Aardvark Pest Management owner Marty Overline, a single father of three and the organizer of Penn's extermination course Mouse Management 101, is responsible for all vermin concerns in Penn's college houses, educational buildings, and recreational facilities. We caught up with this big cheese of on-campus extermination on the front line of his war on all things creepy-crawly.
What's your life story?
I grew up in Philly. Right after I graduated high school I went right to the Air Force where they made me a pest control man. That's how I learned my trade. I spent 8 years in the service and 3.5 years in Germany killing rats and killing roaches, and I've been doing it ever since. My real background is in Integrated Pest Management. We try to do everything we can without using insecticides to try to solve problems.
Your company's name is Aardvark Pest Management. Did you pick that name so that it would be listed first in the phone book?
No, actually some girl I was sleeping with said, "How about calling it Aardvark?" I said, "Honey, I don't care. That's fine." So, I woke up the next morning and I was like, "I guess I have to call it Aardvark."
What would you say is the biggest vermin problem on campus?
The house mouse and the Norway rat, which is a brown rat. I kill a lot of them on campus. They are associated with people. For example, I'll catch maybe eight or ten mice per summer, but as soon as people start moving in and you add the food factor and their sloppy living conditions, one person's habits can affect the whole floor, up and down. You gotta be considerate of other people, sorta like how you wouldn't leave the bathroom without flushing the toilet. I've got a story about that, too.
Would you be so kind to tell us?
There was this foreign student living in Sansom East and that student had an aversion to flushing toilet paper down the toilet so he'd use the toilet paper to clean himself and then throw it next to the toilet. So, we started getting calls from up and down the building that there were gnats and flies everywhere. We knew we had to find the source of the infestation so we went room to room until we found this stack of used toilet paper four feet high and it just reeked.
Question for you: did it smell like shit?
Yeah. It looked like it, too. I don't know about the taste.
When you're battling a mouse or rat, does it help for you to get into the vermin's mindset?
Oh, absolutely. It's just like hunting anything. Basically, I consider myself an urban hunter. I hunt all kinds of things, be it a bug or a mouse or anything. I have to learn their habits, where they live, why they're there.
If I were a mouse, what would I be thinking right now?
You'd be thinking, "Holy Christ, I gotta get away from these giant humans. Where's the safest place to hide?"
Where else do you work besides Penn?
I do the Philadelphia Airport, Reading Terminal Market, Boeing and a bunch of small companies.
Do you ever feel guilty for what you do?
No, because I am a protector of human health. So, do I feel guilty for killing a mouse? No. Human beings are more important. Right now there's a problem in Philadelphia with white-tailed deer. But with the white-tailed deer comes lime disease with the deer ticks, so I gotta do what I gotta do.
So Bambi takes one for the team?
Yes, exactly.
Do you get flack from PETA?
Yes, but I'm well-versed and I'm good at making my case against them.
What is the strangest thing you've caught?
I guess I can't say VD, so I'll go with the strangest thing I found on campus was in Sansom West. I got a call for a snake on the 14th floor. Now look, there's no snakes in any of the dorms but the housekeeper insisted that there was a rather large snake there. So I get up to the room and I can't find nothing, but I find in the corner of the room a large fecal dropping about 14 inches long. The gentlemen residents got nasty after they got kicked out of the room for partying so they pulled this little prank. I kept looking and I finally opened up the closet and there was a 14 foot Burmese python -- thick as a fire hose -- so I closed the door and said to this apprentice of mine, "Look, I do this all the time. Just pick it up and put it in the laundry bag." And I'm laughing my ass off. Sure enough, he picked it up and put it in the laundry bag.
Do you get calls from people who are freaking out about a gnat?
All the time. I get calls all the time from people saying, "I saw a bug." Hey, it is planet Earth. There's billions and billions and billions of bugs. You're gonna see a bug once in a while.
Have you ever been on a call and caught someone in a compromising position?
Of course you catch a couple in bed together and everything, but usually they're not doing anything embarrassing like humping away. Usually they stop when the doorbell rings. But it's really funny what you find in people's houses. It's funny the fetishes you find out people have. Like, for sex kinda stuff. I went into this one girl's room one time and she had a shrine built to S&M sex with a whip, leather outfits, masks and handcuffs on the wall. I find sex toys and marijuana all the time.
Have you ever seen two mice having sex?
Yes.
How was it?
Small and quick.
Just like me.
Get this, in a rat population, female rats will usually die from getting boned too many times. The males are so dominant and nasty that they completely bang the life outta her.
If you have an on-campus pest problem, you can reach Marty by calling (215) 898-7208.
