A New York City exterminator on the hunt for bed bugs
Through Julia Rothman and Shaina Feinberg
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For more than a decade, Scott Palatnik, a 59-year-old licensed exterminator, and his trusty dog have been hunting bedbugs in New Yorkers’ bedrooms, desk chairs, and suitcases.
“I was a professional chef from 1984 to 2010. I was fired because of the market crash. Three months after I was fired, my landlord calls me and says, “There are bed bugs in the building.” Here I am unemployed and I realize that everyone in New York City has, or thinks they have, bed bugs.”
“They use dogs to track them down. For $10,000 I can buy a fully trained bed bug detection dog and do business. So I do. And I’m going to the races.”
“My dog is Hunter. He is trained to detect live bedbugs and bedbug eggs. He can smell as little as a single bed bug. If he smells one, he sits down.”
“For Hunter, it’s all a game. Bed bugs have a very distinct smell. People can smell 10 things at once, and after we smell 10 things, we say, ‘The room stinks.’ A dog walks into a room and smells 1000 things at once. And he can distinguish the smells. If the bed bug odor is present, it won’t be long before the dog finds it.”
“Believe it or not, 80 percent of the inspections I do, there are no bed bugs.”
“People find carpet beetles and think they are bed bugs. People get skin rashes from new laundry detergent; a hair on our arm moves and we think something is crawling over us because we are neurotic New Yorkers. Ninety percent of the time, I’m convinced they’re mosquitoes.”
“It’s a pandemic-proof company, it’s recession-proof. The bed bugs didn’t go anywhere. There is no cure for it. †
“Once the weather starts to get warm, people put on shorts and go outside — that’s all. Busy until Christmas. People call me up and say, ‘If you come here today, I’ll be your best friend to be.’ I tell them, ‘Why don’t you go to your bed, pull the sheets back and tell me what you see.’ Everywhere they crawl they leave little black spots, they are brown and the size of an apple seed.”
“If I can think like a bed bug, I know where I’d be hiding.”
“I love helping people. That’s what it comes down to. I am an exterminator and a bed bug exterminator. I am an advisor. I’m a psychiatrist (I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m just funny). Some people who call me are panicking. I can talk to the most neurotic New Yorker off the ledge. I love that they need help and I’m going to help them. Like the hero riding in on a horse with a cape. It’s a good feeling.”
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