Understanding Occasional Pests and Effective Control Strategies

We all get bugs in our house , typically whether we have pest control or not . And if you have a pest control service , you're wondering why the hell you have bugs inside your house . Right , because we have customers small percentage , but we have customers and nothing wrong with them . Great customers , great people . We need to educate them up a little bit more .

Set the proper expectations with folks , okay , and I'll get into some a little bit more . On frequency I've spoken about this before , but I'm gonna get in a little bit more about frequency too and the reasons why you're seeing more activity or seeing activity .

So no matter if you have pest control service or not , you're going to get bugs inside your home and usually just be an occasional thing . Scorpions are the number one most talked about conversation that I'm having recently with some customers . I'm seeing a scorpion in my house . I need someone out right away . You know . Answer is the answer they get .

Usually they don't necessarily care for . Okay , but the reality of it is . And then answer is well , one , one scorpion is . It's one bug . Nonetheless , it's a scorpion . They're scary and I understand that , but it's one bug , okay , that's not a problem . Companies , we give warranties and guarantees , yes , but not against one or two bugs .

That is normal , very normal . Now , all of a sudden , you've seen four , five , six scorpions in the last two days . Well then there might be something going on and we need to get out there . We need to reestablish that barrier and figure out hot number one . You know what's the most important thing here ? How do they get in ?

Because I don't care if you have a company or if you spray yourself and you do it on a daily basis . You're still going to get bugs inside your house , no matter what . Oftentimes we find them dead , which is that's good , right , but harder to kill , and we'll just refer to them as bugs . But arachnids , scorpions , spiders , they're very difficult to kill .

There's a lot of things to be said about spiders . They say that they're not big self-groomers . Enemologists have been kind of recently . Some have debunked that , but people always have anything in life . They have their opinions . I feel like they're probably not the biggest self-groomers personally , but they do self-groom . I do believe in that .

The reality is , their biggest reason that they are not being as easy to control is the mere numbers of them . They say in Texas , in the South , here , if you go , stand in the middle of your lawn , there's a spider probably within a foot of you in every square foot . That's how many spiders there are and that might be off .

That might be more than that , I don't know . I remember hearing something about that multiple times and they say that so don't fact check . I remember hearing something about that multiple times and they say that so don't fact-check me if you want , I don't care , but anyways it means there's a lot of damn spiders . That's the moral of the story , right ?

So do you think we can kill all of them ? Another bigger question is do you think we should ? The answer to that is unequivocally no . They are very important for the ecosystem and they're great pest control and almost every single spider that you will ever encounter in your life is not going to be harmful towards you or your pet or your child .

Okay , we have black widows in this area , in Central Texas and Austin area Certain parts definitely not around this area you can find brown recluses . I've discovered one or two brown recluses in the last ten years in this area and that was just because somebody moved from Georgia and they had a bunch of boxes packed inside their garage and they brought them .

They brought them along with the trip . They they moved with them . Otherwise they are not prevalent Now . If you go up to Dallas area , where I started my career , I dealt with them fairly regularly .

Okay , they were an issue up there , not an everyday issue , but definitely dealt with them a couple times a month and that's about the extent that I dealt with them up there . I had some customers that were infested with them and it was scary for them . I didn't like messing with them either .

To be honest , educate that's the reason I do these podcasts to help educate people a little bit , really to debunk things and don't live in fear . Be aware . That's the number one thing in life . Be aware , but there's always going to be spiders . Okay , we don't want to kill all spiders at all . They're great .

Pest control also , I don't have to pay them payroll either . That's great , but the reality of it is if you're getting , let me get back to it . If you're getting bugs inside your house , you have to ask yourself why . It doesn't mean that you didn't do a good job yourself when you treated .

There could be other factors there , maybe conducive conditions , landscape , blah , blah , blah . Tall grass , whatever . Let's take that all the equation . Let's say that you're taking good care of your property , everything's clean , nothing cluttered , but you're still getting bugs inside . Why do you think that is ? It's because you have gaps .

You have some ceiling issues on your home . You need what we call exclusion . You need to be sealed , whether that's roof returns or the people call them roof joints , holes in the soffit . You know vents . You need vent covers on mushroom vents on the roof .

The vents on the roof , you know sometimes that will keep , and that's speaking to getting squirrels and wildlife or rats inside . But even roof returns , scorpions are notorious for getting into adducts . They do that by .

Typically , if you have a lot of like I do live oak trees overhanging or almost touching the structure and just having a lot of oak trees and trees in general in your yard , you're going to have in rock , and if you live on the west side of 35 , you're going to have in rock . And if you live on the west side of 35 , you're going to have scorpions .

Okay , but depending on how many trees and all those conducive conditions outside , you might have more than the next person . But , most importantly , let's say you have pest control . Okay , they're coming regularly . Coal-leaved pest control service is not going to really cut it .

You might be able to get away with it if you have your home sealed really well , okay , but the combat tougher . To kill pests as those , you need to have more frequency , at least a bi-monthly service and I'm going to go down a rabbit hole on this because this is getting on a topic of the occasional bugs that come inside .

But this is important to understand . Traditionally , pest control companies do quarterly service . Majority of them do . Almost all of us offer it to some degree , unless you're the door-to-door companies . They're doing bi-monthly just to get higher contract values . They'll even throw a 30-day back-to-back in there follow-up .

And they do that because they want high contract values , because the sales reps are all coming from Utah or whatever and they're going door-to-door and they're going to sucker you into signing a contract . They might even some of them have gotten .

You know , I , some of them have developed over the years a little bit and they might be actually giving a decent service . But typically they don't . All they're going to do I'm really going deep in a rabbit hole .

They typically are just to get your credit card and get a signature , because in a few years they're going to sell you to another company a large company typically and that's their MO . So they do buy monthlies for that reason .

But us local quality companies at my company I offer both Even have a few customers that aren't on monthly because they're completely freaked out by bucks . Excuse me , I'm trying to get them to realize they don't have to do monthly . Yeah , don't get me wrong . Someone wants to pay me monthly for service .

Now it's great , we make money , we're in a business , make money but at the same time it's really not necessary . If you have your home sealed really well , so spend them on . Do it right the first time . You know , spend the money takes money to make money or save money right . So seal up the home .

Years to come you'll actually save money because you won't need that much frequency .

There's a lot of variables in that . If you do construction , building ceases things calm down , let's bug activity , and there's a lot of variables , of course , but in general , if you have scorpions and you're getting them fairly regularly , you got to ask yourself why am I getting them inside ?

Well , seal up my home , and it's still possible to get one occasionally . You can't seal a home up perfectly , but , I guarantee , by addressing a garage door , weep holes and your threshold of your doorways , weather stripping on the sides , make sure there's no light , no gaps .

I guarantee , if you were seeing six , six a year in your house , you'll probably get down to one a year , maybe none . So that's the difference with pest control service . Of course , though , you have to have a pest service and , like I said , I'm not here just to lobby to get you to sign up with my company .

Again , it'd be great if you gave us a shot , though , but just saying . But at the same time , whether you have a company or you hire somebody else or you want to do it yourself , just do it . Quit living with them . They're not paying rent . But at the same time , when you do do it yourself , don't think what you're you know well . Let me back that up .

If you are doing it yourself , most likely you're not getting your hands on good products . Home Depot is crap . You're not going to find anything worth a shit there . Did I just say that I apologize ? That just came out . Wow , I normally don't swear , but you can tell I'm getting fired up , so we'll let that one slide today .

Okay , I apologize if I offended anybody on that . We'll keep it to damn and hell . Okay , but anyways , that is . That is . I got myself really screwed up by saying that I feel bad . Anyways , I really don't feel bad , but I just try not to . I'm trying not to swear on these at all . So , but I did . We'll get over it now , move on .

So , with that said and I don't remember what the heck I was saying now so with regular services , whether you're doing it yourself or you're hiring somebody , don't expect not to see anything inside your house . That's the bottom line , and if you are and your pest control company just did a service , you need to trust that they did a good job .

One or two bugs inside your home does not indicate an issue at all . Okay , that's actually oftentimes a good sign , especially if they're just treated . Things are going to move around . They're going to move about and they're going to die off . Okay , they don't die right away . Take hours for them to die , sometimes it takes minutes , but it can take time .

If a scorpion just happened to wander through a doorway , a door seal , something that was unsealed , and a week after you just got that area treated well , that barrier is still there , that's still protected , the structure is still protected .

It's not as hot of a product , we'll say , as it was five minutes or five hours after it was just sprayed and dried , you know , and it's dried now , but nonetheless it's still effective . Call that LD50 and people understand toxicity and all that kind of stuff .

We get into that some other day , but but anyways , nonetheless it is effective , still okay , and it's going to be , remain , remain to be effective for usually a couple months In that area . That's covered . But , mind you , a patio especially , we've put inside a weep hole , we put a insecticidal dust .

Hopefully you just you know , if you're a patio especially , we put inside a weep hole , we put an insecticidal dust , hopefully you just you know , if you're worried about scorpions , though , you need to good to have the wall voids dusted .

Or , like my company , we even we can even foam wall voids , which is pretty cool , but we do a lot of dusting because dusting works great against scorpions . Okay , and that's what I would ultimately usually recommend is dusting , because dusting works great against scorpions .

Okay , um , and that's what I would ultimately usually recommend is dusting the weep holes and then stuffing them . Okay , prevent anything from going in there , and you just killed whatever may have been inside the wall void , which is important now . With that said , you might end up kicking some ants inside your house . That can happen .

It's because you don't know that they're in the wall . Sometimes that happens . You deal with that then , but that is the best way to combat the issue , and so the moral of the story is you're going to get occasional invaders .

We're going to have different seasonal pests that are going to be popping up now Crickets , beetles , earwigs , especially pill bugs , which are crustaceans . You know there's going to be a lot of moisture-driven pests with all this rain that we've been getting , and now it's getting warm and it's humid as crap out . Now I said crap .

Instead , you're going to get bugs . We're all going to get bugs . You're going to see bugs outside . You're going to see them dead on the patio . Just because you got a little bit of rain doesn't mean the products not effective . Most products can withstand a decent amount of rain .

There's products that companies like myself and other good companies out there they're utilizing that can withstand up to four to six inches of rain . When it comes to like granular baits that work quite well for like crickets and the seasonal pests , okay , now also you might see an influx of them and say , oh my god , there's so many of them .

And then just , but they just did treatment a week or two if they baited . Okay , it's not going to just kill them instantly . They're gonna have to find that bait . You're protected if your doorway is . If they're getting inside there again , why are they getting in ? It's kind of common sense . If you really think about it .

I can't stop something from getting in . And here's the reality . Why do they Ask yourself this ? Why would they want to go through that doorway ? Well , right now it's going to be probably 90 degrees out today , 92 degrees possibly . I think it was 89 yesterday . It's going to be 92 out today . If you're normal , you got your house probably at like 70 , 72 .

Or if you're like me , you're like around 68 . My wife , I should say I have to have to practically wear a sweatsuit Just to sit and watch TV at night In my house . She gets it so cold and I'm 225 pounds . Anyways , she likes it cold . Of course she sees that the heating blanket on her One or two dogs , it depends if one likes me or not .

Otherwise she has the cold . Of course she sits with a heating blanket on her Two dogs well , one or two dogs Depends if one likes me or not . Otherwise she has two dogs on her . So she's , she's plenty warm , but you know , your feet feel like ice cubes . Anyway , that's another conversation , another time . Um , doorways , why do they want to come through ?

Well , it's cool inside . This is where we want to be . Okay , that's the ideal temperature for them , around 70 degrees , right For all of them , for everybody , pretty much Pretty universal . They want to be inside Wintertime . Why would they want to come inside ? Well , probably cold , though Might almost have freezing temps at some winters we've had .

The last few have been pretty bad . The last one wasn't bad , it was pretty mild . They want to get inside . They're looking places to harborage too , inside those weep holes . So what's a good thing to do ? Get your weep holes treated and get them stuffed with a venable mesh .

I've talked about mesh before and my company uses a different type of mesh than just about everybody . I copper mesh is good , it's quality , don't get me wrong , um , but it does lose its nice copper finish and usually you'll have those straggly wires sticking out sometimes if the company didn't take their time with it , and I just don't like the look of it .

Over time it looks bad aesthetically . But anyhow , that's my rant for the week , I guess . Make sure your home is sealed up really well . If you're unsure of what all needs to be done , what all , how to go about doing it .

I'm here . I don't mind answering some questions . I'm quite busy . Usually I literally texted all my guys and said please don't call me for the next 20 , 30 minutes while I do this podcast episode . Okay so , but like I said , you can call me . Leave a message . If I don't answer , I'll be happy to call you back . Leave a message .

If I don't answer , I'll be happy to call you back . Or and that number is 512-588-2998 . That's my company number , evofoampestcontrol . Or you can email me and I will give you a call , I promise . And it's Damian D-A-M-I-A-N at evofoampestcom . Okay so , go seal your home up . Give me a call . Y'all have a great day .