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I once oversaw the management of a small downtown office building in 
Phoenix which was leased in part to a major regional bank.  The bank kept 
complaining of scorpions in the building.  Desert scorpions are small
critters with a nasty sting, much like a bee sting.  And, the bank's
secretaries would sit on the floor to go through bottom file drawers and 
sometimes would get stung on the behind.  

So the building manager called the pest control company and they sprayed
the building.  Still got complaints.  Sprayed again.  Still complaints.

Clearly another strategy was needed.  The pest control contractor 
pointed out that scorpions are unusual in downtown Phoenix and there were 
no complaints from other tenants on other floors of the building.  He and
the building manager concluded that the bank itself was bringing the 
scorpions into the building from their record center warehouse out in the 
desert.  They alerted the bank to this source of the problem, but the bank 
refused to take any counter measures and continued to complain that it 
was a building problem.

After several more sprayings, we started to get concerned about the 
risks of putting more insecticide into the building.  Our pest control 
contractor was adamant that sprayings would do no good if scorpions
kept being reintroduced into the building with each delivery to the
bank from its records warehouse.  So I asked the pest control contractor
and the building manager to look into the possiblity of environmentally
safer biological controls such as natural enemies of the scorpion.

A few days later I received a copy of a memorandum from the building 
manager to the bank facilities department.  He had also posted a copy 
of this memo on the bank employees' bulletin board:

   "Building management recognizes recent employee complaints 
   of scorpions in the bank's records management areas.  We have 
   attempted to use pesticides but fear that increasing the level 
   of pesticide could pose a health risk for some employees.  

   "Because scorpions are native to our desert country and appear to
   be entering the building in the storage boxes delivered from 
   the bank's desert warehouse, we have researched safer natural 
   biological controls such as those which keep scorpions in check in 
   their desert environment.  We have found that scorpions have only 
   one natural enemy.

   "Should there be any further complaints from the bank or its
   employees on this matter, building management will be pleased to 
   introduce rattlesnakes into the records management areas."

We had no more complaints.

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