Roaches do not like poisonous pesticides and neither does Mike Walker.
Walker's Tropical Shores business, Nature's Safeway, knows how to keep bugs out of your home without harming your health, he says. Walker started a new way of doing pest control in St. Petersburg by using substances in nature, such as boric acid and kelp to get rid of cockroaches, ant and just about any other pest. Others have followed.
Walker, 64, says spraying chemicals all over the place or calling pest control companies to do so is easy—and a lot of people do it. But, he says, for the most part, those chemicals are more harmful than bugs are.
Considering using spray pesticides on your lawn, dog and furniture to get rid of your flea problem? Forget it, Walker says.
Walker began his nature-friendly business 18 years ago for that reason. His Great Dane, Beauregard, like many dogs in Florida, was suffering from fleas. He placed a flea collar on him, treated the carpet and the yard and did everything he was told to do, he said.
"I managed to get rid of the fleas," he says. "But I also lost one of my family's best friends in the process."
The insecticide he was using contained a cholinesterase inhibitor. Cholinesterase is an enzyme needed for the nervous systems of humans, insects and vertebrates, including dogs, to function properly. Certain pesticides, like the one Walker used to treat the fleas, contain the cholinesterase obstructer, which can kill pests but can also be harmful to people and their pets in some situations.
"I realized that Beau weighed 165 pounds and so did I," he says. "I didn't even want to think of what it was doing to my wife who suffered from asthma and my young children."
After burying Beau in their back yard, Walker studied organic alternatives to pesticides and realized a nature-friendly exterminator was needed, he says.
St. Petersburg, like all of central and south Florida, is an area where roaches often present significant challenges to residents and businesses.
Walker says when he started his business, no one understood how natural substances, like diatoms, could kill insects.
Diatomaceous earth, or D.E., for example when scattered on an ant pile or on the ground, slices the insects that walk through it, making it an effective and non-toxic way of getting rid of insects.
Because people working at natural food stores and restaurants knew more about the dangers of pesticides, he says, he catered to their businesses when he began. Then, with people becoming more environmentally conscious they began accepting the organic methods, welcoming Nature's Safeway as an alternative to more commercial exterminator companies. Walker's company went from having a dozen customers to 1,200, he says, including apartment complexes, medical facilities and retirement homes.
Eventually, teachers and academia jumped on the idea, too. The University of South Florida has had Walker, who has no formal degree, come to lecture on boric acid and organic forms of pest control.
To explain the different levels of toxicity with pest control chemicals, he tells students that if four of them were sitting around at a table drinking the same amount of alcohol, one would be more intoxicated than the others because people's metabolisms work differently. This happens with poisonous methods of pest control on people, too.
"You don't need hard chemicals to kill bugs," he says.
Boric acid is one of the most popular forms of organic pesticides. The substance, a white, odorless powder is in household products such as eye drops and shaving cream.
"Boron is an element and poses no greater threat than table salt," Walker says.
Roaches live under refrigerators, ovens, washers and dryers, he says. Nature's Safeway's method involves using boric powder under the refrigerator, which the roach walks through, and it dies. Instead of drowning or zapping the roach with chemicals, his method causes dehydration.
"Natural [pesticides] takes longer and lasts longer," he said. "Traditional poisons tend to evaporate and pollute the air."
Walker says he will never hire anyone who used to do traditional pest control because, he believes, one's natural instincts are to go back to what we know best.
However, Walker encourages those who want to "convert to the natural way" to get a pest-control license and start their own businesses. Nature's Choice, Nature's Resource, All Nature's Safeway and Natural Bug Control have all spun off of Walker's Nature's Safeway.
Walker's opinions contradict those of some professional exterminators. He's confident in his methods, though.
"Pest-control companies like to do it because it's what they were told when they were younger and they're still doing it," he says of spraying insecticides. "But I disagree with it."
Today, about 90 percent of pest control companies in St. Petersburg use some type of organic pesticide, says Jack Carson, of Carson Pest Control and also professor of pest control at St. Petersburg College. Boric acid and diatomaceous earth, he said, are very effective toward outside roaches such as the American and the Australian cockroaches.
Roaches will eat virtually anything people will and many things we won't.
Walker relies upon what he considers to be tried-and-true methods for beating cockroaches throughout St. Petersburg: closing drains and cutting off access points to water.
Carson agrees.
"Outside roaches will harbor around water sources, such as pipes," he says. "They don't get away from their food source too far," which makes the problem easier to eliminate.
"Most people make keeping bugs out a lot harder than it is," he says. "Close your doors, keep your drains closed. You might see one from time to time that will sneak in, but you're not going to have a problem."
Unlike so many metropolitan area residents, though, Walker doesn't see cockroaches as an enemy so much as just a part of Earth's natural wonder. That's one reason he focuses on eliminating roach problems indoors and outdoors using garlic, sulfur and kelp.
But he doesn't concern himself too much with their presence outside buildings. Seeing one or two sprinting for safety on a sidewalk doesn't bother him either.
"I'm just chasing them to my next business," he said.