The Exterminators

Homeowners are the best customers of Los Angeles exterminators, said Carl J. Doucette, former president of Pest Control Operators of California and manager of Western Exterminator’s Los Angeles office. They account for about half of the local industry’s overall sales, he said, with apartment houses making up 25%, restaurants and food handlers 20%, and warehouses and factories the remaining 5%.

Most of the homeowners ask for preventive monthly sprayings or crack and crevice dustings with poison, Doucette said. “Some people are deathly afraid of seeing an insect anywhere. They see a spider and they go in orbit. . . . It’s peace of mind, and we guarantee it.”

Termites are the most talked about pest, but controlling lowly ants and cockroaches remains the real money-spinner in pest control. According to a biennial study by Klein & Co., a consulting firm in Fairfield, N.J., about three-fifths of the urban pest control industry’s sales come from the routine poisoning of cockroaches, ants and, to a lesser extent, such other small bugs as fleas and spiders.

“That is the meat and potatoes of the pest control industry,” Los Angeles County Deputy Agricultural Commissioner Cato Fiksdal said.

Southern California has plenty of termites, cockroaches and ants, but that does not satisfy the region’s exterminators. The region’s flea population has fallen since a peak in 1984, perhaps because of a lack of rain, Doucette said. “I wish we had more fleas,” he said wistfully, “because that’s a good business.”

Wild rodents such as ground squirrels and skunks are becoming a growing nuisance in Los Angeles County. Increased development of Southern California hillsides deserves much of the blame, said Frank Hall, a vermin expert with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. “It’s not so much that vermin increases, but people going into (their habitats).”

The growing intermingling of people and wild animals can be dangerous. Wild rodents and mammals are susceptible to sylvatic plague, a flea-borne disease known as bubonic plague when it strikes people. On Wednesday, the health services department announced the finding of an afflicted ground squirrel and coyote in Griffith Park, plus a diseased domestic cat in Rancho Palos Verdes and two plague-stricken stray dogs in Santa Clarita and Topanga.

“It’s just a matter of time before people come back with it,” Hall had said in an interview before Wednesday’s announcement.

The last three cases of bubonic plague in Los Angeles County occurred in 1984. All the victims survived.

Roaches, fleas, ants and other small insects: 61%

Termites: 25%

Rats, mice and other indoor rodents: 10%

Birds and outdoor pests: 4%