BONUS WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Which came first? The bedbug or O'Reilly?

Here's another item for the "news to make your skin crawl" file. In New York City, the offices of Fox News are waging a new kind of battle. It's not about ratings, bias, or credibility; it's against bedbugs. A veteran employee for the company is suing Fox after experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder as result of the pest infestation.

From Reuters:

Jane Clark, 37, a 12-year veteran of Fox News, a unit of News Corp, said she complained to human resources after being bitten three times between October 2007 and April 2008. She said she was ridiculed and the office was not treated for months.

Beacon Capital Partners, which owns the tower in midtown Manhattan, said in a statement that it had not been made aware of the problem and that it was the responsibility of tenants to manage infestations.

Clark, who says she's been diagnosed with PTSD and can no longer work, has filed a separate workers compensation claim with News Corp, and the company is paying her medical bills and lost wages. A News Corp spokeswoman declined to comment because News Corp was not named in the lawsuit.

She said she believed a colleague who used her workstation on weekends, and who no longer works for Fox News, brought the infestation to the office. Clark's home was never infested.

Clark says she suffers nightmares and keeps a flashlight at her bedside so she can check for bugs during the night.

The suit names the owner and manager of the office tower in Manhattan where Fox employees worked. She has filed a separate workers compensation claim against Fox, Reuters reports.

In his March 18, 2008 article, "Bedbugs at Fox News," Jacques Steinberg reports, "In an interview on [March 17, 2008] Warren Vandeveer, senior vice president for operations and engineering at Fox News, said the cable channel had realized it had a problem a few weeks ago, when an employee “caught a bug and showed it to us.” An exterminator determined that the incursion was limited to a “very small area in the newsroom.” But the source of the bugs was not determined until the exterminator inspected the homes of about 20 employees. Mr. Vandeveer said the exterminator later described one employee’s home as having “the worst infestation he had seen in 25 years in the business.”

And this from the Web site, Gothamist:

Fox swears the bed bugs have been “totally eradicated,” but the annoying thing about bed bugs is their tenacious ability to survive for months between feedings, and in some cases they can live up to a year before sucking blood again. The bed begs have clearly refused to let New Yorkers rest, but their sudden infiltration of Dick Cheney's favorite news source can mean only one thing: Al Qaeda training.

UPDATE: A tipster tells Gawker that the employee who caused the bedbug infestation has been terminated; he's described as "a satellite desk guy who was greasy and gross." Is that even legal? If New Yorkers can now be fired for a bedbug infestation, then the bedbugs have already won.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Ants Go Marching...

Today's Weird Wednesday story comes straight from the "you can't make this stuff up" file. For facility professionals outside of the Houston, TX area, this story is odd, but amusing. For fms in the largest city in Texas, it's "A Bug's Life" with a nightmarish twist, and the siege shows few signs of ending anytime soon.

The story is about ants...crazy rasberry ants. What makes them doubly nightmarish (especially for fms) is their appetite for electronics (computers, motors, wiring) and their tenacity (it's nearly impossible to kill them because of their extreme numbers and the cost of the treatment).

First spotted about six years ago, paratrenicha species near pubens (their formal name) may have arrived in Houston by way of cargo ships from South America or the Caribbean. Their numbers have gone from the thousands to the millions in the meantime, and their infestations have spread to five surrounding counties. Moving at the rate of a half a mile a year, the ants (named after Tom Rasberry, the first Texas exterminator to do battle with them) do bite, but they don't sting.

Linda Stewart Ball of the Associated Press reports:

Exterminators say calls from frustrated homeowners and businesses are increasing because the ants — which are starting to emerge by the billions with the onset of the warm, humid season — appear to be resistant to over-the-counter ant killers.

And when you do kill these ants, the survivors turn it to their advantage: They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide.

"At this point, it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ant because it is so widely dispersed," said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist.

The good news? They eat fire ants, the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.

But the ants also like to suck the sweet juices from plants, feed on such beneficial insects as ladybugs, and eat the hatchlings of a small, endangered type of grouse known as the Attwater prairie chicken.

Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists. They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner's gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA's Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven't caused any major problems there yet.

Apparently, Moscow has called Houston to make sure everything was safe at NASA.

Here's more on these critters from the Center for Urban & Structural Entomology, Texas A&M University, Department of Entomology:

They have been known to short out many different types of electrical apparatuses. In some cases the ants have caused several thousand dollars in damage and remedial costs. These ants often cause great annoyance to residents and businesses.

Currently, little is known regarding specific biology of this ant. Texas A&M's Center for Urban and Structural Entomology is currently investigating food source attraction (Rachel Wynalda, M.S. student), colony growth, and immature development (Jason Meyers, Ph.D. student). However, research regarding other Paratrechina species is available and may offer close approximations of this species.

Colonies are polygyne (multiple queens) with moderately sized numbers (several hundred to few thousand). However, size of the colony can be much greater, especially when considering their unicolonial (supercolony) behavior. The colonies can be found under or within almost any object or void, including stumps, soil, concrete, rocks, potted plants, etc.

Check out this news footage from a local Houston station:

This story makes me itch.

Need To Spread The Word About Pest Control?

Facility managers can download free newsletter content on pest management from Orkin Commercial Services. The company is providing articles on a variety of pest management topics, including identifying and handling an infestation, weather trends, and kitchen sanitation.

Created with the input of Orkin’s board-certified entomologists and quality assurance team, the newsletter content offers managers a way to educate occupants about pest management and equip them with practical information to help stop infestations before they start. “Many people don’t realize that the dirty dishes they leave out on the counter or the opened candy bars in desk drawers can actually be feeding pests,” said Orkin director of quality systems Zia Siddiqi, Ph.D.

Orkin is offering text-only versions of the articles and high-resolution images available for download on its site. Facility managers can download the articles by visiting this Web page; on the right, there is a section titled "Property Management Newsletter Content."

About Orkin
Founded in 1901, Atlanta-based Orkin, Inc. provides essential pest control services and protection against termite damage, rodents and insects in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Asia. With more than 400 locations, Orkin’s almost 8,000 employees serve approximately 1.7 million customers. The company serves homeowners and numerous industries including food and beverage processing, foodservice, hospitality, healthcare, retail, warehousing, property/facilities management, schools and institutions. Orkin is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rollins, Inc.