Tech Review: Pest Stop 2000
I make it no secret that when it comes to things with eight-legs that like to live in the corners of walls or flat right above me, crawling across the ceiling like that baby in Trainspotting – or even their funnest new place to torment me from, the floor – that I crumble into what can only be described as a blubbering man-mess who cowers from a distance while shrilly giving orders for someone else to kill it. Honestly, I do the best Shelley Duvall impression you’ve ever seen. You know, from that scene in “The Shining” where Jack Nicholson is breaking down the door.
Where this phobia of you-know-what stems, I honestly couldn’t tell you and I wholeheartedly admit that it’s an irrational fear, but blimey, those buggers get to me. Not physically, emotionally and mentally. If one were to physically get to or worse, on me, like aforementioned ceiling-drug-baby falling on Ewan McGregor, then I’d probably die.
Over the years I’ve, futility, tried many a contraption and homebrew wives’ tale to rid them from my sight and home short of getting in a priest (or, you know, a bug-guy) to perform an exorcism. Seriously, if I’ve tried a tube-sucker-catcher-thing and placing conkers in each corner of every room to deter them from coming in and raping my home, then I’ve tried it all.
It wasn’t until my last encounter a couple of weeks ago where my own Spidey-Sense kicked in telling me to look over my shoulder and my subsequent finding a spider as big as my splayed palm – fingers included – sitting there on the wall right beside my head that I decreed that something needed to be done. And of course, by ‘decreed’ I meant sob. So, being a geek (not wuss, there’s a difference), I turned to the Internet as one so oft does in these times because surely the Internet would have a solution, right? Thankfully, it did. Huzzahs were had all round.
Serendipitous in my nonsensical Googling, I’d stumbled upon the idea of repellent plugs. Not those air-freshener things, but actual plugs that you, well, plug into power outlets that replace scenty goodness with invisible electronic waves. Behold the Pest Stop 2000. Love the name. The promise of getting rid of the bane of my life aside, it was the tech involved which really caught and swayed my mind. While pricey, I reasoned that over the years I’d probably spent more on various other solutions and that if it didn’t work, well, at least I tried; but if it did? It’d be priceless.
What the plug does is essentially create an electromagnetic field and ultrasonic wave that the spiders and various other creepy-crawlies don’t much care for. Best yet, this plug transmits this signal down every cable in your house in some sci-fi display. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for animal rights and yes it may be considered cruel, but this is a bit difference from neglecting a puppy or something. It doesn’t kill the bugs, it just simply makes my lovely and trendy home inhospitable to them and sends them on their merry way never to return… unless we have a power-cut. Oh god, what if we have a powercut?!
I digress, the signal and waves the plug emits are harmless to humans and household pets and should be considered as wondrous as Wi-Fi in my eyes. Since using it, I haven’t – touchwood – seen a single swine scuttling about. Not tempting fate but, it looks like my home has been digitally exorcised and with no peasoup spider-squishies on the wall. I’d joked that if I saw a mass exodus of the gits coming out of the woodwork and making for the window that I’d be both relieved and terrified at knowing that so many of the buggers had been lying in wait.
At the end of the day, it’s more about peace of mind than anything else, knowing that I don’t need to – although I still do – scan my peripheral vision every so often. Resounding success? Fingers crossed.
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