Cowley's Pest Control Blog

Pest Control and the Holidays

Pest control problems can can easily ruin your families holidays. This time of year could be a great time for a home pest inspection before guests come. Pest control professionals can help you identify potential pest problems in and around your home.

Here are some tips to keeping your home pest-free during the holidays.. and year round.

Leaving cookies for Santa or carrots for the reindeer? Keep them covered to prevent midnight insects.

1) Keep it Clean

Pantry pests are a common residential pest control problem all year long, but we may not be as careful to thoroughly close containers in the holiday rush. Weevils, moths, ants, rodents and beetles are happy to feed on any carbohydrate-heavy food, including rice, cereal and flour. To avoid drawing pests to your pantry, keep a tidy kitchen. After eating, immediately clean up any crumbs or spills, and store extra food in airtight containers. Finally, keep your pantry dry; like us, pests need water to survive.

2) Firewood Pest Prevention

For pests, firewood represents both shelter and food. You can more easily avoid firewood pest infestations by storing firewood off of the ground. Keep firewood more than twenty feet from your house. Proximity encourages infestations, as bugs tend to explore the area surrounding their homes, and firewood makes an excellent rodent and bug home.

3) Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Hitchhike Into Your Home

Bed bugs can be found at all levels of hotels across the nation, so don’t feel bad about protecting your home from bed bugs that may have hitchhiked in with holiday guests. Your guests may unknowingly bring bed bugs into your home on their luggage. Following the visit, wash clean linens in very hot water. Lastly, a box spring and mattress encasement is an excellent method of practicing bed bug residential pest control.

4) Christmas Tree Pest Prevention

Before you bring that beautiful store bought or live Christmas Tree into your home, carefully check them out, looking for spider webs. If you find webs, remove them immediately. You should also keep an eye out for live insects lurking in your tree. These pests can breed quickly in your home’s warm environment. Use these same home pest inspection methods when bringing fresh wreaths or garlands into your home.

5) What Lurking in Your Stored Decorations?

A variety of pests could have made your decorations their new home. Moths, nesting mice, silverfish and carpet beetles love to set up shop in storage containers. Not only do storage boxes provide a protected home for pests, but they also contain pest food in the form of organic materials like fabric and paper. Therefore, be very careful when unpacking stored holiday decorations. It may be wise to unpack your holiday decorations outside.

It’s that time again to prepare for the “Fall Invaders” (sounds scary!!). These are the pests that enter our buildings in the fall as the weather cools, looking for shelter to spend the winter.Some of our most “pesky” invaders are Lady Bugs (Asian Lady Beetles), Cluster Flies, Boxelder bugs and the ever popular Stink Bugs.These are the pests that we get inundated with calls in the spring when they have suddenly appeared indoors as they again become active and are trying to sneak their way back out. Unfortunately, the time to control theses pests is in the early fall as they are congregating and making their way inside.

When these fall invaders get inside, some will die soon due to the drier indoor air, but others will end up behind baseboards, in wall voids, behind drapes (some of these pest can stain fabrics), and in attics. Because of the many hiding areas they are difficult to control once inside! You will find them active inside during the warmer winter days and also around recessed lighting, which allows them entry into living quarters. It is important to understand that we can control these invaders with a “Population Reduction Program” to substantially reduce the numbers that are entering. Do not let anyone tell you that they can eliminate these pests from entering your buildings!!! Insects can enter structures through openings that you and I cannot see and/or are not supposed to be sealed due to proper ventilation.

Exterior perimeter or barrier treatment: Timing is Critical. Too late, and some may have already entered the structure. A properly applied perimeter treatment is the first line of defense. It will deter entry and knock down most of the population before they can enter. Caulking/sealing gaps around windows and doors as much as possible is always recommended.

This is the bare minimum of a program that will have an effect for you, but that should include interior services as well to be complete.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, additional information or for free evaluation of your buildings/communities.

I hope this helps even a little. Have a great day!!

Decreasing rat populations on horse farms can be challenging due to the constant access to food supply.

Each and every day, a Canada goose residing in New Jersey eats 2-3 pounds of grass and deposits approximately 1-2 pounds of droppings.  It is estimated that the 3 million plus Canada Geese in the United States dump 1.8 billion pounds of droppings.  As a coastal state, New Jersey has gotten more than its fair share of these bird and their offerings.  It's bad enough that people slip and fall on these slippery droppings.  Like all bird waste, the droppings are chock full of diseases and parasites.  These geese are not wild in the traditional sense; because they habituated to people and adapted to living in and around us.

Rats with wings.  Sky rats.  Gutter Birds.  Flying Ashtrays. Pigeons are one of the most unloved birds around.  Some even suffer from peristerophobia, an extreme fear of pigeons and their potential for contamination, especially because of their prodigious droppings.  There is a basis in fact for this fear.  More people would be seeing therapists for peristerophobia if they knew the extent of the toxicity of this waste to humans.  When their droppings dry out, turn to dust and become airborne they can be absorbed in the mucous membranes of unknowing victims in their eyes, nose, or mouth.  There are over 60 diseases that pigeons can transmit to humans including potentially fatal diseases like salmonella and meningitis as well as a range of histoplasmosis fungal infections.  Respiratory histoplasmosis permanently affects the lungs while ocular histoplasmosis eats away at the eyeball tissue causing serious vision problems.

Serious pigeon problem on local docks.

Nuisance birds take over and use the inside or outside of a building or warehouse as roosting, loafing and nesting sites.  Nuisance birds cause extensive damage to structures by drilling holes or clogging ventilation systems and machinery with their nests creating fire hazards.  They cause water backup in rain gutters that can lead to dangerous and costly structural damage.  To add insult to injury, these birds leave mounds of diseased waste droppings that are acidic enough to dissolve paint, stain wood, erode metal, and cause concrete and stonework to crumble.  Bird problems don’t magically go away.  Once these birds get settled in, they won’t be leaving on their own accord.  You need to contact an experienced bird control professional who can evaluate the problem and institute cost-effective bird control measures that work.

When a client is at wit’s end in dealing with birds and their noxious droppings, the general attitude is that drastic times call for drastic measures.  They want these birds gone.  Shoot them. Trap them.  Poison them.  That’s wrong for a variety of reasons.  First, the Migratory Bird Treaty and Endangered Species Acts prohibit the trapping or killing of most birds, eggs or nests without a permit.  So, before doing anything, you must identify the pest bird and know any applicable municipal, state, and federal laws.  Proper and effective bird control is about removal and exclusion through various physical, visual, or auditory deterrents.  The objective in bird control is to not only rid yourself of the existing bird infestation, but also to make sure that birds find your facility undesirable. You want your facility made as “bird-proof” as possible so you don’t have to keep revisiting the problem every year.

Bird control is a multi-tactic approach involving a variety of deterrents.  Bird control can be difficult and frustrating, but it is a winnable war.  Physical barrier deterrents such as anti-roosting spikes, nettings, post and wire deterrents, bird slopes, and shock tracks are usually the most effective over the long-term and just as important, no harm comes to the birds.  Effective long-term bird control requires behavior modification.  Eliminate potential food and water sources.  Finally, do not attempt to clean up bird droppings yourself unless you have the proper protective gear and have been trained in hazmat procedures.

If you hear some babies crying in your house and all of your kids are grown-up or the nursery isn’t in the corner of your attic, you’re not having auditory hallucinations.  Something very real is lurking up there.  You can bet that some wildlife mother has decided to care for her litter in the comfort of your home.

For the summer of 2012 and Lyme Disease risk, expect one of the worst seasons ever.

Coweys discover and treat thousands of fruit fly larvae in commercial kitchen grease trap to prevent major infestation.

At first blush, the unseasonably warm winter in New Jersey seems like a blessing.

Hundreds of Sea Gulls and some pigeons have been roosting on a home in Millstone, NJ, leaving a nasty mess on their roof.