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Jan. 16, 2017
When local undergraduate student Mindy Rankin came home from work last Tuesday evening, she knew something was wrong.
“I saw two or three mugs on the living room table and thought, ‘huh, that’s weird, I thought I washed those,‘” Rankin explains. “WBut when I went to put them in the kitchen, I passed two more on my dresser and found at least ten of them sitting in the sink. That’s when I realized how serious the problem had become, ‘oh no… this is really bad.”
Soggy tea bags, spoiled milk, and tufts of fuzzy growth are: all telltale signs of a mug infestation,—an increasingly common health concern in crowded urban areas. Challis antiquus, the most common type of mug, is known to accumulate in spaces where students live and study for long periods of time, particularly during the winter. Once mugs are present, they reproduce extremely rapidly and are very difficult to kill.
“The trouble is, most mugs are resistant to pesticides nowadays,” explains pest control specialist Bob Koopman. “You just gotta go in and smash the critters one by one.”
Mugs are unable to fly, but can move quickly from the kitchen to other areas of the house by traveling on a human host andand remain hidden on flat surfaces for prolonged periods of time. If you suspect that you are suffering from an infestation, be sure to call your local extermination company so they can de-mug the house before your parents visit and lecture you endlessly.
