Dirty Jobs Recap: Bug Breeder
Tree Trimmer/Stump Grinder. If you've never seen a tree removed, it's very interesting to watch (although perhaps not by sitting and watching, but checking in from time-to-time). In fact, this is actually a two-part job, the first of which is to cut down the tree itself. Once you get the top most portion removed, you move down the tree a bit, and chop off another section, and then you repeat. All the way to the ground.
There are two main problems here, the first being that someone has to climb all the way up the tree, and while you do you take a chainsaw with you so that you can do the cutting. Maybe you don't have to take a chainsaw, but if you don't, you'll be sawing by hand, and then it takes a whole lot longer, so it just makes sense to take a chainsaw with you. But whichever route you choose, it's a big job.
Those pieces of the tree then come back onto the ground and get thrown into the chipper, a vicious-looking device that turns the large chunks of tree into small pieces of the tree that can then be turned into mulch, if you're concerned about that kind of thing. You just need to be careful that you don't throw yourself into it, because you can easily get turned into mulch yourself, and that wouldn't be a good thing.
The final step is to grind out the stump. In this case, a massive clump of bird-of-paradise trees had grown together, so instead of a single stump that you usually see on the tree, it was in fact what looked like a dozen smaller tree trunks all grown together into a single fused stump. This has to come out of the ground. Luckily this particular tree doesn't grow far into the ground, and a smallish grinding wheel can take care of it. If it goes farther into the ground, then you need a larger wheel. I have actually seen the need for one of these are our house, with larger, older, harder trees, and the corresponding grinders are much larger.
While I don't know that I would qualify this one as a truly dirty job, I can see that you could certainly get sweaty doing it, so I guess that could count. And you could probably die if you weren't paying attention, so that probably gets an honorable mention.
Bug Breeder. It wasn't suggested during the episode, but I would imagine that this came up during the filming of the Mosquito Control Officer segment, when the crew was in New Orleans. But it certainly didn't have to do so. Maybe they were just there to wander about.
In any case, as Mike tells the story, they were going by and see a vehicle labeled Insect Express, and when you produce a show like this one, you just have to stop and ask about it. So they did.
The result is that they find themselves in the Audobon Insectarium Insect Rearing facility. This is a part of the same place that has the aquarium and zoo in New Orleans. Apparently they have an Insectarium too, and those insects have to come from somewhere. This is "where".
Mike spends the day taking care of the various insects, from leaf-cutter ants that need to have their dumping ground cleared out to stick insects that need new foliage in their cage to millipedes that need to have their dirt cleaned so that the roaches don't get them. He even gets to vacuum poo out of one cage. Finally at the end of the day they get to take their trash and freeze it so that non-native insects don't take over our country. Freaky stuff.

















