Living with a large infestation

Photo: Kathleen Kaiser

Kathleen Kaiser, president of Kaiser Pest Control Plus in Wichita, Kan., snapped this photo of a door hinge at a single-family home with what she calls the “worst cockroach infestation I have ever seen in a place where
people still lived.”

“I was called by the landlord because the tenants complained the heat wasn’t working,” she explains. “When the landlord arrived at the home, he discovered the cockroach problem and determined the cockroaches made the thermostat short out.”

Two school-aged children lived in the home with their mother, and about a month after the first cockroach control treatment, Child Protective Services called Kaiser. The social worker told her when he first visited the family, the walls appeared to be moving with all the cockroaches (she agreed). But after the first treatment, he spotted only a few and commended her on a job well done.

“In the end, I was able to get control of the cockroaches,” she says. “But I don’t know whatever became of that family.”