New York City transit workers recently started a contest for the best picture or image of a rat spotted near public transportation throughout the city. Members of the Transit Workers Union are asking passengers to submit the most disgusting photos and videos of rats in the subway system. The best image will win a free unlimited monthly pass on the transit system.

Thus far, the union has collected hundreds of images including pictures of rats climbing on mountains of garbage and drinking out of discarded beer bottles. The union has also launched the Rat Free Subway website to keep passengers aware of the growing rat infestation problem in the subway system, Yahoo News reported.

The union workers hope that by encouraging passengers to notice the growing rat populations, the city will be forced to take care of the infestations and make efforts to maintain a more sanitary subway system. Union workers said that passengers see rats near platforms, but the majority of the rodents can be found in refuse rooms where union workers conduct business. The goal of the contest is to raise awareness of the epidemic and give the union leverage to negotiate with the city to hire more cleaners to maintain the subway system.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 started the campaign in September, and is demanding the Manhattan Transit Authority remove trash from stations more frequently, fix holes where rats live, create bins that rats cannot scour through for trash and hire pest control services to treat the system more often. The MTA, however, says it regularly disposes of trash in stations and has installed rodent-resistant bins and rat poison in refuse rooms.

A law passed in 2010 in Washington, D.C., calls for exterminators and pest control professionals to not kill any rats or rodents, but capture entire families and relocate them to a wildlife rehabilitator or somewhere nonresidential. Pest control services will not be allowed to use glue or snap traps to collect the rodents either.

Fox News reported the law is worrying Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who fears the relocation of families of rats could bring large populations of rodents across the Potomac River into Virginia. The new law was passed as many officials started finding swarming populations of rodents growing around the Occupy D.C. protests at Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square.

In an interview with Virginia news source WMAL radio, Cuccinelli said the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 places animal rights over human health.

But the law applies to a number of vermin including raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks and pigeons. The goal of the law is to transport the wildlife away from the metropolis of District of Columbia to a more animal-friendly and appropriate sanctuary, rather than kill them, the source reported.

The federal government has been deploying an initiative to eradicate the boll weevil from the United States, as the pests destroy cotton crops. The effort has been very successful, and the boll weevil is now confined to the southernmost part of Texas near the Mexican border.

Texas is the largest cotton producer in the United States and, according to the Houston Chronicle, is home to the last remaining boll weevils in the United States, which have been narrowed to the Lower Rio Grande Valley Zone. The U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the pest control campaign, which has since significantly reduced the overall population of boll weevils in the nation.

"Now we're having a hard time finding boll weevils in cotton and it's really neat," Brad Cowan, a service agent for the Texas AgriLife Extension, told The Associated Press. "A lot of Texas growers haven't seen boll weevils for several seasons now."

The source reported in 1995, the eradication of boll weevils started in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, with some initial efforts failing and farmers reporting crop loss. In 2005, however, the pest control program restarted in the region.

The boll weevil is a beetle that lays its eggs in the part of the cotton plant responsible for reproduction. When the eggs hatch, they feed on the cotton plant and prohibit it from releasing its fluffy flowers known as bolls, thus severely damaging the crop.

Students at Big Sandy Schools in Simla, Colorado, recently learned something new: Bed bugs had invaded their schools. One of the outside classrooms was housing bed bugs, which prompted the school district to alert parents to the situation.

Simla news source KKTV reported the school shut down operations for one day in order to allow pest control services to take care of the bed bug population. However, some students and parents are afraid the bed bugs might have attached to students' bags, clothes or books and journeyed with students back to residential homes.

"Families around here have been checking their kids and stuff, because they don't want anything bad to happen, any bugs to get sent home," student Morgan Dwyer told the news source.

Even the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in New York City has fallen victim to bed bugs. The New York Post city's housing agency faced a bed bug infestation in November, forcing the entire third floor of its headquarters to be evacuated and 5,000 boxes sent to be fumigated.

Bed bugs were recently discovered spreading through the Weld County Work Release facility in Greeley, Colorado. The tiny pests caused a stir among residents and law enforcement officials, prompting fear to spread throughout the facility.

The Greeley Tribune reported the facility was treated for bed bugs back in November by a professional pest control service. Following the pest treatments, the news source said it received an anonymous letter that the issue had not been resolved. The letter said some of the participants of a work release program at the facility were spreading bed bugs throughout the community when they went on job interviews.

The facility underwent a second round of pest control treatments to eradicate any bed bugs that may have survived. After another letter, Work Release took even more precautions, allowing residents to wash their clothing for free and taking a room-by-room approach to eliminate the bugs. However, the news source suggests that there was no evidence any bed bugs survived the first spray.

A local community in San Mateo, California, is also taking extra precautions to weed out bed bugs.A free training seminar is being offered from a local pest control service to help hotel managers, hospitals, apartment complexes and other facilities check for bed bugs and hire professionals to get rid of them efficiently.

The event will feature new techniques being used to treat bed bugs, common myths about bed bugs that are not true and different ways to identify bed bugs in a facility.

A former staff member of a McDonalds restaurant in Philadelphia said he saw a rodent running through the kitchen near a bag of hamburger buns. The employee pulled out his mobile phone to take a video of the pest, following the mouse on his path through dozens of buns in the restaurant.

The Daily Mail reported the video was shared by the employee to warn customers of the possible pest infestations at McDonalds and other fast food restaurants. The video footage shows a mouse inside a bag of hamburg buns, rummaging around for food. The employee also says he has worked in fast food for more than a year and has spotted rodent droppings and other unsanitary conditions while working. Apparently, the employee's boss told staff to brush off the droppings before serving the customers.

In an interview with My Fox 29, another employee of the same restaurant said he also saw the mouse and rodent droppings while working at the restaurant. He even saw the general manager brush off droppings himself before serving the food to customers.

Ken Youngblood, the McDonalds owner and operator in Philadelphia, said he plans to investigate the pest situation at the restaurant and will take any spotted violations seriously. Pest control services would most likely be called if rodent droppings or actual mice were found on premise, Fox News reported.

The Solano County Weed Management Area will hold an annual public education meeting to discuss a variety of ways residents in Vacaville, California, can take care of their weeds. The event will be hosted by a coalition of local agencies and private landowners who are developing new ways to combat invasive and noxious weeds throughout the county.

The meeting will address topics such as pest management practices associated with weed control, how land managers can control the spread of weeds on their properties and how the community can work together to keep noxious, invasive plants from entering the county. Professionals will be in attendance to demonstrate the proper methods for eliminating weeds, and highlight the scenarios when pest control services are required, the Reporter said.

Similarly, in a recent advice piece, Angie Hicks addressed the many options available to homeowners looking to get rid of a problematic tree. One way is to remove all new leaves, preventing the tree from collecting necessary nutrients to survive. Another way is to hire a professional pest control service to remove the tree, grind down a stump and destroy roots to prevent them from resprouting.

A Salvation Army shelter in Orlando, Florida, recently closed temporarily as pest control services were called in to eradicate a growing bed bug infestation.

The Associated Press reported the men's branch of the shelter had to be closed for a week while exterminators came in to treat the facility and employees cleaned the shelter. The shelter provides short-term emergency shelter for men who have lost their jobs or homes. The nonprofit homeless shelter is forced to dig into its funding to pay for the pest control services, as do-it-yourself treatments will not kill the resilient pests.

To accommodate for the closing, shelter employees are working tirelessly to find other shelters in the area where residents can stay until the facility reopens, Click Orlando reported.

"We know the strain our closure, even for these few days, puts on the homeless population and its already overstretched providers, so we are working quickly to be able to open our doors once more to operate at full capacity," said Andrew Kelly, area commander major.

Health inspectors recently spotted numerous health code violations at restaurants in downtown Houston.

Texas news provider KPRC reported a health inspector found dead roaches and roach droppings on top of a dish machine at the Morningside Thai Restaurant. The inspector had to ask employees to clean up the mess and call pest control services to get rid of the bugs.

A little more than 12 miles away, Jolynn's Crawfish Restaurant received violations from inspectors for having rodent droppings on the floor of the storage area, and flies swarming the kitchen, the source reported.

Elsewhere in Texas, restaurants are receiving fines and losing clients for their unsanitary operations. Corpus Christi news source KZTV reported Jay's Seafood in Port Aransas received a plethora of violations from health inspectors including leftover food not being stored and rodent droppings seen throughout the dry storage area.

Professional pest control services can help treat pests and rodent infestations better than do-it-yourself traps and poisons. Therefore, businesses should call pest control professionals if they receive a citation or notice a pest and want to avoid failing a health department inspection.

The St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspection in Minnesota recently discovered 600 housing code violations at the Westminster Court Apartments. There are many tenants still living in the complex, but because the apartments are in foreclosure, little has been done to fix the conditions.

St. Paul news source KARE 11 reported the tenants are combating bed bugs, mice, roaches and high levels of mold throughout their apartments. One tenant, Aminah James, said her four children are getting sick from the living conditions, developing symptoms such as asthma.

The Twin Cities Pioneer Press reported that Ramsey Court District Judge John Guthmann recently appointed a receiver to take over the dilapidated apartments. The receiver will collect the rents, oversee the operation of the complex and work on bringing the apartments up to code. The previous owners of the complex, Peggy and Randall Chun, were continuing to collect rent from their tenants but failed to pay their mortgage lender for almost a year. As a result, the complex started to deteriorate and went into foreclosure.

According to the source, the receiver has the option to try and rebuild the quality of the apartment complex with pest control services treatment or deem it uninhabitable and relocate the tenants elsewhere.