Back to Aardvark Pest Control

It's unwise to assume that everything you see creeping and scurrying around your house and yard is up to no good. Although more than 86,000 species of insects have been identified in North America, making up approximately 85 percent of all living creatures on the continent, only about 1 percent can hurt you and damage or destroy your belongings. Don't classify anything as a pest unless it causes trouble.

This general information will give you an insight into many common household pests and what to do about them. In some cases you may be able to eradicate them yourself; in others you may need to hire professional services. Even in the do-it-yourself cases, it is a good idea to check with a pest control company to get up-to-date information on chemicals that should be used.

MAKING PESTS UNWELCOME

ZEROING IN ON THE WORST OFFENDERS INDOORS

COCKROACHES exist in 55 varieties in the United States, but only 5 kinds are troublesome indoors. Not only do they spread disease by contaminating food, they create an offensive odor in large populations. Indeed, even dishes crossed by cockroaches may give off an offensive order unless they are washed thoroughly before food warms them.

Because cockroaches multiply so rapidly - one common German cockroach produces forty more every thirty days - it is essential to determine their hiding places. One method of doing this is to enter a dark room quietly, turn on a bright light and see where they run. Treat hiding places with pesticides such as diazinon, dursban or baygon, paying particular attention to the undersides of tables and chairs, behind mirrors, inside drawers, on closet and bookcase shelves, inside the motor compartment of the refrigerator, around sinks and the dishwasher, and under loose floorcoverings.

MICE look for a steady source of food supply. They, as well as parasites which live on them, contaminate food with droppings, urine and hair. Able to squeeze through incredibly small openings, these tiny animals - often weighing less than an ounce - can enter a house through basement windows, small holes in the foundation, vents in the basement or attic, and gaps in weather-stripping. Blocking or screening these openings and using a mousetrap with tasty morsels of peanut butter, bacon, gumdrops or cookies usually is sufficient to rid a house of them.

RATS pose a larger problem, especially in areas where poor sanitation and accumulation of garbage provide ideal conditions for them to breed. Ranging from six inches to a foot long, they nest in basements, attics, sewers, subflooring, open garbage cans and piles of trash. Active mainly at night, rats contaminate food with disease germs and filth that can cause acute food poisoning. Worse, they will bite people - particularly small children who have been left in bed with milk, juice of other food.

Controlling rats requires sealing all openings around the house with sheet metal, iron grills, hardware cloth, cement mortar, or similar substances they cannot gnaw through. Elimination of food sources requires constant community cooperation to see that garbage is stored in sealed containers and collected often. Furthermore, attractive nesting areas, such as firewood stacked against the house, must be removed. Where rat infestations are confined to a single area (a garage attic for example) large traps may be adequate to rid the vicinity of these rodents. In some cases, potent poisoned baits called rodenticides are needed. These must be used with the utmost care to prevent harm to humans and household pets.

TERMITES live in underground colonies and feed on wood products. You may never see them, even if they're feasting on the lumber that's holding your house together. Fortunately they work slowly, giving you several years to discover their presence before they cause substantial structural damage to your house. You might see a swarm of termites during the spring due to temperatures and moisture conditions. A telltale sign is discarded wings on the floor or windowsills after a warm rain in early spring. But, termites can be active at other times during the year, such as during the winter in heated basements.

Because termites strike five times as many homes every year as do fires, the annual bill for damage they do is astonishing. In addition to destroying wood, they'll eat books, clothing, and anything else containing cellulose. One way to detect their presence is by the characteristic pattern of destruction: they eat the soft part of the wood and leave the annual rings intact. Another sign of their presence is mud tubes constructed along obstructions they cannot chew through. However, such signs are not often readily visible.

It is virtually impossible for you to get rid of termites yourself. If you're fortunate, your house was designed and constructed with prevention of termite damage in mind. The ground beneath your house may have been treated to repel termites, and specific care may have been taken to prevent any contact of wood with the soil. Call in a reliable pest control company if you suspect termites are at work in or near your house. Having an annual inspection to detect termite damage is a sound investment, like fire and accident insurance.

ANTS come in more than twenty household varieties and have many tastes. Some prefer sweets, others like grease, and still others feed on insects and seeds. Consequently, do-it-yourself eradication with bait is often a trial-and-error effort. To get rid of these annoying indoor species that contaminate food and in rare cases bite humans and pets, find and destroy their nests and remove their source of food by practicing vigilant housekeeping and storing foodstuffs in tightly closed containers.

CARPENTER ANTS are frequently confused with termites because they, too, destroy wood. Unlike termites, however, they do not eat the wood, preferring instead to tunnel channels through it in order to enlarge their living space. Although a carpenter ant has wings, his front pair is much longer than the back pair; his termite cousin has two pairs of equal length. Another distinguishing feature of the carpenter ant's body is a pinched-in waist like that of a wasp.

If you find little piles of sawdust near the baseboards of your house, suspect that carpenter ants are at work. Since their nests are extremely difficult to find, call in professional pest control help to determine the extent of damage and stop these creatures in their tracks.

FLEAS have been troubling mankind and animals for thousands of years. These tiny tormentors reproduce at astounding rates, laying several hundred eggs which hatch and mature in less that two weeks, each new flea ready to reproduce hundreds more. They enter your house on pets and lay their eggs in carpeting, bedding, and upholstered furniture. Since they must feed on blood to survive, hungry fleas can make life miserable for you and your pets, causing itching and swelling wherever they bite.

Getting rid of fleas is tricky. You must eradicate all fleas and eggs in the house and stop more from coming in. If the problem is really serious, call in professional pest control services. If you do it yourself, thoroughly clean infested rooms with a vacuum cleaner. Include baseboards, rugs, upholstery, floor and wall cracks, ventilators, closets and any other areas where eggs or larvae may be. Discard the vacuum cleaner bag in a sealed container at once. Then, apply an insecticide to all vacuumed areas, using a nonstaining product when spraying rugs, carpets and upholstered furniture. Pets should be treated at the same time you clear the house. Pest control firms will not treat animals, so you may require the aid of a veterinarian.

TICKS come in two varieties: American and Brown Dog. American ticks usually live outdoors but can be brought in by pets, mice and rats. These ticks are dangerous because they transmit serious diseases such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme disease to humans.

The Brown Dog Tick usually lives indoors and is the only kind of tick to frequently infest homes in the U.S. Once they enter a house, they prefer to stay there because it is dry and warm. They are flat shaped and about 1/4 inch long with a uniformly red-brown appearance. They must have blood to survive, but they rarely bite humans. After feeding on your pets they drop off the animal and hide, living for months or even years without a meal. Meanwhile, they occupy themselves by laying from 100 to 5000 eggs at a time. When the eggs hatch and all the new ticks hop on your dog in search of blood, you'll wonder why your pet has suddenly gone berserk.

As with fleas, both your pet and home must be treated simultaneously. You may need to take your pet to a veterinarian who can have him dipped in a bath containing a suitable insecticide. Then check and thoroughly clean all hiding places, i.e. baseboards, furniture, window frames and sills, molding, loose wallpaper and linoleum, rugs, curtains, drapes, picture frames, and all cracks and crevices. Use an insecticide on all these areas, including places where the animal habitually sleeps. Again, be sure to use an insecticide that will not stain when treating fabrics or furniture.

SPIDERS have a bad reputation. Actually, many of the 25,000 varieties in America are helpful because they trap and eat other pests. Although they rarely bite humans unless they are injured or cornered, their venom can cause painful sores. Two species especially dangerous to man are the brown recluse and the black widow. Found in out-of-the-way spots like closets, attics and garages, the brown recluse attacks only when disturbed. Seek treatment at once, because untended bites can be fatal. Venom of the black widow is 15 times more powerful than a rattlesnake's but because the spider injects so little during a bite, death does not often occur except in very young children.

Your best protection against spiders is to cut down on the pest population inside your house so they will move out in search of a more dependable food supply.

SILVERFISH and their close relatives, the firebrats, pose no known danger to humans, but they can do extensive damage to clothes made of natural fibers, books, wallpaper, and important records. Silverfish are wingless, slender insects with a color ranging from dark steel gray to almost black with a glistening metallic sheen. Small and unobtrusive, they work at night and are rarely seen unless they get into a sink or bathtub and cannot climb out again.

To get rid of these pests, apply insecticides especially designed to kill them, such as diazinon, lindane or malathion, to baseboards, door and window casings, closets and places where pipes go through walls. The results may not be immediate, but if it is properly and thoroughly applied, it will leave a residue that should be effective within a few weeks. However, if the problem is serious you may need to call in professional services.

DEALING WITH PESTS IN THE LAWN AND GARDEN

Before you declare a war on pests in your home and garden, you may want to see if you can use or restore the balance of natural forces that can keep troublesome creatures in check. For example, every day of their lives ladybug beetles eat two and a half times their own weight in aphids, mealybugs, moth eggs, spider mites and scale insects. Or consider this: it is not unusual for a single bird to gather hundreds of caterpillars, flies, grasshoppers, snails and spiders.

In some states there are now companies that raise and sell "pests of pests"- Predators that kill and eat pests, parasites that weaken or kill them, and pathogens that cause fatal diseases in unwanted species. Some of these firms are legitimate sources of ladybugs, praying mantis, and other beneficial creatures. But mail-order pest control is risky. Something advertised as a "Foolproof Natural Method for Killing Pests" may turn out to be two blocks of wood with instructions to place an insect on one block and hit it with the other.

SELECTING AND USING PESTICIDES WISELY

A federal law requires commercial applicators of "restricted use" products to be certified. The certification program is left up to the state. Homeowners can call the certifying state agencies for information (in Nebraska and Colorado call the Environmental Protection Agency).

Be wary of the person who comes to your home uninvited and offers to give your house a free inspection for pests. He or she may try to scare you into authorizing immediate and costly treatments to prevent the collapse of ceilings or floors. Such a person may bring along frightening specimens of spiders or cockroaches, or fragments of wood riddled with termite channels, and pretend to find them in your house.

Always deal with a licensed exterminator. Your local USDA Cooperative Extension Service agent is a good source of information on pest control methods. Ask friends and neighbors to recommend companies they have used successfully. Check prospective choices with the Better Business Bureau for a reliability report.

Before you sign a contract for pest control services, be sure you fully understand the nature of the pest to be exterminated, the extent of the infestation, and the work necessary to solve the problem. Find out if the company has liability insurance to cover any damages to your house or furnishings during treatment. If a guarantee is given know what it covers, how long it lasts, what you must do to keep it in force, and what kind of continuing prevention and control is necessary. Don't expect an application or series of treatments to last indefinitely. Rarely, for example, can a firm guarantee to leave a house free of cockroaches for more than six months. Some pest control companies offer renewable retreatment warranties.

If a sizable amount of money is involved, don't hesitate to get bids from several pest control companies. Even termite damage will not be significantly worse if you wait a week or two before authorizing treatment. Don't rush your decision. Since you are paying for professional knowledge as well as skillful application of pesticides, look for someone whose judgment you can trust.