinated by the concept of Green pest management.

We are working hard to bring the standards and practices into effect where ever we can. Our management team offers no cost seminars and educational programs to help people understand the benefits of going green.

Property Managers That Care

2008-11-25T16:45:00.000-05:00

Today I spoke to a property management company that asked me "Why would I care if your services were Green." It was a pretty scary comment taking into account the growing green movement. Most people do care. I wonder what the response would have been if it was his family home instead of the people he makes a living off of. I guess this is just an example of the attitude that has gotten American into the spot we find ourselves.

Here are some property management companies that do care:
Fisher Brothers
Gumley Haft Real Estate Property Management
GFI Development

New York Business Expo

2008-11-20T17:29:00.001-05:00

I attended the New York Business Expo at the Jacob Javits Center yesterday. The event boasts 600 vendors and 15,000 attendees. My experience tells me those figures are close to the truth.

There were also over twenty (20) seminars offered I attend two (2). The first was on perfecting your elevator pitch and the other on proposal writing.

The vendors ranged from no profit minority business development organizations to major banks and insurance providers. I found the local Chamber of Commerce offices very interesting and found they offer many marketing opportunities.

I also spoke with several Marketing firms that produce Exhibition Displays. Those nice graphical walls that you see all the pretty people standing in front of during photo ops. I look forward to erecting our own display at our next event.

For contact information on any of the above companies please feel free to contact me.

Welcome

2008-11-18T10:38:00.000-05:00

Come join me on the Green path.

I am the Marketing Director of Magic Pest Management a family owned business operating in the NY Metro Area since 1960. I formally owned my own pest management company and worked as a pesticide applicator for that concern.

It is an honor to know be employed at Magic. Magic has always been at the forefront of the pest management industry and was one of the first companies nationwide to attain "Green Shield" certification and offer Green Shield Certified Services.

My purpose here is to pass along my experiences, both positive and negative, to assist others in there Green endevours and to network with others as they stroll with me along the Green path.

Regards Andy
Go Green anyone can be conventional