The Little IPM Team That Could

By Nathaniel Park 

With the end of the quarter looming ahead of us we have decided to, as Tiaan Jerjerrod, the architect of the second Death Star, said to Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi, began to double our efforts. For our Bigbelly pilot project, we have been moving steadily forward, handicapped only by the slow churning of the USAC funds machine.  Hopefully, they process the purchase order quickly so that we are still in school when the Bigbelly arrives.  For our rat picture acquisition project we have had very terrible luck with no pictures to show for our efforts.  We have begun to survey ivy instead as it is another area of high rodent incidents that our campus would do better without.  We have also began to set up the cameras every week night rather than three times so that we have a better chance of catching them.  If you are a rat reading this, please follow the smell of peanut butter. For our GIS project, we are increasing our efforts and we will begin to analyze the data and start spatial statistics to determine if there are any trends in factors that would be appropriate for our final report. For this, we are analyzing trash can data, bait station locations, rodent work orders, and building data.  Wish us luck mama!