Pest Control: Healing the Hospital On The Outside

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Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital, deep in the heart of Sweetwater, Texas, is blessed with a beautiful central courtyard where patients stroll, staff members take breaks, and an employee even donated bird feeders. Birds came —but not songbirds. Grackles came to mess up the courtyard.

Howard Bryant, Plant Operations Manager was aghast, having never seen anything like it, and the smell was intolerable. A groundskeeper cleaned daily, but the odor remained intractable. And the droppings were a health and safety hazard — shoes tracking in the nasty waste wouldn't do in a hospital environment. Droppings are known to harbor bacteria that can cause debilitating diseases. Furthermore, feathers threatened to clog the air conditioning system.

Removing the feeders didn't stop the grackles, who settled in. The county's farm information agency referred Bryant to Bird-X, Inc. in Chicago, and its Super BirdXPeller PRO. The electronic device's speakers broadcast precise reproductions of birds' distress cries as recorded by a major U.S. university, creating a perceived 'danger zone' — frightening birds away in their own language.

"We were skeptical," Bryant admits. "The salesperson said, 'If you're not satisfied, send it back.'" Bryant has no intention of sending it back.

Weeks later, they turned the unit off. As if on cue, the birds returned in force. They'll not be turning it off again any time soon.

Bryant says "it is not bothersome to patients. The windows are closed, and it sounds like a crow outside."

It helped bring the courtyard back to its original appearance and natural outdoor fragrance, and it reduced the hospital's annual clean-up costs, he notes.

By R.W. Delaney, Business Writer