Pinpoint Pest Control Blog

Having a rodent infestation can mean as few as five or as many as five hundred. Granted, if you have more than twenty rodents running around your home, you already have a very big problem that is readily visible to Pinpoint exterminators. However, some people can live years in a house without knowing that their attics and walls have many busy and unwanted inhabitants.

There are some key factors of rodent infestation that every exterminator looks for. Before you can even begin a rodent control program, the exterminator has to walk through, around and look into many spaces in your home to determine how serious your rodent problem is. These key factors are as follows.

High Grass and Weeds Around the Property

When you leave your yard au naturel for a long time, that is exactly the kind of ground cover rodents love. It hides them from most predators and allows them to move quickly out in the open. If you have a lot of weeds, brush and/or high grass, this is the first of many areas where our exterminators will look.

Given their tiny size and tenacious nature, ants are easily one of the most pervasive pests. Once a scout ant finds a viable food source and reports back to the colony, it opens the floodgates for an endless stream of foraging ants to make their way into your home.

Understanding how ants enter your home is vital to slowing their advance and saving your property from undue damage. Pinpoint Full Service Pest Control is here to help you identify and educate you on this phenomenon. Here, we will discuss what to look for when you start to notice ants in your home so that you can take proactive measures to keep them outside where they belong.

How Ants Create Trails

As mentioned, ants often deploy scouts to find food sources and efficient routes to get to them. If allowed to make it back to the colony, they create a scent trail for other ants to follow. If you notice a large amount of ants in your kitchen or elsewhere in the home, study their movements and see if there is an organized line they follow. This will identify areas to clean, as removing the scent trail disrupts their movements.

Don’t let the name fool you — silverfish aren’t aquatic animals living far from your house. They are dangerous small insects that can destroy wooden surfaces in your home. The main issue with ridding yourself of silverfish infestations is that they’re particularly difficult to spot and identify. Luckily, a little bit of information goes a long way. Here’s what you need to know about silverfish to identify and prevent them.

Silverfish Appearance

Silverfish are tiny, about 12-19 millimeters in length. You can spot them by their small, wingless, carrot-shaped bodies and the three filaments coming from their tail. They’re difficult to find since they are mostly nocturnal and run away from light. But, they often get stuck on smooth surfaces since they can’t grip and climb them. If you can get a hold of one, silverfish leave a metallic sheen on your finger to help you identify them. 

Silverfish Habitat and Diet

Since silverfish love the dark, they are mostly found in basements and attics. Sometimes, they can be found in bathrooms and kitchens since they also thrive in humid environments. They tend to hang around areas with lots of exposed, unfinished wood, which is their main source of food. Sometimes silverfish will destroy fabrics, but they mainly eat wood products and the glue that holds them together. Any places where you store cardboard boxes, like garages, are also possible breeding grounds for these insects. 

If someone asked you what the most dangerous animal on earth was, what would you say? It may come to a surprise to know that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the mosquito to be “one of the world’s most deadly animals”.

Mosquitoes may look like your average, annoying pest, but they are not. In fact, they can be quite dangerous at times. Let’s take a closer look at mosquitoes and the dangers they pose.

Male vs Female Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are different from other insects because males and females go after different feeds. They both require water and will feed on nectar. However, when females go through the reproductive cycle, they seek out blood to supplement their diet with more protein.

Pests are an unwelcome addition no matter what type of property they find their way into. As a landlord, you have a responsibility to keep your tenants and property safe. Pests can cause many problems for everyone. They disrupt your current tenants and can reflect poorly on you as a landlord. You need to work together with your tenants to help prevent and eliminate pests.

Who is Responsible for Pest Control?

When it comes to pest control, everyone is responsible:

While building maintenance is primarily the responsibility of the landlord, tenants have to shoulder some of it as well. Tenants are the ones living there and their actions may be attracting pests. If they are leaving food out or failing to take out the trash, they could be expected to pay for pest control. If the tenants' lease agreements state that they are required to clean and maintain the inside of their units, this conclusion is verifiable.