Getting the bugs out

MOSES LAKE — With the weather getting colder, some creepy crawly critters are likely to decide that your home should also be their home. A new business in town aims to help evict them.

“Spiders, ants, just generally insects,” said Josh Gilliam, owner of Bug Out Pest and Spray. “We’re a very hot and arid environment, but we also have access to a lot of water, so that brings out the bugs.”

Bug Out opened for business Aug. 1 and held its official ribbon-cutting Tuesday in Moses Lake. Gilliam has been in the extermination business for about 25 years, he said, first in Spokane and then in Moses Lake. He decided to go out on his own after meeting with his partner, Kip Burns, who also owns Blinds for Any Budget and B and B Doors.

“I met Kip at his house probably seven, eight years ago, when he first built his home in the Mardon area,” Gilliam said. “And I guess he just liked how I worked.”

Business has been, well, teeming since then. Burns said.

“We’re gaining five, six customers a day,” Burns said. “I mean literally, a day. It’s growing leaps and bounds.”

Besides pest and rodent control, Bug Out also offers lawn fertilizing and weed control. And if there’s anything the Basin isn’t short of, it’s weeds.

“We get a decent amount of rainfall, even though we think we don’t,” Gilliam said. (With) that and then hot summers, boom, they just go crazy. We get a lot of kochia — that’s the (one that looks like) a 6-foot Christmas tree. Crabgrass is very prevalent in lawns … and Russian Thistle. This area gets a lot of noxious weeds … These types of weeds are extremely difficult to get control of. You’ve got to do it in the early spring before they emerge.”

Pest and weed treatments involve a lot of powerful chemicals, for which Gilliam has all the necessary licenses and training, he said.

“All our chemicals that we use, it’s all pet-safe, it’s all kid-safe,” Gilliam said. “The amount of chemical I’m putting down is target-appropriate. So if I’m controlling a weed of a certain size, that’s the amount of herbicide I’m putting down. The same with a pest control. (If) I’m trying to control a spider or ant (infestation) or something like that, it’s a very low-use insecticide, and I just require that you stay off of it until it’s dry, which is anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.”

Bug Out is a family operation, with Gilliam handling the spraying and his wife, Michelle, taking care of the office work.

The key to Bug Out’s success is customer service, Burns said, and the fact that Gilliam never locks clients into a contract.

“People will get trapped for a year in a contract that they feel they can’t get out of,” Gilliam said. “They’ll have a technician show up and that technician can basically do whatever he wants to do. He can skip things, not do a thorough job, get in his truck and leave. And then those customers are held to that contract because they will have upwards of a $250 cancellation fee for canceling within that the calendar year. Then when they call with a complaint, the company will go, ‘Well, we’ll just send a technician out,’ and he’ll just come out and do the exact same thing again. People either get tired of it or they don’t like confrontation, so they just forget about it.”

“In my opinion, (contracts) are a trap,” Burns added. “They over-promise and under-deliver, and we’re not asking people for it.”

Bug Out is already making plans for the winter, when the bugs and the weeds won’t be as prevalent, Gilliam said.

“I’ll be getting into snow plowing and deicing for the winter months,” he said. “That’ll be something that I do to keep it busy in the wintertime.”

    Josh Gilliam, accompanied by partner Kip Burns and surrounded by Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce members, cuts the ribbon on his new business, Bug Out Pest and Spray Service.
  

    Kochia is one of the most prevalent weeds in the Columbia Basin, said Bug Out Pest and Spray Service owner Josh Gilliam.