Don't Mess with the Best (Pest)
Driving through the streets of Cambridge in an unmarked truck filled with gadgets ranging from Hershey’s chocolate spread to copper mesh, Matt J. Kreimeyer could very well be a secret agent. Given the fact that Matt has keys to Harvard’s dorms and an unfathomably vast knowledge of the intricacies of our campus, part of me genuinely believes he might be Harvard’s Dark Knight. And in some ways, he is.
Somewhere between James Bond and Paul Blart, Kreimeyer serves the needs of Harvard students every day. As the owner of Best Pest, a company his father, Rod, founded just over 30 years ago, Kreimeyer works tirelessly to fight off mice, roaches, bed bugs, and basically any other creature hypochondriacal students like myself worry about. “The only thing we don’t handle is wildlife,” Kreimeyer tells me. “Things like squirrels and raccoons.”
As for the aforementioned weaponry Kreimeyer carries around on the job, pest protection isn’t exactly what the cartoons make it out to be. “If you watch Tom and Jerry, you think 'Oh, let's put some cheese in there,’” Kreimeyer says, sympathizing with the average, dare I say ignorant, pest-infested Harvard stu- dent. But in reality, “mice like wet, greasy products,” he tells me, which explains the chocolate and peanut butter his technicians carry around.
In the so-called Harvard bubble, where students are fixated on startups and extracurricu- lars, sometimes, it’s hard to remember the way the world operates outside of these hallowed grounds. But speaking from personal experience, few things bring Harvard students back to earth like a mouse sighting. As Kreimeyer puts it, “it’s like having a stranger in your house.”
So, when Kreimeyer or one of his seven other technicians comes into a student’s room—big sense of humor, Boston accent, and mouse traps in tow—Harvard students are almost forced to (gasp!) show some humility.
And according to Kreimeyer, “Harvard students, as a whole, are very polite [and] very friendly” when Best Pest shows up.
“We feel like a big part of the community,” Kreimeyer explains. “We take a lot of pride in servicing Harvard.”
This pride shows in their work, as Richard Pollack, a Harvard professor and senior environmental public health officer who oversees Integrated Pest Management, can attest. “Best Pest, particularly Kreimeyer and his father, Rod, seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the structure of buildings,” he tells me. “They know what's in our walls better than our architects."
In short, “there’s a lot of institutional memory,” as Pollack puts it, that Kreimeyer gained through osmosis from following his father around on the job as a kid.
“When I was in high-school, it was just [my dad],” Kreimeyer remembers. “So I got to go on a lot of jobs with him... doing grunt work.” At the time, Kreimeyer tells me, he “had no desire to be in pest control.” But now, as the owner of Best Pest, Kreimeyer is doing what he loves.
“Everything’s new, you’re meeting a lot of interesting people, [and] here at Harvard you’re seeing a lot of interesting things—I’ve seen the original Moby Dick manuscript, which is something I'd’ve never seen in my entire life,” Kreimeyer says.
The benefits of working in pest control at Harvard don’t stop there. “What's nice about being a pest control guy is, for the most part, people are happy to see you,” Kreimeyer explains, as his bright blue eyes light up. "They're excited to see me ‘cause I'm gonna solve their problem.”