June 19, 2002
Critter career benefits collector
Gary Collier uses bugs as business training material
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Gary Collier has no shortage of training material hanging up in his office.
From wolf spiders and bees to moths and beetles of all types, he spent the past three decades gathering a wide variety of samples of northern Michigan creepy crawlies.
In all, Collier has six display cases filled with bugs, spiders, rodents and rodent skeletons, with more items waiting to be mounted. Besides enjoying his hobby, the veteran pest controller has found that his collection is an excellent reference tool for both himself and his five pest control applicators.
"It is a great training tool and we can look through this and find something we saw on a job," said Collier, who founded Collier's Pest Control 28 years ago. "I just encourage all my guys to stop and take a look at what they see, not just to run from job to job."
"Knowing what's going on around you is where you find problems from home to home," he added.
While the state strictly licenses pest control applicators and requires ongoing training programs, Collier said his samples beat pictures in books hands down.
"The rodent skeletons are real useful because they can see how big the skulls are so they can see how big holes would have to be to get into a house," he said.
Collier has also encouraged his employees to bring in samples they see, sponsoring a weekly 'best bug' contest to spur them on in their work.
"We all enjoy it," he said.
A native of Kansas, Collier has been coming to the area since he was a child, vacationing with his family when his father, a schoolteacher, had summers off. After high school, he settled here, graduating from both Northwestern Michigan College and Central Michigan University.
Summer jobs in pest control led to a career and the beginning of his hobby of bug collecting. Most the specimens in his collection come from the region, including a northern Black Widow and wood bores. One Palmetto bug was a souvenir of an island cruise that he added to his collection after returning home.
Collier noted that he lost some of his oldest specimens because he did not know at first how to preserve and mount them. Even today, he struggles with some species that are notoriously difficult to preserve.
"Moths are very difficult to mount because if you touch the scales they will come off," he said.
Besides traditional mounting of his bugs, Collier has begun experimenting with group mountings. For example, he has clustered numerous bees on one mount to represent a hive.
"These things are art, renewable art," he said. "I see myself in my old age, collecting and mounting bugs still."
Collier also has a pet tarantula named Stan who lives in an aquarium in the office. He was given Stan by a tenant ten years ago and said that with the arachnid's life expectancy of 50 years, he thinks Stan will easily outlive him.
Collier also said Stan is sort of the office's 'canary in the coal mine.'
"If Stan dies, we know we haven't washed our hands enough," he said.