By By ANDY HAMILTON / Niles Daily Star
NILES - Bugs beware. A new exterminator is in town.
Rose Pest Solutions opened its doors for business Friday morning with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Four Flags Area Chamber of Commerce.
The office is located at 2714 S. 11th St., across from Rural King in Niles Township.
Rose Pest Solutions has 18 vehicles that are on hand and ready to serve anyone within the Niles and South Bend, Ind. area.
The corporation's 14 other offices are spread throughout Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.
Stashed within the Niles location is Rose's own collection of critters that have been been brought back from the field by the technicians. The display room is filled with all types of insects pinned down in a glass case to help Rose's entomologists with identification. The room and its residents are Rose's best way of finding out what the rare-looking bugs are and how to go about treating them, service technician Betsy Milcinovic said.
Perhaps the most skin-raising residents are a pair of alleged wolf spiders and a slug, which Milcinovic said she came across while on the job. Milcinovic said the spiders were easy to spot because they were about the size of a tennis ball when she found them.
The slug, which Milcinovic called “her pride and joy,” was nestled inside one of Rose's hollow plastic tubes, called stations. These are stuffed with wood or chemicals to either attract or kill almost any variety of bug, Milcinovic said.
The most common pest that Supervisor Chuck Dougherty said Rose's is called to handle are ants. Most often, a tech is dealing with carpenter or odorous house ants, Dougherty said.
Supervisor Kenny Ray said Rose's uses the same plastic stations to deal with the ants in a similar way as termites and other insects. The method is less intrusive on the homeowner because it does not call for ripping back the carpet inside the house.
The grand opening was the fifth of 2006, CEO and President of the Four Flags Area Chamber of Commerce Ron Sather said.
A group of Chamber Ambassadors were also on hand to support the opening as well. Sather said the team was created in May 2005 as a way to keep communication lines open for all 700 members of the Chamber. Ambassadors make the “courtesy calls” to other businesses during regular hours, at grand openings and during the Chamber's Business After Hours, Sather said. At least 335 Chamber members met with an Ambassador last year, Sather said.