PEST CONTROL ADVICE FROM A PEST CONTROL PRO WHO IS ALSO AN ANIMAL LOVER
Yellow jacket nest on house: leave it alone or use wasp spray (or dress like a beekeeper and manually remove it to somewhere else).
Yellow jacket nest in tree: leave it alone.
Little ants inside: clean, caulk, use boric acid gel bait if necessary.
Big ants inside: hire a carpenter to replace your water damaged wood.
Spiders: leave them alone.
Isopods/millipedes inside: hire a plumber to fix your water leak/repair the broken window allowing rain in. Run a dehumidifier in the meanwhile.
Mice in kitchen: repair holes behind stove and other appliances where water and electricity utilities penetrate the floor and walls.
German cockroaches, bedbugs: hire a professional pest control company
Raccoons, flying squirrels, squirrels, opossums getting into chimney or attic: Cap the chimney, repair damaged siding, put mesh over vents.
Mosquitoes in yard: keep the weeds to a minimum OR don’t go out at dusk OR wear a repellent that is 20% deet or picaridin or 30% eucalyptus oil. Dump any containers holding water around the house, pick up plastic trash and tarps, clean your roof gutters.Â
Flies indoors: take the trash out, close the damn door, make sure your window screens are intact.
House centipedes: leave them aloneRabbits/woodchucks/deer in the garden: use a better garden fence.
Rats, raccoons, bears at the birdfeeder: take down the birdfeeder.
Mice in the car engine: don’t park in the woods.
Grain moths in the kitchen: throw out contaminated source (it’s probably bird seed but it could be pet food, or pasta/rice/cereal/flour/other grain based food that has been stored for more than a month), use freezer for long term grain storage from now on.
Fruit flies (red eyed) - empty your compost, trash and recycling and scrub the receptacles with hot soapy water.
Fruit flies (dark eyed)/drain flies- get a sink brush and scrub the interior of the drain pipe, flush with very hot water.
Most pest control companies use anti-coagulant rodenticides when they are controlling rats or mice. Those big black boxes or the ones shaped like rocks that you see outside restaurants and warehouses are full of rodenticide, almost certainly anticoagulant rodenticide. Anticoagulant poison is easy to hide in a food block, making it attractive for pest control companies–mice and rats are very good at detecting contaminants and toxins. Most also require multiple doses, making these products safer to use around children and dogs–if a kid or a dog eats a bait block they won’t die, and there is a ready antidote. Unfortunately anticoagulant rodenticides build up in animal tissues, and are causing mass mortality of birds of prey and even affecting rodent-eating mammals. There are other kinds of rodenticide baits but they are not as effective (they don’t taste as good to the rodents) and pest control companies are going to continue to use anticoagulants until there is a law prohibiting them.
This is coming from someone in the Northeast of the US, your pests may vary
