Pokémon Go players have basically one job: catch Pokémon. Pesticide workers also have a job to do: kill bugs. Those two occupations are getting a bit tangled up in Texas, where truck drivers trying to spray for mosquitoes are happening upon swarms of Pokémon Go fans at all hours of the day and night.
Pesticide workers spraying North Texas neighborhoods for mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus say the human pests are abundant this time of year.
“Everywhere. They’re everywhere,” the Texas Operations Manager for Vector Disease Control International told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth.
His company has been stumbling upon folks tramping around outside in the wee hours of the morning, sometime as late/early as 4 a.m.
But for some players, night is their time to have fun — and it’s a lot cooler, temperature wise.
“I work all day. That’s why I come out at night,” said one Pokémon Go player.
As we’re all learning, it’s not that tough to spot Pokémon Go players. In this case, they’re often huddled in groups in parks or gathering under street lamps.
“You know automatically. They’re all looking at their phones. You know they’re all playing Pokémon Go,” one driver said. And he gets it — he plays the game himself. But it’s not so fun when it takes him longer to do his job because he has to wait for humans to get out of the road, or clear the area before he can spray.
“There’s people not paying attention, and then they complain to us that we’re being unsafe,” he said.
The drivers are doing the best they can to avoid the crowds, saying they’ll leave the parks and popular areas for last. But if you really don’t want to risk West Nile, maybe try to stay out of the way — drivers own’t spray anywhere they see people, which means leaving those areas unprotected.
Pokémon Go Slowing Down Mosquito Spray Effort [CBS Dallas-Fort Worth]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist