Our previous article about ticks discussed how they’re relatively easy to remove. Many don’t attach to your body immediately, often looking for the softest skin. Clothing prevents many of them from getting anywhere. You can pick them off, stick your tongue out at it because “you failed, you little %$#@,” and toss it back into the woods or the toilet. Removing them is relatively simple, if not disgusting if they become attached.

Battling bed bugs, on the other hand, means changing your situation more than searching your body. After all, humans have created the perfect environment in which they can thrive. We give them places to hide, sites to mate, and a year-long warm atmosphere in which they can do so. Oh, and we lay out a smorgasbord for eight hours every night—our bodies—so that they can come and dine in peace. What more could they want than an utter lack of predators? We’ve given them that, as we call the exterminator, and removed bed bugs’ natural predators, such as cockroaches, ants, spiders, mites, and centipedes. You might as well wear a birthday hat to bed every night because we’re throwing them a party every day.

Bed bugs aren’t the only animals out there we’re helping to thrive. While we might not protect them in our house, we encourage other animals to multiply as we change the environment. Here are some “success” stories we’ve helped shelter, feed, and breed.

Cockroaches

If someone says “disgusting New York apartment,” the first thing that probably comes to mind is a cockroach. As a city grows, there are affluent parts of town and poor sections. The more impoverished parts become derelict, repairs that prevent cockroaches from traveling from apartment to apartment. Of course, once one apartment has them, almost every apartment will.

It might surprise you that cockroaches shouldn’t even be in New York; cockroaches tend to be tropical creatures. Most cockroaches couldn’t survive a winter in New York City without the artificial heat we supply. But because there’s always a warm place to hide, cockroaches and New York will always be connected.

Raccoons

Raccoons are cute little trash pandas, and watching them frolic in the wild can be fun. But they’re also one of the most common carriers of rabies, and they have sharp teeth and often aren’t afraid of humans. Farmers hate them because they can get into feed supplies. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your opinion of them), many of them get hit by cars in rural and urban environments.

Raccoons have adapted well to living with humans, primarily because their dexterous hands can help them get into almost anything. They’re omnivores and can quickly eat human food, so the trash cans we put out provide them with just about every food they need to survive. Suburban fences don’t stop them, and while we might have diverted many of their water supplies, our sprinklers and birdbaths give them more than they need. We’ve also heavily reduced the animals that feed on them, such as wolves, bears, and large cats. Why don’t they take over the world? Well, our actions have helped one of their predators.

Coyotes

Coyotes are one of the most hated animals in America. Farmers hate them because they attack cattle, and homeowners aren’t fond because they sometimes attack house pets. But despite control efforts, the coyote has adapted to living with humans like few other animals.

The coyote was once a mammal of the western United States, but trying to destroy them made them move east. Coyotes thrive because they can survive even after a pack splinters, which is called a fission-fusion adaptation. Coyotes can go off in groups of one or two when a pack is threatened and start their own club. Even more impressive, threatened numbers cause them to have more pups. While a regular litter might be six, a pack in distress might have litters of 15 or more! (It’s like a social version of a starfish; cut it up, and you’ll have more.) When you splinter coyote packs, and if you also provide bridges so that they can cross rivers, they’re suddenly everywhere in the country.

Coyotes are fine adapting their feeding habits to the suburbs and cities. Trash cans are abundant, as are rabbits and squirrels. Perhaps most significant is that no one in the town is trying to poison or shoot them as they might in the wild. Urban areas work as safe spaces for coyotes.

Pigeons

Look at a skyscraper from a distance, and it looks magnificent. Look at it up close; it seems more like an ancient castle ready for battle, considering how many spikes cover every horizontal surface.

These spikes dissuade pigeons from landing on the building, nesting, and leaving their mess all over everything. But that doesn’t control the population, as the pigeons will go to a facility that doesn’t have such protection.

Pigeons are technically doves—rock doves, to be precise. The rock part of their names comes from the fact that they were initially doves that nest on cliffsides. We give pigeons precisely what they want when erecting a tall building, giving them a reasonable facsimile of their natural habitat. With few natural predators in cities, pigeons have found a place to thrive.

So we’ve helped pigeons in the “shelter” departments, but it’s also apparent that we’ve helped them in the food department. Big cities throw away a lot of food in the trash and leave many crumbs behind on the sidewalk as people eat on the go. Humans also have a weird interest in feeding animals.

While you can close your door on these other animals, you can’t keep bed bugs out that way. We have to be honest...writing about these different animals has been nice because every time we write about bed bug treatments, we itch like crazy! Just talking about them is horrible, but we want to eliminate them once they’re in a home. That means taking action. Because they tend to hide when we’re awake, we have to lay bed bug traps for them and kill them with bed bug spray. While these bed bug eradication methods can be intensive, at least there’s an answer. That answer is the Bed Bug Store.

Our natural, plant-based Bed Bug Patrol Killer Spray provides an all-natural solution to infestations of bed bugs, as well as fleas, spiders, and other common indoor bugs. Our 100% natural solution is made in the USA. It relies on the power of natural ingredients like citric acid, clove oil, and peppermint oil to naturally deter these bugs from living in your furnishings and upholstery. Just spray our solution on affected surfaces twice per day, and it will get to work on exterminating your bed bugs and preventing their return. To keep you safe from bed bugs on your travels, arm yourself with our Bed Bug Blasting Travel Spray, which comes in a handy, TSA-approved travel-size bottle for your convenience.