#infestations

⚠️ CW: Animal Cruelty and Death ⚠️

I saw a terrible video a few hours ago. Throughout the video, five or six mice and a snake were stuck to a glue trap and died a very slow, painful death over the course of a few days. It was horrible to watch but what was worse to see were all the comments cheering for it.

Glue traps are an incredibly inhumane type of pest control. They work by using a very sticky glue that traps animals such as rats, mice, snakes, bugs, and other small critters. The animals don't die immediately. Instead, they suffer and die a painful death of starvation and exhaustion. There have even been cases of them chewing through their own limbs in an attempt to escape.

These traps also end up trapping many animals other than the intended targets. There have been cases of harmless snakes being caught in traps intended for spiders, birds being caught in traps intended for insects, and even some threatened and endangered species being caught.

With all these awful consequences, you'd think that the traps would have to at least work well. Nope. Glue traps have been proven to have little to no affect on infestations as they don't target and address the source of the problem. People have also reported being bitten by some of the animals stuck to the trap while trying to dispose of the traps.

Roach infestations. Typhus outbreaks. A 5-month-old baby’s death. 

All connected to a rental empire in Southern California whose owner makes billions renting to people who are a step away from homelessness. The LAist found it while investigating evictions in Southern California.

This network of companies was responsible for about 4,400 parcels of land - many snapped up in the 2008 financial crisis - worth an estimated $1.3 billion. They were responsible for 1 in 20 evictions in San Bernardino County in YEAR. And all of it could be traced to one man: Mike Nijjar.

Nijjar lives in a 12,000-square-foot mansion in an LA suburb while his tenants fight mold, roaches, bed bugs and maggots. Lawsuits over wrongful evictions, manslaughter and medical bills related to his properties have chased his companies for decades.

Some properties under these companies were barely habitable and often illegal — but enforcement on rental properties is fragmented and hard to trace. So Nijjar’s “decades of neglect” had gone unnoticed. - LA City Attorney

The LAist spent months unraveling the web of companies connected to Nijjar, and talking to tenants who rent from them. They found a low-income rental market in California that's exploitative and only nominally regulated. Here’s the full story: 

“Well you didn’t even know till we moved to Wisconsin that ladybugs, that are secretly not ladybugs and are evil, can be a infestation”