Peskies Pest Control Montgomery Alabama Podcast

View Details

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the river region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, Auburn and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Michael Wienecke
So today here on the pesky pest control podcast, we are going to be talking about my favorite subject, roaches, not just any Roach, the largest roach in Alabama, not in the world,

Travis McGowin
but before we now we dive off into the bug stuff, let’s acknowledge the obvious. It’s been a while.

Michael Wienecke
Yes, yes. I completely just forgot about that. Yeah, yes. Well,

Travis McGowin
it has been a while, yeah, but for those of you who do listen on a regular basis, we apologize, but it has been a while. Things have things have been wild around here. The bugs have been non stop, and so we had to take a little hiatus, and now we are back. Yes,

Michael Wienecke
it’s a lot harder to do everything you know than you’d think. So,

Travis McGowin
right? So anyway, American cockroaches, let’s talk about them. Yes.

Michael Wienecke
So American cockroaches are in your house. It’s becoming fall, and they are going to find their way in through holes in the wall, holes in the brick, pipes, vents, tree branches touching, you know, the side of the house to let those guys bypass any products or anything like that to get into the house.

Travis McGowin
I mean, I haven’t seen any in my house. You said they’re in my house. Well, you

Michael Wienecke
just said you had a smokey brown roach in your house that was

Travis McGowin
off record. We didn’t want to talk about that. That was off record. Much

Michael Wienecke
harder to control, much harder to control. Yes,

Travis McGowin
so, yeah, the American cockroaches. And I tell a lot of customers this, the American cockroaches like to live underneath pine straw, underneath mulch vegetation areas. So they’re very typical to see them around the outside of your house where you’ve got landscaping, and they like to eat under that dead and decay that layer of dead and decaying vegetation up underneath all of that landscaping material so they can make a nice little home for themselves. And typically, they don’t usually want to come inside and they don’t usually want to infest a person’s house. But there are exceptions in the fact that sometimes they mistakenly wander their way in,

Michael Wienecke
or they just weasel their way in because it’s a nice dry spot, and it’s been raining for five days straight,

Travis McGowin
right? And I also think, too, that sometimes with gaps, cracks and crevices around the house, whether it’s doors, windows, anything like that, that you end up, you know, at night, you got light coming through those gaps, cracks and crevices. I don’t think that helps your I don’t think that helps your calls either when trying to keep them out. No, 100%

Michael Wienecke
I can remember as a kid, I was watching TV one day with my window open, and an American cockroach flew right in and landed on the TV and scared me after death. Going straight

Travis McGowin
for the light makes you, makes you think about those commercials that they used to have where you’re sitting there watching it looks like a regular, normal commercial, and then this bug goes and crawls across the screen and always looks so real, like you want to throw something at the TV? No, I know. I wonder if they were ever liable for someone throwing it, throwing something at the TV and breaking a TV, and like, you know, had to pay for somebody a new TV. Oh, I

Michael Wienecke
almost broke my TV. So, yes, I can say that. But no, that that’s, that’s a great point. Turning off your lights at night. That’s going to stop any attraction to, really, any bug. I mean, spiders, because you’ve got your flying insects flying around that that that light. But roaches, you know, that’s our topic. So we’ll stay on topic. Roaches typically like to infest the lower portion of a house, like crawlspace, or, I’m not going to say infest. They like to gain entry to occupy, yes, I like to gain entry to crawl spaces, basements, like I said, the underside of houses, due to, you know, higher moisture content, much better. Survival, survivability, survivability, yeah.

Travis McGowin
So we know where they like to go. We know what they’re searching after. Let’s talk about a couple things that maybe you know you can do to prevent that. We’ve talked

Michael Wienecke
about it before. Try to keep your bushes, your branches, anything touching the the roof line or the side of your house, because you can put down product after. Product. If that Roach is crawling a tree, and that tree is hanging the the roof or touching a window, or it’s just going to be easy access for for that little guy or a little girl,

Travis McGowin
right? They can circumvent right over anything that you or that your pest control company, that your technician applies, that they just have a route to go around it or over it.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, like, we’re talking about roaches right now, especially American roaches, because it’s fall, that’s when they start really getting into people’s homes again. You know, the pine straw around the house, just keeping everything nice and dry, trying to divert water away from your house, is going to stop them from feeding on that organic matter up under the pine straw and around the mulch,

Travis McGowin
right and some other common entry points that we can talk about sealing up, you know, HVAC entry points, where your HVAC lines go into the house a lot of times, there can be gaps right there. You can also seal up around vents. If you have a crawl space, you can seal up around those vents, you know, but you don’t want to block any airflow. You want to make sure that you have good ventilation and airflow inside the crawl space, too, gaps and cracks around plumbing. I know sometimes we see houses where there’s some master drains that are exiting the outside of the house that maybe aren’t buried underground, or have some other kind of plumbing or drainage pipes coming in and out of the structure somewhere or another. So sealing up any of those access points can keep you free from American cockroaches as well.

Click Here to See This Podcast Video!Are you looking for Pest Control? Click Here!The post Keep American Cockroaches Out of Your Montgomery Alabama Home! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today on the pesky pest control podcast, I’d like to focus on termites. Termites are something we do a lot of we see a lot of termites, small jobs, big jobs. And today I’ve got my friend Jay Campbell with me. Jay, it was funny, because whenever to Jay’s house and talked him into let me do a termite inspection, got up under there and found the, probably the worst one of the worst termite claim damages I’ve ever seen. So Jay, tell your story, man.

Jay Campbell
It was bad.

It was bad.

Well, I’ve got a crawlspace. I’ve got a crawlspace house and I never go down there. That’s the problem. And so, you know, when I was young, I bought the house and everything and I let my termite bond lapse and, you know, didn’t have termite. What would you call it like a termite bond

Michael Wienecke
where the termite protection?

Jay Campbell
Yeah, it didn’t have the Sentricon and all that kind of good stuff. You know, so younger dogs, just let it go. You started your business and everything. And I was like, Hey, man, come on out. Check it out. And everything. And you know, I had to get under there to where do you kind of crawl? Yeah, that was fun. Yeah.

Michael Wienecke
It’s always good. It’s always good when a homeowner comes under there with us, because I’m like, Man, you can experience this. Yeah. Great.

Jay Campbell
So got up under there. And I’d had some water damage. I think there’s

Michael Wienecke
water down. Yeah, we started noticing a lot of mold. And yeah.

Jay Campbell
So it was a lot of moisture and everything, you know, know what I know now that drops in the termites. And yeah, it was bad. It was really bad. When you’re doing your tap test, or whatever, you could take a screwdriver, just drive it to the side of the, you know, through the side of the home, you know, two by sixes or two by eights or whatever they were, yeah, in the floor joists and everything. So yeah, it was bad. And then we ended up you know, having to tackle the situation, you know, so it was bad. Yeah. But we got it though.

Michael Wienecke
I remember we were sitting there when you when we found out you know, you were telling me about the boat you’re about to buy? I mean, you might you probably gonna have to hold off on the boat. Yeah, I had a lot of plans. there with that. But yes, yes. But it

Jay Campbell
was it was, you know, it is what it is. And you know, that’s what learned a lot. I’ll say that learned a lot. So yeah, it’s crazy. Well,

Michael Wienecke
so as far as having a termite bond, I mean, do you think you would ever not have a termite bond termite coverage on another house? I’ll

Jay Campbell
never do that again. Yeah, I mean, honestly, you know, tell me that, because if you did have if, you know, correct me if I’m wrong, if you have the termite bond, and that happens, the company covers it. I think

Michael Wienecke
maybe it depends on the type of coverage you have exactly. A repair bond if you have a retreat only retreatment only bond. Yeah.

Jay Campbell
So, yeah. So yeah, word of advice. Get your bond.

Michael Wienecke
Well, so, um, walk me through the process of repairing it. I think it’s amazing that you repaired your own house. I mean, you know, you literally took the initiative to tear your floors up, and I mean, just walk me through that.

Jay Campbell
Well, I had a guy come out, there’s actually a buddy of ours. He’s actually a friend of mine. Now here originally your friend. Yeah, buddy of mine. Yeah, Greg Kane, good guy. He come out and looked at it and everything and, um, you know, gave me a quote and everything and I was like, a little bit steeper than I wanted to go you know, and you know, that you know, this obviously, but you know, I work on cars for a living and I talked to my wife and everything and I was like, you don’t really want to spend that money or should I just try it myself, you know, if I can rebuild a total in the backyard in the shop at home, surely I can do something with the house and everything and I got a lot of friends and construction and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, people that I can bounce ideas off of, you know, like, I have a concept of how to do it. Yeah, it’s like a hey, what would code code thing to do here so that way whenever that date does come sell the house and you know, am I in the right in my going down the right path of fixing it and everything so

Michael Wienecke
I’m good Josh. Yeah,

Jay Campbell
Josh you know at the end there’s a lot of people I’ve talked to a lot of people with my bad my bad he knows a lot actually learned a lot that he that he knows a lot about that type stuff and I didn’t realize that Yeah. So yeah, got with dad. He’s got a bunch of friends I’ve talked to my good buddy Josh. I’ve talked to people at work but no friends and you know, they got people and also it was kind of like a and YouTube you know, we were talking about YouTube. Yeah, definitely YouTube a bunch of stuff and yeah, just got in there and just did it just started small and worked my way into it and obviously pulled the floors up and everything and I don’t think I sent you pictures but so the biggest reason I had to jump on it pretty quick was you know Benji was being born. Yeah, he found out we were pregnant. Everything is like, let’s talk I want to get on it now. Right? Right. Um, I don’t think I ever showed you pictures but in his room which you know where it’s at, yeah. The termites that ate into the sub floor itself. It was within a foot of the actual main beam of the house like the main I guess you I call it beam but but main

Michael Wienecke
structure? Here’s some structural damage.

Jay Campbell
Oh yeah, it could have it could have went about another foot, it would have been really, really, really bad.

Michael Wienecke
Well, that’s why I wanted to bring you on here. Because I mean, this is that house is the worst case I’ve ever seen. And I don’t I don’t mean to be mean. I get it. It’s like one of those things. And the cool thing about it was, and I was thinking about this, and I was like, you know, I really started my company. And it was like, what, two years three? I think it was like, after two years, we started doing termites. And your house was like the fourth or fifth house that I kind of inspected. You know, did all that training all that book, we’re looking at all these pictures, and I’m secretly screaming like, yes, you’re excited.

Jay Campbell
I can see it all over your face. You’re excited. Which I mean, it was cool, though. You know, it was Yeah. So the whole time being like,

Hey, man, I gotta get I gotta get pictures. Don’t Don’t Don’t judge me. All right. Yeah, it was. So it was the fourth or fifth house.

Michael Wienecke
It was somewhere around there. I mean, you know, I was I was extremely green. And like I said, Do it try to do everything I could do to learn without actually getting in the field and getting out there and finding something like that?

Jay Campbell
Well, that was probably what once in a lifetime, maybe not once in a lifetime,

Michael Wienecke
but it’s a that’s a rare. It’s hard to find a termite, you know, infestation that completely tears down, you know, almost, really the front side. I mean, and we’re talking the room size was like 203 100 square foot

Jay Campbell
room. Yeah, things like a 10 by 12. And it was

Michael Wienecke
on their wall side of the window. You

Jay Campbell
had or had his room. But then if you it was like his room, but then it was like, in the living room as well. So it was he was there the whole front side of the house. Yeah. So it was bad. Yeah. But then to come to find out there was another water leak, too, that I saw that brought him in, right on the front side from the porch, you know, you know, I’m talking about what the porch came up. So I think that’s what brought them in, originally. Yeah, well, it’s funny. It was it was one man tear of it. She when she you know, obviously, we’re serious and our relationship, so she kind of started staying more at the house and everything. And at that time, it was my daughter for him. Yeah, yeah. Jay, what are these bugs? Oh, no, baby. I think that’s just please dance.

Michael Wienecke
You remember? Yes. I do remember that.

Jay Campbell
I was like, oh, no, it’s all good. Well, then the next year, they came back. And I was at work or something. And she looked it up. That’s when I sent you a picture. So what are these? Like? Do those are? What are you calling warmer? Warmer? Yeah. Oh, Lord, then I think that’s when you came out shortly after that. Yeah. If it was in the sheet rock in the in the two by fours and the walls and the floor joists in which you got the pictures, everything. It’s in the, like, the big window frame and the header in the header? Yeah, almost to the to the roof and everything it was? Yeah.

Michael Wienecke
Well, that’s why I’ve been so excited to bring you on here because it’s, it’s awesome. Getting your perspective because like you own a home, you pay for that home, you worked hard for that home. And to understand, you know, I would never not have a termite bond on my house. Obviously, I know a guy so yeah, but it’s just it’s that important, because that process you went through if you don’t mind? How much were the quotes that you were getting to repair your home house.

Jay Campbell
I’ve had a couple people come out in the highest now. I think the highest now there was some damage in the back as well. And I think all together. Like 50,000 That’s the quote you were getting. Yeah, I got a $50,000 quote. And then I had a guy just for the front side was like 30,000 I think it was Oh, wow. Yeah. So it was pretty expensive. Right

Michael Wienecke
was the highest though.

Jay Campbell
Yeah, I don’t want to throw him under the bus. But Now granted, that was for everything. Right? Right. And I just I didn’t want to swing that. You know, couldn’t swing it. You know, you know I think I’ve got with me doing the work. This is front and back. I’m maybe have eight grand in it.

Michael Wienecke
That’s That’s incredible. What’s that a

Jay Campbell
fifth of what it was a call? Steena? Yeah,

Michael Wienecke
that’s Wow. Yeah, it

Jay Campbell
was maybe eight. Now granted, I had about some tools and stuff to in that. So materials. Probably like six.

Michael Wienecke
Well, it’s also I mean, it’s like I said manage Just you went out and you did something that you didn’t know how to do at all. You’re just like, hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna just I’m gonna go through this and I’m gonna fix this myself. Dude. I think that’s awesome. Yeah, appreciate it, man. I can’t like when you told me you were doing I was like, I can’t wait to see these pictures, videos. All this so there’s a lot of late nights. Oh, dude. Yes. A lot of late night. I know. I know. I I can’t wait to get on YouTube. Like I said, where we can talk show the pictures and all that because really? I think talking about it doesn’t do it justice unless you can see it. Oh, yeah.

Jay Campbell
I was I was thinking about too. I got some more pictures I’ve tried to send to you too, before you put them up there. But

Michael Wienecke
so let’s talk about the the flying ants. So when when they when they flew out? Did you just spray him with something or how did you treat it? Willy?

Jay Campbell
They I don’t know exactly how termite works and everything. But they were did for some reason. Yeah. Okay. So it was like, assuming they made it and they died after they laid their eggs. I’m assuming not real sure. I’m talking kind of just

Michael Wienecke
so kind of guessing here. Most time they’re flying out. Their wings are gonna break off. You probably saw a ton of wings sheds all around like the windowsill on the floor. I mean, tons tons. It’s amazing. How many of you see, and then they’ll just die. Yeah, they’re just they won’t make it. Yeah,

Jay Campbell
I mean, they didn’t get far. I guess they kind of just hung it. There was so much right there. I guess I just hung out right there. Because it was almost like you have like ladybugs in the house. Yeah, it was just like that. But quote, unquote, flying ants, right? Being swarming termites. So

Michael Wienecke
well. And I mean, do we get so many phones, we get so many phone calls in the summertime when they start swarming? And it’s always, hey, I’ve got an ant problem. There’s an ant problem, or, Hey, it’s a termite problem. It’s an ant problem, because they both can fly the summertime. So yeah, I always call it professional and you know, just get an opinion.

Jay Campbell
Yeah, cuz Honestly, I thought there and yeah, that’s kind of odd to have. You know, was it the queen that has wings and everything? Reproductive care? Okay. I was like, see that many? In the house? I was like, but, of course, the wife she Googled, I was like, Oh, well. All right.

Michael Wienecke
Well, and like I said, it’s just one of those things where you don’t, you don’t pay attention to it. And then, of course, a lot of people don’t get in their crawlspace.

Jay Campbell
Well, that’s the biggest thing is who really wants to get the crawl space? Well, I

Michael Wienecke
don’t have to know. I hate it. Yeah.

Jay Campbell
So it was once I got down there with you. Yeah. And I saw what was going on. I was like, you know, I need to make it more of an effort to get under there. I was I needed to do now speaking of that, just to get into there and check everything out. Yeah, um, yeah. Word of advice to people. If you have a crawlspace get in there and just check everything. And if you don’t feel comfortable, call some

Michael Wienecke
of it. Go check it. Yeah, I agree. Like somebody you trust? Yeah. Yeah. So

Jay Campbell
for us, it’s not going to, you know, try to pull one over on you. Yeah. You know, um, I’ll never forget that. You laughing? I’ll never forget that. Like pictures. I got, I

Michael Wienecke
know. So excited from from a very small YouTube channel. But what was it going with that? Oh, yeah. So like, you know, not know what’s on your crawlspace. I mean, we’ve gone on jobs before where crawling the crawlspace looking at termite damage, and all their pecs lines are just leaking. It’s just a water hose under there. And there’s a swimming pool, and I have no idea. So I would say, you know, just with as our termite inspection, we’re also looking for mold growth. I mean, we’re gonna let you know, things that you can do to fix problems like that, because we’re not a Water Restoration. Come on. Now. Of course. I mean, we have people that we can send that way. Yeah. But I think it’s very important as doing an inspection, you might as well just do everything, you know, make sure that there’s no major leaks you’re seeing, I mean, I’ve seen air ducts, you know, people cooling and heating the crawlspace instead of their house, because the air duct came on, it fell down. So yeah, I would agree with you on the problem, the crawlspace. And it’s, yep,

Jay Campbell
it’s worth it. And if you’re older, if you’re, you know, whatever, not able to at least get somebody you trust to get up under there and just look.

Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah, I agree with that. So

Jay Campbell
yeah, it’s still a lot to do, but it’s a work in process a work in progress, that’s for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like the like the room and everything like everything’s done. It’s just you know, honestly kind of straighten it up out there now because it was in such a hurry just kind of cleaning up the debris and stuff like that.

Michael Wienecke
Well in the amount of damage that they did and the amount you had to replace. I mean, that’s a lot of work like cutting the wood out. Like I said, we keep you know, kind of emphasizing on the on the amount of damage and it’s really the time that it took I mean, this took like, nights and weekends. Yeah, I mean a lot of time.

Jay Campbell
Well then also the damage that that the termites did. That wasn’t just a one year deal. Oh, that was uh that was years worth of you know? Yep because what I bought the house 21 Something like that. Yeah, so I was early 30s When I saw that oh man so yeah younger younger No Yeah,

Michael Wienecke
well you live and you learn man that’s it. Well Jay I appreciate you coming on the podcast might have been like through sickness and kids and all that kind of stuff it’s

Jay Campbell
glad to get together on it

Michael Wienecke
yeah Glad we could talk about your your you know I think just victory from from having your issue to fix it that’s all that and like I said can’t wait to get those pictures out there. So again, thanks. No,

Jay Campbell
of course man course. Appreciate it.

Visit us on YouTube!The post Peskies Interviews a Customer with Severe Termite Damage in Montgomery Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Request a Wood Infestation Report (WIR)! Click Here!Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama, with your host, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the river region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, Auburn and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Travis McGowin
Hey, thanks for checking out our video today as we wanted to go ahead and take a quick moment to discuss the official Alabama wood infestation inspection report. So what this form is, is for real estate transactions, whether you’re buying or selling a home, whether you’re refinancing a home, most of the time, mortgage lenders are going to require a wood infestation report what infestation reports are done in search of wood destroying organisms that may be affecting the home and this inspection is done so that it can be fully disclosed to the purchaser, as well as the seller. And then that way they can make an informed decision before they actually sign the dotted line and by the house. So as you can see on the this is the very first page of the report, man with the title official Alabama wood infestation inspection report, part A. And it does consist of a Part A and Part B. And then there is a third sheet, which is an addendum, but we’ll show you all that here in just a moment. So the first portion, the top part of part A labels, the company name, license number, address, and all the information for the company as well as the date of inspection and the date of issuance. It also has a spot for the sellers name, purchasers name, and it also list the inspectors name. Now another very important part to this is the scope of inspection. So this actually details what it is that the report encompasses. So you know, it lists out that some portions of the structure may be covered and not visible, list out if there’s any mold like conditions, or there’s concerns about molds and fungi in relation to indoor air quality and that it’s not covered. And then you know, you should have that inspected by someone else who’s certified in that type of inspection. So it’s really important to read the scope of inspection so that you really clearly understand what it is that has been inspected by this report. As you can see here, there’s also a list of the address of the structure and whether this report is only for the main structure itself, or whether it may include you know, some sort of outbuilding shop or shed that you have on the property. And there are some mortgage lenders that will require you to have all of those building inspected, instead of just inspecting the main structure that is for sale on the property. And then there’s also a spot for evidence of previous treatment, which is right here. And that is just going to be up to the inspector to see whether or not they found any evidence such as drill marks around the house bait stations for termites around the house and that sort of thing as well. So moving down to the next section, you have findings. So inspection reveals evidence of subterranean termites, powderpost beetles, wood boring beetles, dry wood, termites, wood, decaying fungi. And you can see there’s checkboxes to mark active or previous infestation. What you can’t see is right here, there’s a section that says remarks and additional findings. This is a spot on a fillable form where the inspector is able to put their remarks, you know, maybe they didn’t wanted to elaborate on something that they found or elaborate on what they checked. And so typically, they’ll type something in or write something in right there. So it’s always a good idea to go ahead and look at that remarks. And additional finding sections just to make sure that the inspector didn’t put something that was you know, very relevant or that might not want to be overlooked by the person who’s buying the house. Directly beneath that, there is a section for treatment. And it shows if any treatment was done on the structure. Now, sometimes this can be done in conjunction with this wood infestation report or it can be done previously well before the wood infestation report was issued. So in this case, the company that’s doing the inspection may have at one point in the past done treatment on this house and this allows them to showcase that to the new buyer. So they may have the above structure was or were treated by this company as follows and they may check this box and then you know they’ll write the date of treatment and the date that the treatment expires on these lines. And they will also note whether or not that is transferable or not transferable to a new property owner when the house is being purchased. And then at the very bottom of that is the last check box which is the above structure is are are not covered under a treatment contract by this company. This is a very important pour Part of this form. And the reason it is is because this tells you whether or not the house you are buying has coverage with the company that is doing the inspection. Now, just because this box is marked, that there is no coverage does not always mean that your house does not have termite coverage, there’s a possibility that your house could have termite coverage by a another company, and that that company is just not the one doing the inspection. But this box will tell you if the inspecting company does have coverage. And if it is marked that it is transferable to the new home buyer, it is a very good idea on your part, to reach out to that company after the closing of your home and ensure that they have updated contact information for you. That is one problem that we do run into occasionally, where contact information for the new homebuyer is not relate to us or to the other company that holds the termite coverage on this house. And if it comes time to renew, and they’re unable to contact you unable to get ahold of you, because they don’t have your proper contact information. And maybe they sent mailers and never heard back from you, then your termite coverage may actually lapse or be canceled altogether, at that time of renewal. So it’s always a great idea to go ahead and reach out to that company after closing, and just update the account information so that they have some sort of contact information for you. So right here, at the very bottom of part A, there’s a buyers signature form. And that, of course, is just going to be where the new buyer signs accepting the results of this report on part A. And then these boxes down here on the bottom are simply checkmarks were the people filling out the report, the company filling out the report can request that copies be sent to either the buyer, the mortgagee, the real estate agent, the seller and as well as the pest control company. So the next page is labeled as Part B. And part B starts off with, of course, showing the address and the date, just to make sure that this report goes along with that same address structure. And these conditions are very important to they kind of spell out a little bit more about what the extent of the report is. So it’s really definitely a great idea to read over these conditions and understand them. So that when you close on the house, let’s just say you close and that very same day, you start to move in and you walk into the house, and then you find something that maybe doesn’t look right to you. It’s a good idea to know what was either a not covered under this inspection that wouldn’t have been listed or be maybe unfortunately, somebody missed something during their inspection that should have been covered. So it’s a good idea to read the conditions governing this report just to ensure that you’re aware of what was covered and what to look for just in case something was missed. A little further down under the conditions governing this report is three checkboxes and it says inspection of accessible areas of this property indicates visible evidence of active or previous infestation as follows. Now this section should go right along with the section from part A, where the inspector was able to mark whether there was an active or previous infestation. So this should mirror whether there was anything found on part A it should mirror on Part B. So the inspector has the opportunity to say that there was evidence observed and that either control measures were performed, or control measures were not performed. And then as well as it should tell you that the evidence of an active or previous infestation exists below. And then they should be able to list that out. Now directly underneath that you see there’s more checkboxes for active and previous. And then it has the five wood destroying organisms that the report looks for. And in these blank lines to the right, the inspector should list a more detailed description of exactly where the wood destroying organism was found. So let’s just say hypothetically that there were subterranean termites found there were active ones, and the company did not provide any control measures. So they would check the boxes up here to mirror that, as well as check active by subterranean termites. And let’s just say for the sake of this video, that the termites were found in a wall, near a window seal in, for example, the living room, so the inspector may list out to the right of subterranean termites. The exact location of the activity, window seal on front side of the house and the living room. May be a little more specific than that. And so they’ll list that out. And directly below that is a diagram. So this diagram will actually give you a visual of where that activity or where that wood destroying organism was found in the structure. So this diagram should have it clearly marked. And then directly below this is a legend, or a key that shows you what the markings mean. So for example, if there were active termites found on that graph, where the termites were found, you should see something like S T, and N A, so that should stand for subterranean termites active. Now, if it was previous damage, you would see S T, with a P for previous subterranean termites previous. And then directly to the right of that key, you’ll see the construction type of the home, whether it has a basement, whether the house is on a slab, or whether the house has a crawlspace. And it does say check all that apply, because we do have some houses that have multiple, if not all three of these items, or construction types. So you may have just a slab checked, or you may have a crawlspace and a slab, or you may have all three. On the bottom of form, Part B is another location for the buyer to sign and date. And then directly beneath that is an authorized agent signature with a date of inspection, then that authorized agent signature is just going to be the inspector signature. And then again, the section that allows them inspector to check where the reports need to be sent or where copies of the reports need to be sent. The very last page which may or may not be included in this report is the wood destroying organism and best station inspection addendum. This is simply an addendum form, we typically do not include it unless there is some sort of change or addendum that needs to be done to the actual initial report itself. And it’ll allow for the inspectors name, date and file number. And then as well as any other relevant information that may need to be added. So let’s just say that the original wood infestation report showed that the house had an active termite infestation. And maybe before closing, the company was asked to treat that, excuse me that termite infestation. So maybe the company would issue a or an addendum, and maybe be able to graph out on the bottom underneath the information portion here and show that they treated. So that’s just a hypothetical as to what can be done with this. But typically, this will not be included unless there’s something additional done after the original inspection was completed. So this was just a overview to tell you kind of what the purpose of the official Alabama would infestation inspection report is, and to give the homeowner, someone who’s buying a home or a business or just any property in general in the state of Alabama, to give you a good idea of what each section means. And to give you a good idea of what you should look for. In terms of reading this report. I always tell my customers and I always tell anybody that asks, Please do not go to the closing table, and just sign the paperwork without reviewing the report. Once you sign this and you close, you’re accepting that report. And you want to make sure that it is acceptable before you sign it and before you close on your house. Know that property. homes and businesses can be the most expensive investment that a person can make. Their home is usually their most expensive investment more than cars or any other items that they may buy. So it is important to make sure that you protect your investment. If you’re dealing with any type of wood destroying organism, whether it’s subterranean termites powderpost beetles, wood boring beetles, dry wood, termites, and even wood destroying fungi. Give us a call at Peskies Pest Control. We’ll be more than happy to help you. You have a question about your wood infestation report or your existing termite coverage. We’re happy to talk about that too. Our Montgomery number is (334) 595-9055 and our Birmingham location is (205) 470-8161. We hope that you found this video helpful and if you have any other questions about this report, give us a call today.

Watch our YouTube video “Peskies Pest Control Explains Alabama Wood Infestation Reports (WIR)”! Click Here!The post Wood Infestation Reports in Montgomery Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today on the podcast, we want to talk about something we’ve been seeing a lot of and that is just creepy crawlies in the attic, anywhere from Asian lady beetles stinkbugs pretty much your too generic that they were getting a lot of calls on. And I think the best thing to talk about what this problem is just that, you know, homeowners always can we seal up the attic, can we still have the attic? No, you cannot seal up the attic. The attic has to live and breathe. You know, as your house is getting hot getting cold, it’s venting. So there’s really no way to completely seal up an attic. So those bugs are still going to be able to get into your attic. So Travis, talk about some treatment plans.

Travis McGowin
Well, unfortunately, like you said, we’re getting those calls and and tis the season I had a very long conversation with someone about two or three days ago in reference to the Asian lady beetles specifically, but you can kind of bundle the stink bugs into that same conversation because they’re, they’re about seeking the exact same thing. So they’re both seeking out a place to overwinter. They’re seeking out a place to just basically make home until it’s time to go and get back out, you know, in the springtime and whatnot. So, but yes, you’re exactly right. Houses need to breathe. And, and I’ll take that even one step further. Even if you have spray foam insulation in your attic, these insects will find a way to get in. I don’t care how good of a spray foam job that you have had. If you go up into your attic, you know in the late or early fall and going on into winter, you’re gonna find some form of either stink bug or Asian lady beetle, it just there’s no way to either a completely seal up your attic. And like you said, nor should you really necessarily want to because that air exchange has to happen. Or else you’re going to end up with more problems than just insects, you’re going to end up with moisture problems and everything up in that attic spaces which you definitely don’t want.

Michael Wienecke
100% And another thing I’ll say to what we’re getting a lot of calls is ladybugs, ladybugs in the attic. They’re not ladybugs, they’re Asian lady beetles, super aggressive. They bite ladybugs, or just cute little, you know, red bugs with dots on them. They don’t

Travis McGowin
Well, and I’ll say this too. While we’re on the topic of that. Ladybugs are beneficial. Yes, Asian lady beetles are not

Michael Wienecke
they don’t. They sorted they serve no purpose,

Travis McGowin
Other than being a nuisance. But the unfortunate thing is, is that if they if you’re seeing them if you’re seeing them in your house, if you’re seeing them in your attic, surprise they’re already there.

Michael Wienecke
Oh yeah, definitely. Well, it’s funny I saw a video the other day of somebody letting an Asian lady beetle crawl on their finger and a bit them

Travis McGowin
You know, people can actually be allergic to their bites, I do have a customer that is allergic to their bites and and so you know, they, they definitely are more concerned about the Asian lady beetles than the average homeowner, and rightfully so. But like I said that they’re so small, and adapted to getting into these little tight places, and they want to go live in your wall voids and in your attic. And and if you start seeing them in your house, they’re already there. The the thing that I recommend most to my customers is being proactive, especially in that late summer, going towards fall to try to be proactive and treatment. And what little bit exclusive that you might can do around doors and windows and cracks and crevices that don’t involve completely just sealing out something that needs to ventilate. But being proactive and treatment and exclusion early on to try to keep them from getting in in the first place.

Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, I know my house was built in the 70s. And we had the old style windows a couple of years ago. And every every time and this time of year, we just got stinkbugs galore. And we got new windows put in and that you know it was cut down to I mean, almost almost none coming to the windows now we still get some of the attic. And we still have to treat but that just door seals something something as simple as just replacing your door seals if your door seals are wore out, or your windows or anything like that is going to help tremendously.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, and we do have some other options too. In terms of treatment and products, I did have another customer that actually swapped over from a larger company to us under the I guess under the agreement that I would be able to take care of his stinkbugs and that was a big thing for him. That was really the only problem that they were having was stinkbugs consistently being an issue. And I went and inspected located the fact that they were coming in through around the eaves of the house and getting up into the attic and then coming down to the living space in the attic. We were able to treat that addict with a dust. And they were pleasantly surprised because they didn’t have any more stinkbug issues after that.

Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah, it’s huge. And I mean, standing behind our work, that’s just what we do. But yeah, I love how you brought that in. So I mean, when you’re, when you’re getting getting in the attic, you have to the dust is going to be the best way because you’re going to be able to get all those cracks, crevices, those voids where those bugs are going to try to enter, and that dust is going to linger. Another great thing about the dust is that there’s no sunlight in the attic. So it’s not going to break down, it’s going to stay there. Most of the time, when we do a treatment in an attic like that for stinkbugs or Asian lady beetles, or ladybugs you know, it, they don’t have a problem the next year, the next year, the next year until that product starts to break down, which takes a very, very long time and the attic or a wall void or anything like that.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, that product is definitely there for the long haul. And definitely, like you said, undisturbed by sunlight undisturbed by large amounts of moisture, it will be there and it will be effective there for quite a while.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, and another deciding factor that I’ve kind of found just from from homes with these issues. It’s always light colored homes white, light gray. So I just recommend everybody paint their house black and they probably wouldn’t have this.

Travis McGowin
Well, maybe so maybe not. I do know that especially stinkbugs to you know, if you go out on a warmer day on the side of the house that’s facing the sun that you get a decent amount of sunlight you may even catch some of these inbuilt insects sunbathing and and there’s a higher likelihood to that that’s the side of the house that they’re going to be more of an issue on you’re going to see them more often. Because of that, that heat from the sun they’re searching that warm place actively so you know they’re going to be in those wall voids they’re going to be in that portion of the attic more so than others. That’s not to say that you’re not going to see them in any other portions of the house because you will but they’re going to be on the sunny side because they like the warm

Michael Wienecke
Yeah. And like said for this for this podcast I’d say the takeaway is just you know, you just if you have this issue going on, just know that don’t go up there and just try to follow them every every void in your in your attic and like, like Travis said, You’re gonna cause a lot more issues than good.

Visit us on YouTube! Click Here!The post Attics Are Winter Havens for Pests in Montgomery Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today I want to talk about blowflies. blowflies are disgusting. They’re disgusting fly, they come out of dead animals they come out of poop, or feces. Travis take it away on the discussing both blowflies

Travis McGowin
I like how you said that they are they are disgusting. Unfortunately, if you find yourself with blowflies, that can mean a number of different things, from the very basic of you have pets in your yard, who may use the bathroom in your yard, and you know, blowflies will use that excrement in your yard as a something to feed off of, and continue to survive. And that’s really gross, even on up to the more harsh things which they typically like dead things dead animals, dead rotting flesh. And so they’ll seek that out and they will go and they will lay their eggs on that. And the larva when they when they come out, they’ll you know, they’ll feed on that and continue to grow until they grow into adult floss so and then they want to come and they want to land on your surfaces are laying down your food, you know when you’re around your house and contaminate those items before you eat them or touch them.

Michael Wienecke
And that’s how we get salmonella,

Travis McGowin
E. Coli, Salmonella. I think even cholera, just a home just a whole slew of just nasty things that you don’t want gastrointestinal problems that you don’t want. All from a little bitty, fluorescent colored fly.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah. So here on the podcast, we always talk about real life events. So I’ll just tell a story about you know, last week well, right before Christmas, had a customer call, we had done a rodent job for him. She called she flies all in her basement, she had them flying around her TV at night, they were just everywhere. So whenever inspected, and she had blowflies. So we knew that we had an issue with a rodent problem. So we had controlled the rodents, one may have died somewhere around the house. And that’s, you know, that’s the whole point of talking about blue flowers today. Once again, she had 50 of them downstairs, when I had invaded took care of the problem. If we if we still would have had blue flowers coming out after treating it, then we would have known that we’d had more dead animals or potential bigger problem, but the treatment completely solve the problem. So

Travis McGowin
I even had a customer several months ago that had blowflies is like she woke up one morning. This is this kind of hotel and it but she woke up one morning. And it was just like an explosion of flies very large, all over the place inside her house. And that was what was very strange for us is that there were no dead animals. No dead animal smells. We checked the whole house, we checked the attic and couldn’t find anything. She did have a dog that lives in the house, you know, which would go to the restroom in the backyard. But it wasn’t like there were large amounts of flies that were lingering around in the backyard was just like all of a sudden an explosion of flies in the house. Which we of course, like you said, baited. We took care of the problem. And she hasn’t had any more issues like that since but if you’re experiencing these flies, just like I said all of a sudden overnight, or even, you know the dreaded inward maggots. If you find yourself, you know overwhelmed with not just flies, but maggots, you might want to check your garbage, you might want to check your your yard, you might want to check your walls or your attic or what have you. Because something has brought them there. And that’s why they’re reproducing and showing up.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, and they can fit at the tiniest crack and crevice. So just your typical window they can fit through, especially if it’s an older style window, your doors don’t have proper seals on them, you’re going in and out, you know, especially taking out the trash or something like that, you know, they can enter in. And then of course, if you have something dead in your attic, or your crawlspace not a problem at all for them to fly into your home or even the maggots to to get into your home and then turn into flie.

Travis McGowin
And they just reproduce so quickly. One female can lay hundreds of eggs, you know at one time, and where you started with, you know, just a couple over a very short time span, especially in warmer climates. I mean, it can just balloon out of control and balloon to this very, very big problem.

Michael Wienecke
Well, and again, I mean, the it’s always best to find the source of your issue, whatever pest problem you’re having. There is a source. There’s a reason that that pest is there and like I said with flaws, especially with blowout loss. Typically it is going to be something dead inside or around the home. I know I’ve had them in my house before. I’ve had a rat issue at my house before so I had to seal that and get rid of it. But that’s that’s always going to be an indicator of something bigger the flies are are showing you that you have a bigger problem.

Click Here to See This Podcast Video!Are you looking for Pest Control? Click Here!The post Blow Flies Are Filthy Insects Trying To Get Into Your Montgomery Alabama Home! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today I want to talk about powderpost beetles. And if you have ever experienced powderpost beetles, then you know exactly what they do they leave a fine frass powder on the floor, it’s normally white, yellow, and that is the signs of powderpost beetles.

Travis McGowin
You know, a lot of the the crawl spaces that I’ve inspected in, in older houses have been prone to having some sort of old identifiers that there were at one time powderpost beetles, and typically, you know, on the floor joist floor members inside the crawlspace, I mean, little holes everywhere. But the key thing there is that powder, that identifier that there’s activity going on, and that usually looks like a, like you said a whitish yellowish colored powder that’s kind of been pushed out of those holes. So it makes like a, almost like a rain down effect on the side of the wood. And that’s always usually an indicator that there’s activity going on inside of the wood in that crawlspace.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, that’s right. And then, you know, a lot of times people freak out about powderpost beetles, typically, they do not reinvest. So there’s really not, not really a need to just, you know, I’ve worried more about termites and I would powderpost beetles, because we see it all the time. And if they’re if you just see the holes, and you don’t see any of the powder, then that’s old, there’s really no need to worry about it.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, definitely. Although I will say this, you know, I think there’s some misconceptions out there from people. I had a customer this is back probably a year or two ago, that called us because they had had an inspection from another company. The other company said, Hey, we think you got powderpost beetles. And I assume, I guess that the other company declined to do the treatment on the house. And of course, this gentleman was very concerned about it and wanted it treated. So he ended up calling us and I went out to inspect the crawlspace. And sure enough, there were holes and powder coming out. And the The interesting part about this is the wood in question, the wood that was infested wasn’t the old wood underneath the crawlspace, it was actually new wood that they had put inside the crawlspace that they had recently bought from a big retail store. I’m not gonna say any names on retail chain, but they had just bought it and had it put in and a couple months later, lo and behold, they’ve got a powderpost beetle infestation coming out of the wood in this wood was supposed to have been treated wood.

Michael Wienecke
Well, let’s talk about that. So when when the wood is brought into the sawmill, it’s not invested from from the forest or whatever it’s brought into the sawmill and then that wood is stored. That is when that wood starts to become infested. And they’re supposed to go through treatment styles, they’re supposed to put a type of bore care on it, or they’re supposed to do a heat treatment. But it’s heat treatments just aren’t as effective. And they take forever. I mean, you have to heat wood up for I think it’s 24 hours at 124 to 135 degrees. And that’s just, that’s, that’s hard to heat that much lumber. But, you know, 111 bundle at a time, I guess you’d say?

Travis McGowin
Well, and you also, you know, with wood, there’s there’s other factors to consider more so than just heat to you’re talking about heat, you’re talking about moisture content inside the wood. And like you said, whether or not the wood itself has been treated with some sort of pesticide or bore a type substance that’s going to, you know, penetrate down inside of that wood and have a long lasting effect. But like I said, I think that there’s just a common misconception that, well, if you go to a store or a retailer, and you purchase wood, well, it’s been treated. So it’s good to go, you know, and that’s not always the case, you can’t always just act under that reassurance that that there’s not going to ever be a problem.

Michael Wienecke
Right. And then but the customer you had that they were emerging. I mean, there was no structural damage done to the wood, it was just a couple pinholes that were that were coming out. So I know you traded it, and typically likes that they don’t reinvest any, any beetles that are emerging out of that are going to die. So pretty easy to fix.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, and like I said, a good if someone has that problem has that issue in their house with their wood. It’s nothing that a bore a treatment cannot, you know, go ahead and take care of them. And the other good part about that is these these treatments like say with borides products, like board care, I guess or Tim bore or one of those products is that once that wood is treated, I mean that that product absorbs down inside of that wood and that product is there for a very very, very long time. And so it’s not just effect against things like powderpost beetles or other types of beetles, it is also effective in helping to prevent infestation for things like termites as well.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, that’s right. So I want to talk a little bit to about some miscommunication between people thinking they have powderpost beetles and people thinking that they have are actually having stored product pests. So I know, you know, a lot of the flower beetles and powderpost beetles can be, you know, that you can think you have one in the other.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, you know, and the other thing that I will say to differentiate is your powderpost beetles are your going to be less likely to actually see the beetles themselves. Most of the time, they’re going to be inside of that wood. They’re very rarely are you ever going to actually physically see the beetles themselves. Whereas a confused flower beetle or other type of stored product pests crawls around a lot of people will have a mis misconception that that weevils are beetles too, or some type of beetle. So you’re usually gonna see these pests. I’ve had a customer that had some confused flour beetles at one time. These things were everywhere, when I tell you the room that had them. They were crawling all over the counters. They were they were they were just everywhere. And actually, they they had bought these like wicker, some type of scent, a material baskets from a home decor store. And then they put these baskets in their house, and then all of a sudden, they’ve got confused flour beetles everywhere. So it’s kind of interesting, but like I said, typically with the powderpost beetles, you just you just don’t physically see the beetles very often at all.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, that’s right. And I mean, they’re not going to they don’t have a pupa either. So you’re not going to see that that little cocoon up in the in the corner of the pantry or anything like that. Also the powderpost beetles that come out at night so that’s another reason you don’t see the beetle.

The post Powderpost Beetles Can Infest Wood in Montgomery Alabama Homes! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Learn more about the Sleep Soundly Sweepstakes! Click Here!Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today on the podcast we want to talk about something we’re doing kind of a Christmas giveaway. It’s called the sleep soundly sweepstakes. And what it is, is it’s a free heat treatment to anybody that applies, wins the contest, and they are going to have a bedbug free home. So come in hate, hate the house and get rid of any bedbugs that you might have.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, I’m excited about this. I really, really am. I’m excited about putting it out there to somebody in need, because let’s face it, bedbugs Okay, let me start off by saying I wouldn’t pick any insects to live with. Okay. I mean, roaches, ants silverfish earwigs. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t pick any, any insects to share my home with but if I was forced to pick, I definitely wouldn’t pick bedbugs. You know, whether it’s the fact that they are literally using you as their food source or the stigmatism that surrounds bedbugs. They’re just something that I don’t want and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody else.

Michael Wienecke
Well, it’s funny you say that I’ve actually I had a customer the other day asked me you know what’s worse, German roaches are bedbugs. And by far bedbugs. I mean, really, at mites. In other things I can think of parasitic, you know, insects, fleas, anything like that bedbugs are worse. I mean, there’s, there’s nothing worse than, you know, the, the horror stories we’ve heard where customers laying in bed, and they can just feel these things munching on them, or they wake up and they can, you know, see him crawling in the sheets, or just just the, the stress that they that they bring on.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people limit their view of the problem that bedbugs cause to only to only really thinking about the physical aspect of it and in terms of like, like you said them feeding on us and, and maybe the allergic reaction calls from their bites or, or that sort of thing, but really, there’s just a whole other. There’s just a whole other problem with bedbugs. More so than just the baits. Like I said there’s the social aspect the stigmatism around having bedbugs. And then there’s also a mental aspect of it too. You know, bedbugs. They don’t, they’re not limited to just one socio economic class there. They’re not limited to one group of people, people who own a million dollar home can have on people who own a, you know, $90,000 home can have them and everything in between. And so if you end up with these insects, they can affect you mentally from affecting your sleep. That can make it harder to sleep because you dread laying down in your bed or dread laying anywhere in your house because you feel like you’re going to become a meal. And then that can affect your your day to day, you know, at work or with your family. I mean, it’s just there’s just a lot more than just the physical feeding aspect.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, you definitely don’t want to like go over to your your family’s house for Christmas if you got bedbugs because then potentially, you know, you could bring it to them so, and

Travis McGowin
Your family’s not gonna want to come hang out with you either. Especially if they know!

Michael Wienecke
Exactly what and you know, we’re joking about this. But But really, I mean, we’ve seen it so many different ways that people get bedbugs. I mean, we’ve had, you know, somebody’s mother in law stayed with them. They they she had bedbugs at their house. They had no idea. They were infested. We had a lady that was traveling really nice hotels, all throughout Louisiana and all that and she got bedbugs brought it back to her condo. We’ve had Travis you’ve had some that

Travis McGowin
I had a good friend of mine, same thing. He in his previous job. I mean, he traveled three, four or five nights out of the week, sometimes in different states. You know, working for a national company, and ended up bringing them home to his own house. And you know, it he didn’t stay and nasty hotels either.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, and I think the biggest thing too, is once you get them, people don’t know what to do people just they think that they can treat them with these, you know, store bought products that really don’t work. I mean, they’re gonna kill the one you spray. Just like roaches. They’re gonna kill the one you spray but they’re not going to take care of the problem bedbugs can get in cracks and crevices. I mean, I remember you telling me a story Travis and you were at a gas station and you saw one between the crack and crevice of like a sign. We’ve seen them in firearms. We’ve seen them just all kinds of the tightest little crack they can fit into.

Travis McGowin
Well, I did an inspection a couple of weeks ago at a house and they they had initially somehow gotten the bedbugs back and I want to say June or July of this year. And they went bought a whole bunch of like you said over the counter products labeled, you know guaranteed to kill bedbugs. Bla bla bla bla bla I sprayed everything down, sprayed everything down in the bedroom that was affected, and then thought they were in the clear, you know, didn’t see any more, didn’t seem to have any more problems. And now, you know, all of a sudden here it is November into December, and they’re back. And what I tried to explain to the customers, they never left. You know, you have bought these over the counter products. They’re they’re over repellent nature. So like you said, they’ll kill on contact if they contact. But, you know, what they didn’t understand is that bedbugs can go a long time in between feedings, they can survive for a long time before they need to feed again. And so if they had to go and hunker down and hide because of an over the counter product that was treated in there, they can they can wait it out.

Michael Wienecke
That’s right. And so I went to a CEU class and I remember the teacher talking about a boy’s home, and the boy’s home all the beds were metal tube style, you know, they’ll bedframe that we’ve all had his kids just hollow on the inside, and they infested with bedbugs. And that’s why we chose hate because he is going to penetrate everything. So they could not they had to throw all these beds away because they were doing liquid treatments. They’re these boys, these boys homes, and they had to throw all the beds away because the bedbugs were so deep inside the cracks and crevices of the tube metal frame, they could not get the product in there. So that’s why we chose heat because heat is going to penetrate the walls, it’s going to penetrate all cracks and crevices the bed pretty much anywhere that bedbug can hide.

Travis McGowin
Well and a lot of people have a common misconception. So you know, we go and we meet with people, we do inspections, people that have bed bugs. And I would be willing to say the majority of the time, all of a sudden you’re looking in the room where they’re having the problem. It’s like where’s the mattress? Where’s the box springs? Or the or the headboard? Or where are these items that are supposed to be in the bedroom? John? And you know, so there again, the one that I went and inspected a couple of weeks ago, they had just bought the lady that lived at the house a new mattress? Well, you and I both know that didn’t solve the problem. And yes, these insects are called bed bugs. But the mattress is can only be just a small portion of the problem. Usually people don’t realize how far these insects will crawl away from you and then back to you to feed on you. And while yes, they can live in a mattress and live around the seams and parts of the mattress and even the box springs to the headboard but you’re also talking about living under baseboards living in nightstands, behind wall plates for plugs and light switches and just all these other cracks and crevices so they’re not just limited to the bed. And I hate to see people go and throw away a perfectly good mattress, or headboard or or whatever article that they’re away thinking that they’re helping. When realistically one you just moved that item out of the room that was infested or that is infested. So now you run the risk of investing another room in your house. And then God forbid somebody picks your furniture up off the side of the road or or the mattress or you give it away or what have you. Because now they’re probably going to have bedbugs too. So you’ve just spread the problem, when if you just leave everything in that one room, leave it in that place. And let a company like us to come in and treat you get to keep all your stuff. So you’re not out money trying to buy, you know, new items of clothing, new furniture, new anything like that. And we we can guarantee to get into every spot like he talked about the boys home because the heats not gonna miss or neglect anything.

Michael Wienecke
That’s right. So let’s let’s dive into the sweepstakes. So, again, you know, we’re putting on Facebook, but on Google, we’re putting it on all these platforms that we we can because we really want to help somebody that’s in need. And, and there’s having this issue and doesn’t know where else to go?

Travis McGowin
Yeah, definitely this. This is something that we’ve been talking about now for several months and being able to give that gift to somebody. And that’s really what it is. It’s it’s us here at passkey. He’s giving somebody the gift of a bedbug free home. And you know whether that individual has one or two rooms that are infested, whether that individual and their family have a whole house that has issues with them. These heat treatment that were given away can can remedy that situation. And in in one day, and I can’t think right, exactly, you know, going back back and laying down in your bed that very same night and knowing that the problem is gone, the infestation is gone. And then being able to anticipate those family gatherings and and having company over as so many of us do during the holiday season, just being able to give that peaceful sleep. And that ability to believe that you can get together with your family and not have an issue with this insect. I mean, I think that’s huge.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, I agree. And, you know, I’d also like to just kind of get rid of that stigma of, you know, just that that common Oh, well, their house must be disgusting, that, you know, they’re living in filth, you know, all that kind of stuff. I mean, I brought back fleas to my house, a couple of months ago.

Travis McGowin
Inherent risk of the job by the way!

Michael Wienecke
Luckily, I know a guy. So, and bedbugs are no different we worry about that. When we when we do services. I mean, we have to, we have to take our clothes off, you know, right outside the garage or around the back the back of the house and, and take, you know, really, really high precaution on that so

Travis McGowin
Well and I hate that because I think as a society. I think that there are a lot of people out there who, like you said have this negative connotation or negative view on someone with bedbugs, but all of the cheese, all of the heat treatments that we have done so far, have not been in some stereotypical house that’s unkept and not clean. I mean, like I said, it’s so easy to acquire an insect like a bedbug. You don’t have to, you know, have a filthy house or what have you. I mean, it can it can literally happen to anybody. And just knowing that there’s kind of this societal stigma about it, where people just think that someone is lesser than because they had bedbugs is just completely not true.

The post Bed Bugs And The Sleep Soundly Sweepstakes in Montgomery Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today we’re gonna talk about the house mouse or otherwise known as the common house mouse. We have some pretty cool video today, we’re going to show you a little bit later. But I just wanted to go into detail on kind of the what to look for signs of infestation, how quickly they mate, and just their habits alone and of course, controlling them. So Travis, take it away.

Travis McGowin
So the house mouse was originally thought to have come from Asia, but it’s completely widespread, not just in the United States, now. It’s in Canada it’s in, it’s pretty much in every country, and every on every continent, around the world is just a very, very survival adapted creature, well, we’ll put it that way. You know, it can survive and really warm temperatures, it could survive and really cool temperatures. But they’re typically, you know, not really big, definitely not large in comparison to let’s say, a rat, or something of that nature. Their colors rains, typically from you know, a lightest gray, maybe even a little bit of brown on the top of their bodies, and typically a lighter, almost white underbelly on the mouse. If you’re looking at tracks, there’s four toes on the front feet, there’s five toes on the back feet, they’ve got a pointed snout, or appointed nose, and really, really tiny eyes, and air and ears that stick up with minimal hair on them too. And their tails really don’t have a lot of hair either, mostly kind of scaly. So like I said, they’re very small, which allows them to get into places that they shouldn’t get into, we always tell our customers, you know, a hole the size of a dime. But you know, according to research that we’ve done, the average size hole on the small end is about a quarter of an inch, if it’s a quarter of an inch, they can fit through it, and they can get into some very, very tight places.

Michael Wienecke
Well, and if they can fit their head through, they can start nylon and shoe and working that around and making that hole bigger. So it’s funny how you said, thought to come from Asia. I don’t think we know where they came from, honestly, because I mean, with shipping routes and all that they’ve come in trucks that come in boats, all over the place, I find that interesting that they think that it come came from Asia

Travis McGowin
well in shipping, you know, the primary, the primary way that they enter most of your commercial facilities, when you talk about warehouses, you talk about restaurants, you talk about places like that, is through shipping, you know, they may hide inside of a pallet that is, you know, trucked across, you know, from one state to another to be delivered. And then, of course, you know, coming in from the outside, open doors, or from around H back entries, or electrical or other utility entries, plumbing injuries, you know, they’re very, very good at finding, you know, a place to enter into these buildings. And like you said, like what you said, so if the hole isn’t big enough, they may decide to just know, at larger two, they can get in and I actually do have a picture. So I was called out this week to a local childcare facility. And they actually physically saw mice running through the building, which was kind of comical because the kids got to see the mice to which I do have a little video footage of that, that we’ll share here in a minute.

Michael Wienecke
The right place at the right time.

Travis McGowin
Exactly. But I do have this photo here to show you what I found in one of the closets in a multipurpose room. So check this out. So this closet backs right up to another closet that opens door to the outside of the building. It’s like a utility room where they have water heaters and outside objects for play and keeping just different outside toys for the kids. And the door doesn’t always shut all the way very well. So you have to really really force it close. I think sometimes it gets flipped open. But it appears that those mice came through that closet and then with there being no baseboards in that other outside outdoor closet. It’s like they just came right up underneath the sheet rock or right through where some of the plumbing went through the wall and then just chewed open the hole wider so they could get through and you mean you see these vinyl baseboards that they’ve stuck up on the wall? I mean, they’re really no match for a rodent?

Michael Wienecke
Not at all. That’s a that’s like a few seconds for them to get through. And that’s for that’d be in mice you know that. Typically when you see that you’d say that’s a rat hole right out right off the bat but that that’s they did some work to get into that.

Travis McGowin
They did you know in rodents always constantly have to know and chew on things. Their teeth are constantly growing. They have to keep them filed down to a manageable level. But there were we’ve called so far a total of three mice throughout the building. There’s very comical. I arrived that morning after they saw the mouse run through the bill. Holding the video footage that we’re going to show was just not long before I got there, it was taken not long before I got there. And we actually ended up hitting up one of the mice in a storage closet and kind of blocking it off in there. And I put traps in there. And then that evening, I went back and we’d actually caught the mouse. But yet the what’s the big problem, though? So obviously, nobody wants to read it. And you know, they’re there. A lot of people, some people think they’re cute, some people think they’re ugly, a lot of people just don’t want to see them. But what’s the bigger picture? Why do we not want rodents inside of our facilities and our houses and our commercial buildings and those places.

Michael Wienecke
So I mean, the biggest thing is going to be just disease. You know, they’re filthy, the biggest problem they cause they get into your food. They, you know, I’ve seen them wreak havoc in someone’s, you know, worst case scenario, a wrapping paper closet where somebody was doing all their Christmas wrapping paper, and they just shredded it. I mean, it was just so it’s covered in poop, pee, paper, baby rodents, just all that remnants of all that. So and then of course, like said with the food, they’re going to spread salmonella. That’s one of the biggest the biggest issues with with those rodents. So

Travis McGowin
yeah, among among other things, salmonella is probably the the main and primary culprit that is spread by rodents. They usually defecate or pee on everything that they they touch. And then the rodents are very territorial, too. So they go out and patrol their territory, leaving, you know, urine to mark that territory along the way, every single day. And so it just builds up. And I mean, you’re talking about one single rodent can cause a mess. But I mean, most of the time, there’s more than one. So you’re talking about an exponential miss. And it can just cycle out of control quicker than people realize.

Michael Wienecke
Well, it it’s amazing how quickly they can turn from, you know, babies to being able to have babies, I mean, you’re talking about, I mean being weaned off, what, 19 days, 21 days, and then average about 30 to 35 days, they’re ready to start making babies and then they’re gonna have eight, eight litres per year, around 40 to 50 Babies per year.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, the average litter size of a house mouse is about six, six offspring give or take. So on average, ideally, in nice conditions, these mice can have 4850 plus babies per year. Now, in a cooler climate, their breeding may be a little more seasonal, and they may kind of take time off from that until it warms up again. So there might be some slower months. But in an average climate, you know, much like ours, I would say that we’re probably having to deal with inbreeding year round.

Michael Wienecke
Well, not only that, you know, especially here in Alabama, you know, they they’re their commensal rodents, so they may live in the attic, or the crawlspace. And typically, we don’t get that phone call until they have that that major problem, you know, it’s not one or two rodents that they just didn’t see. It’s now five 612. You know, we’ve seen 48 before.

Travis McGowin
So a lot of times, attics are just kind of the perfect place. They’re dark, they’re usually undisturbed. If they’ve got especially blow in insulation, these rodents can kind of burrow out in this insulation, and make their homes inside of that, because it’s just nice, warm and comfortable material for them. The good thing about rodents, though, is a lot of times, I mean, and they may travel a little further for food, but a lot of times their territory is not more than you know, kind of 20 foot in every direction from around where their bedding is. So, you know as a homeowner, if you’ve got some signs of mice, you know, some telltale signs to look for the obvious things. You know, rodent poop, shredded, like you said in that closet with wrapping paper, shredded bedding material, that sort of thing. So if you haven’t caught a mouse with your own efforts by putting traps out and whatnot, if you haven’t caught a mouse within two, three days than the mice, that’s not the mouse his territory, you need to you need to start looking for another place to put a trap.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, I mean, that’s the same with bait. So if you’re gonna put your own bait out or something like that, if they’re not eating that bait within that, you know, one to three days, it’s time to move it around the building outside inside, and just kind of see where your activity is. The best way to know Hey, where they’re they’re eating, where they’re sleeping, all that is gonna be droppings, if you’re seeing a ton of droppings behind the fridge. More than likely that’s where they’re going to be at.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, and if you’re, you know, if you move a shelf and there’s 234 droppings just here or there, then there’s a high likelihood that that is that is I mean They may travel through there occasionally, because they usually like sit, they poop and pee wherever they go. But the vast majority of time, that’s not gonna be in their territory necessarily. So you might want to look elsewhere in terms of your effectiveness, and also some other good things to do to, you want to always, of course, put traps around along rodent runways, the rodents run a lot of the same path, they also explore their territory. So another good place to put it, unless it’s, you know, it’s not on that runway is in a corner. So rodents typically slowed down in the corners. And then the other recommendations we have is, let’s just say they’re in a storage closet, and you’ve got a lot of different, you know, let’s say jugs of cleaning supplies or things like that, when you go to place those traps, relocate some of those cleaning supplies, move them around a little bit, this forces that rodent to not just take the same path, but to explore their territory as their territory has changed. And you can just lead to you having a more successful time and trapping those mice.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, that was them off makes them you know, start kind of rearranging their territory, and they’re easier to trap. Another thing I’ll say, too, about trapping is that if you’re having an issue where you just can’t catch a mouse, bait that trap and don’t set the trap for a couple days, just let it let them eat on that trap, get comfortable that trap and kind of, you know, add that to their, to their runway to their territory where they’re, you know, happy with it being there. And then set it the next couple days. And you’ll you’ll catch them note no problem.

Travis McGowin
Oh, yeah. Well, to kind of round us off, I did, I promise some some footage. So I’m going to show it real quick. Yeah. Now keep in mind, it’s not the best footage, it was taken by a cellular phone, videoing the footage from a CCTV camera system on a computer screen, so it’s not the best. But I’ll start off with this one. So this is an actual, excuse me video of that rodent that was crawling around inside of their multipurpose room. So I’m gonna show that real quick. And you’ll see he’s kind of blurry, but you can tell what he is. So here it is. And you see him right down there on the bottom of the screen. He’s a little dark blob moving around, looks very confused. And he just is exploring that multipurpose room that’s got a bunch of different storage supplies and things in it. Alright, so the morning that I got the call about the rodent running through the hallway. A little girl in the program was at the right place at the right time when the rodent darted from one room to another across the hallway. So this is kind of comical in terms of her reaction. So we got this from two different angles, but I’ll show it to you. And we tried to highlight where the rodent was. It’s very difficult to see. So just keep your eyes peeled. Look the doorways right there.

Michael Wienecke
You can see when she runs

Travis McGowin
Yes, yeah. She turned around and sprinted. She screamed, and she you know, she sprinted. And then that same moment called from the other direction, you can see for a split second the mouse. I mean, it’s just a blur, because it ran through so fast. But she turned around and ran, she was not having anything to do with that rodents. So

Michael Wienecke
And to, I’ll say about this, this facility that had that road. And if they would have, you know, not called us out to come out there and trap and find where those rodents were getting into a couple of months down the road. You’re talking about a major major infestation of mice.

Travis McGowin
Oh, exactly. Like, like we said before, this can balloon into just a huge problem before you know it. My survey, crafty, they’re very good at hiding, they’re mostly nocturnal. So a lot of times you’re just not going to see them unless you know you happen to disturb them or something like that during the daytime and you know, you go into their territory, or where they’re nesting and disturb them and kind of flush them out. You’re not going to see them. So you know, a building like this shuts down at six o’clock the lights turn off and everyone’s gone. And then the mice are left to their own devices for hours all night long. And of course would it be in a child care facility? There’s food there snacks, there’s candy there’s there’s those things are at this facility and not always stored in tubs or or in, you know, storage containers that close that keep things like mice and rats out. So it would have just been a very big problem or much larger problem had they not discovered the mice before that.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah. So let’s dive into control a little bit. I know we talked about snap traps bait all that the biggest thing too is getting rid of the harbor areas sanitation, you know we see a lot of issues where somebody will have firewood stacked up against the side of their house. That’s a huge habitat area for for mice for rats, you know, all that kind of stuff?

Travis McGowin
Yeah, sanitation is a huge one. Mice, you know, they, they may feed on different things in, you know, in their wild environment outside, they’re going to, you know, usually feed on insects, they’re going to feed on different types of fruits from trees, nuts, that kind of thing that fall from trees. So when they get, you know, lucky and find a location that they can enter, such as a school, a childcare facility, your home, a restaurant, and they get in these places they can adapt their their food consumption. So cleanliness is huge in the case of a restaurant, if you’re not getting all that excess food that either falls underneath the tables from customers or falls up and gets raked up underneath the the stoves, the ovens, the cooking surfaces in the kitchen, you have all these things that are just going to build up over time, and they will swap their feeding preferences based upon what’s available at the time.

Michael Wienecke
Well, not only that, that’s going to attract them to the building. So they’re going to start snooping around the building, they’re going to find that crack crevice, get inside and then you know, once again, they’re gonna start pooping and peeing and telling those other rodents, Hey, come on in here and join the party.

Travis McGowin
Well, and what other people too don’t realize is that rodents can follow warm wind drafts, and they can follow odors. So you talk about a building that’s not sealed up well, whether it’s H HVAC, plumbing, electrical coming out of the building, whether it’s doors, whether it’s Windows, mice, they’re not they’re not really good as far as their vision they can’t see very far. And their vision is also they’re colorblind, so they can’t see really well, but they can smell very, very good and compensation for that lack of vision. So you have a building that’s not sealed up, and it’s cooler outside, well, they’re gonna go want one where it’s warm, and to where they can smell something that they may want to consume

Michael Wienecke
Well, and they can jump so they can jump a foot at a time. So you know, if you’ve got a ledge, whether it’s a it’s a foot off the ground that can jump off that and then if you got a windowsill or something like that, that’s open, they can jump into that and then they’re in your home. Same with your pantry. So it’s really not a problem for them getting into places.

Travis McGowin
Oh, definitely. I mean, if you’ve ever caught a mouse on the run or surprised a mouse somewhere, and they took off running, I mean, it’s impressive how quickly they can scale things. They can climb textured walls, they can climb shelves and other objects in your home at lightning speed. You know, a lot of times people don’t realize they have a mouse and then they see something that they thought was a mouse just because they were so fast and so quick to get away just look like a blur like in that video that I showed. I mean, even the CCTV camera CCTV cameras just looks like a blur. So, not realizing that you have the problem for extended amount of time can lead to a very large problem.

The post Mice Are A Winter Pest Problem in Montgomery Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

[This post contains video, click to play]

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the river region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, Auburn and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Travis McGowin
Hey, so today we wanted to come to you and talk to you just a little bit about ants. Ants are a very interesting insect, they’re very strong. I always like to tell my customers that if they were to pull their resources they can most likely and definitely take over the entire world. Their colonies just can be very large. And, and well, as we’ll show you in a video that we took on location at a customer’s house here in just a second, they can definitely work together to get a job done. So they’re very impressive little insects and, and, you know, you encounter them everywhere in your house. In your yard. There’s many different types of ants. So, Michael, give us a little information about ants.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so like you had said, ants are just, they’re really cool. I mean, they, they communicate, they they they set pheromone trails, so we always see ants traveling in a straight line towards someone’s house. There’s typically ants going in ants going out carrying something back to the nest. Ants do something really cool called prophylaxis where they actually regurgitate their food back to the Queen. And that’s how the Queen’s fed. And that’s how one of the ways that we get rid of ants is we bait them, and they eat that bait and then when they regurgitate that bat that bite back to the Queen, it kills the Queen and of course without a queen, you don’t have a colony.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, imagine imagine if that was the way humans actually had a trophy. Alexis is a lot of bricks. Yeah, exactly. Lots of insects, you know, feed each other through triple axis. But that is definitely kind of gross. But Miko you took some video footage for us if you want to kind of explain what’s going on here.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so I was just baiting an ant trail that I found going up a brick wall there. And it was really cool to see him. You know, this particular ant dragging a roach leg and doing it all by himself and just thought it was cool. And that That ain’t right. There’s communicating with that and saying, I would assume Do you need help? That was probably like, No, I don’t need help. I got this. And they’re stopping right now. And that’s what they’re doing. They’re literally communicating back and forth. Whether where to take that that food source or the food that’s already there. And I just thought that was very interesting.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, and, you know, like I mentioned, when we first started the video, the teamwork aspect of the answer is amazing and actually took a video that I thought was pretty neat. I was walking back towards my truck in a customer’s driveway and something caught my eyes I looked down and this is actually what I happened to find. So you can see the ants had kind of dried out looks like a dried out worm of some sort. And you can see the teamwork there. I mean, there’s probably what 20-30 Ants they’re all working together collectively, just to tote that one object across the concrete. So I thought that was pretty impressive and speaks a lot to the way the colony works together for one collective effort.

Michael Wienecke
Well, and it’s amazing to because those ants on the outside are switching back and forth helping those other ants carry that that that dried up worm so when you have answered your house, you have to understand that it’s they’re very complex, so they are very hard to get rid of because they they’re very strong. They’re very tough and where you’ve killed you know, you’ve killed 100 of them in your home. There’s there’s 1000 More to come.

The post Ants Work as a Team in Montgomery Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Travis McGowin
So thankfully, here in Alabama, the weather is getting cooler. Thankfully, this is my favorite time of the year it’s fall leaves or fall in. It’s chilly when you wake up. It’s chilly when you you know when it starts to get dark in the evening. It’s just my favorite time of the year. I love the whole Halloween thing and all that however in your car super hard though. It does. And it does make washing your vehicles difficult but not everybody obsesses over washing their vehicles like some people so not gonna say any names. But anyway. Unfortunately though, with that cooler weather with those other fall temperatures coming in wildlife begin looking for somewhere to stay. And unfortunately, that can push people to have unwanted visitors and spots to their house and outbuildings in areas of their house like their attic, a lot of times, all of a sudden they’ll have no problem and then all of a sudden, there will be some loud noise thump in the attic scratching at all hours of the day or night. You know, and one of those animals in particular that really likes to take up harborage in an attic is a raccoon.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, it’s the perfect place for a raccoon. I mean, you got insulation, and most times can be blown in so blown in insulation. There’s plenty of space, they don’t have to worry about any kind of predators. It’s just it’s perfect for him. So the biggest thing here, that really we want to get across is a raccoon cannot gain access to your roofline without having an access area to that roofline. And what I mean by that is a tree. Really, I think a tree is probably 100% The only way I’ve seen a raccoon gain access to the roofline. And that could be a tree that’s two feet away from the house. I mean, they can jump they can leap. Another way that we see it is the the decorative wrought iron support that’s holding the garage up or something of that nature, they can climb up it, and occasionally a chimney. So the biggest thing is just keeping that keeping all the tree branches cut away from that that roofline is going to stop that that raccoon from gaining access.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, that’s essential for any wildlife control. And especially in the case of raccoons, I mean, a full grown raccoon is not some little small animal, that’s a pretty decent sized animal. And like you said, it’s not, you know, they’re not going to be able to climb up the side of brick. But given a tree given, you know, decorative pillars, wrought iron pillars up underneath carports, like you said, those kinds of things, they’re going to gain access. But I have yet to see a raccoon get into an attic, that didn’t have a way to climb up a tree, like you said, that’s that’s usually nine times out of 10. That’s what it’s going to be. And you know, that tree can either butt right up against the side of the house close to the eaves, or that tree can be I’ve seen them climb up a tree that’s all the way, you know, probably 1520 25 feet away from the house in the yard. But because the branches overhang towards the roof, you know that raccoon has an easy way to get in. You know, I’ve got some really cool photos to show to kind of give people an idea. It doesn’t take a very large access point for these raccoons to get in this customer who I’m going to show you the photos of in particular of their house. They called me one day and they said hey, we have started to hear some kind of craziness in the attic. It’s loud noises It’s usually at night. Just thumping and scratching, most specifically right above our son’s room. So it’s like really, you know, just really this great opportunity for their five year old to be freaked out at night. Because the noises in the attic. So they called

Michael Wienecke
Just in time for Halloween.

Travis McGowin
Exactly right. So they call me and I went up in loads and it took me about 30 seconds of being in the attic to go okay, I know exactly what this is because there were droppings and they were just indicators of a raccoon and so immediately turned around and left the attic. Because, you know of course we operate during the daytime raccoons operate at night. And if raccoons have found a nice place to stay They’re usually there in the daytime, sleeping and waiting for their nocturnal senses to kick in. And so I didn’t want to. I didn’t exactly but I didn’t want to meet a raccoon in the attic. You know, if you’ve ever seen their their clothes, it’s gonna like razor blades. So long story short, it took a little while to catch this one, he avoided my traps for quite a while, actually. And then, you know, one morning, early one morning, we were getting up and getting ready for the day, get ready to get the kids off to school and that sort of thing. And my game camera had caught motion in the attic. And I was like, finally, finally he is he has decided to mess with the cage. And so when I checked my gang cameras, this is what I saw.

Michael Wienecke
So cute.

Travis McGowin
And you know, they really are, especially the baby ones. Everybody thinks the baby ones are super cute. But that is actually a very vicious mean little creature out there. Most people don’t understand that. So we did we got a couple of photos of him he he did kind of was a little wary of the trap at first. You know, kind of see he sniffed around it for a little while before he decided he wanted to go in. But finally, by nine o’clock that night, he was he was caught. So and then you know that next morning I woke up. Before I saw these photos, I have text messages from my customer that said, Hey, he’s in the attic still. And it sounds like he’s tearing something apart. Well, he was actually banging on this cage trying to figure out how to get the door open. So, you know, they’re again, right about their son’s room. So it was just a great night for them. I said, Well, don’t worry, because you’ll you know, it’s gonna be a lot quieter after this. But so in trying to figure out where this raccoon got into this house, I had an idea. There was a tree that I figured was kind of the access point onto the roof, but I was still hunting trying to find out where this raccoon was actually getting into the attic at and I had looked all the way around the roofline, looking for gaps and, and finally after I had called him and removed him, I went and kind of explored a little further in the attic. And I finally found where he was getting into So, you know, addicts have these vents on top, of course, you know, release heat from the, from the attic space and cool the house off. But from the inside, you know, you finally could see he actually tore the mesh out of that attic vent and was able to get in and out of the attic, through that little gap right there, which isn’t really all that big.

Michael Wienecke
And I’ll say this, I mean that that’s factory mesh that they put on on all of those events that took him what Travis less than a second two seconds to get through that right there.

Travis McGowin
I mean, if that as you can, you can see towards the the actual mesh itself, that’s closer to the top portion of that vent. I mean, it’s kind of just sitting there, it’s secured to those. A couple of points. But realistically, all that raccoon had figured out to do was just to push push it inward on itself and go from there. And you can actually see the brackets hanging down. So they’re at one point was some sort of ventilation fan that was housed in that that was removed obviously. So without that ventilation fan being in there, he had he had free access.

Michael Wienecke
That’s correct. Well, I mean, we see it all the time. I mean chimney vents that aren’t aren’t properly secured vents that aren’t properly secured. I’ve seen him rip off the one to the right right there that that big van I’ve seen him completely rip that off the entire house and crawl through the hole there. Once they’re on the attic, I mean they they’re they’re tough so they can chew through that that What about roofing shingles and then write into the plywood and then they’ve got themselves a nice little hole and as you can see in the picture, it doesn’t take much of an opening for them to get into just just from experience I would say the size of a grapefruit typically is what it what they can fit through. And I know we were talking about how they get onto the roof one of the things I’ll add is that I have seen a few times where they can come up a gutter that is a Rambo style raccoon it’s pretty rare to see that. If they are gaining access to the house from from the gutter, they have to be trapped and they have to be removed and it’s that some records are smarter than others it’s pretty rare. We don’t see that very often but it does happen.

Travis McGowin
I’m glad you said that though. They these animals they are they’re very intelligent. The the ones that I have actually caught if you watch them, you know they realize for one of course they realized they’ve been caught but if you watch them, their hands or their paws if you will basically have a thumb I mean they literally I’ve watched set and watch the raccoon they nowhere they get called out. So they saw that the trap door fell down on the cage. And so they’re literally reaching outside of the gap trying to figure out exactly what they can grab to open that cage door. And you know, it’s kind of creepy when they’re sitting there watching you from inside of the cage, just like they’re trying to read you like they’re trying to figure out what it is you are what it is that you’re going to do to them or, or, you know, how can they get one over on you. But there must tell you, anyone who encounters one of those creatures needs to stay away, you know, there was a commercial. I don’t remember if it was the auto insurance commercial, or an Ikea commercial or, or it may have been an Ikea commercial of it. There’s a lady that lets her cat out in the backyard at night, you know, to go out to use the restroom or what have you. And her vision is obviously not very good as the commercial implies, because she’s like, Hi, kitty, come on back in. And it shows that she’s letting a raccoon into the house. You know, she’s like good kitty!

Michael Wienecke
But something else I’ll say about raccoons. You know, going back on what you’re cute, cuddly. I had a customer one time that was feeding raccoon and she was feeding them on her back porch with dog food. She told us about it. While we were doing our quarterly pest control, we recommended to stop doing that she did not stop doing that we got a call about a month later, she now had raccoons in her attic. She had raccoons in her house, they were actually going through the doggie door they busted through the plastic doggy door cover. And we’re inside of her house in her kitchen. So it’s a wild animal. They look cute. They are not pets, and they are extremely dangerous.

Travis McGowin
They are you know one of the points where I’ve trapped a raccoon, you know, I went to go grab the record. And thankfully, these traps have some very tight, mesh together tight middle together. So you know they can’t reach through it. But within the blink of an eye, with within the time that it took me to reach out my hand and grab the handle of this cage. The raccoon snarled at me and tried to basically bite me through the cage. And like I said it was within the blink of an eye it was so fast. So this is not a creature that you’d like you said like you don’t want to be feeding them and attracting them to your residence. There’s already enough out there to attract them to your residence. Like I said, if you have domesticated animals that you feed dogs and cats, garbage cans, waste waste piles, compost pile, there’s enough out there to attract these animals without you helping them along.

Michael Wienecke
Definitely, you know, and that’s another thing as far as the tree branch removal, overflowing trash cans, any kind of food source that’s going to bring them in, like you said dog food on the porch, it’s going to attract them towards your house. And eventually they’re going to try to find a way because now they’ve got a food source around the house. So now they need a Dan around that house because the food you know, we live where we eat. They’re basically the same way now they’ve got it, you know, easy pickings from from you know where they’re going to sleep to where they’re going to eat.

Travis McGowin
Exactly. So definitely don’t feed them. And don’t make it easy on them to gain access because they will find a way inside if they really want to. And then that just creates a for one a very unsanitary situation up in your attic and then a very dangerous situation as well.

Michael Wienecke
Definitely. One thing I’ll say too is rabies right now in Alabama is is running running rampant. There. I know in the last podcast, I talked about it they are dropping rabies blocks out of the sky and helicopters in Birmingham. I’m in bluff Park Hoover, they they’re dropping them out of the sky trying to get get rabies under control right now because because it’s something that’s just kind of growing into a lot more than they thought it would.

Travis McGowin
So that’s actually statewide to that actually, before Birmingham, they were doing that down in South Alabama, closer to the mobile area like said airplanes and helicopters and they were drop dropping these blocks out to basically try to combat it with the wildlife population. So it’s it’s definitely statewide.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah. So with that being said, if you see one in the daytime around your house, or in your house, and he’s there act in any kind of strange anyway, especially in the daytime because raccoons are nocturnal. They shouldn’t be just tromping around in the daytime around the outside of the house or anything like that. Just stay away from a call professional. I would recommend not doing a raccoon removal yourself. Anyway. That cage that Travis posted up on the picture. That’s a special design cage for inside of an attic. It really anywhere but it’s really designed for a roof. If you put a regular cage that’s got, you know, a larger opening, they are going to claw your roof, all the way down to where light is going to be able to pass through your roof. That one right there’s tight knit they can’t call through it. So, just using the right equipment to do the job, it just better to call a professional.

to watch our video!

The post Raccoons Are Invading Montgomery Alabama Homes! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today we wanted to talk about bats, it’s getting really close to Halloween. So just wanted to talk about benefit of bats. Not such a benefit of bats. The Good, the Bad, all that a bat. So Travis, elaborate for me,

Travis McGowin
I may have a very unpopular opinion about bats, to be really honest with you. Because I think they’re pretty cool. Well, I think that creatures really cool. I mean, they’re kind of creepy looking. You know, I remember as a kid, we used to go out in our yard at night, just you know, right before dark, and you would look up and you’d see the bats flying around. But what a lot of people don’t, you know, think about a realize is that bats are a very beneficial creature, you know, to the outdoor ecosystem, you know, where you live where the bats reside, mainly because they are one of the best consumers of insects, and they help keep insect populations down. So bats are, you know, are very good thing to have around. However, you know, of course, there’s, there’s a drawback to them, you just don’t want them inside your property that you don’t want them inside your attic. You don’t want them inside, you know, your barn or outbuildings or wherever they may decide to take up residence. So Michael, what are some things that people typically first start to notice? That may clue them into the possibility that they have a bat problem.

Michael Wienecke
So the first one would be seeing the bats, you know, we get a call saying they see bats flying in and out of their house. Or the the best indicator for us is always going to be the guano. So the bat droppings. We’ll typically get to a property, it’ll be all over the side of the siding of the house or the window ledge or the driveway. And that is 100% identification that you have bats. Bat droppings are interesting. The guano is interesting because it it has little flakes of bugs in it. So you can actually see it kind of with a light it kind of has a little sheen shine to almost like

Travis McGowin
I’ve still the ones that I’ve seen almost looked like, like the poop has glitter in it.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, like like it’s got glitter in it. So it looks like kinda like a distorted mouse droppings. So a lot of people think that they have mice running around their house, and they’re just just pooping everywhere. Because bats poop a lot. Because if you have a colony of upwards, you know, 500 to 1000. That’s a lot of droppings. So it’s always funny, because they’re like, oh, I have mice around my house, and they’re everywhere. And no, it’s bats. So,

Travis McGowin
Yeah, you know, it reminds me of a customer that I had the same problem. So this customer has a two story house. And they have a big gable vent on the side of the house. And, you know, the customer had never addressed this problem to me, I was actually just on site at their house just to do a quarterly pest control service. Just a standard service. And like you said, I looked down and I’m like, There’s poop everywhere. And you know, of course, you look up just like directly below this, this Gable vent. And then, you know, with a gloved hand, picked it up and looked at it as like, you know, this is bat poop like it does. But, you know, I mean, how typical? Do you see that as far as you know, in an attic, and in that kind of area? Is that kind of like the most common area that you see infested?

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so like you you’d stated, you know, they’re in barns, they’re in houses. I mean, their typical place is going to be caves, you know, dark areas in natural nature. But the best the second best place for them is going to be an attic. A barn, you know, perfect, perfect example, this image right here. You’ve got a gable vent, that’s wooden slat it’s wide open. And a back of fit to that no problem. Doesn’t take long. A lot of times we’ll see. You know, when we’re doing bat jobs, we’ll see the, I call it you know, basically, bat screen the roofer roofer, the contractor will put something called a bat screen and it’s just just a little bit of mesh over the inside. And the problem is, is that they can roost right between the screen and the gable vent. And then once they hang out there, they’re pooping, that poop is going to go right onto that screen right into the attic. And we definitely don’t want that the droppings in there because they can cause a lot of issues. One of the biggest thing is the it’s called histo plasmosis. And it’s a Pretty bad lung infection, so you have to be very careful when cleaning up bat droppings. And like we just stated they poop a lot. When you’ve got 500 to 1000 There are a lot of droppings I have seen just mountains of droppings inside of an attic. So definitely something to be careful you want to wear a respirator, definitely a respirator, you’re not going to want any kind of a dust mask or an n95 is just not going to cut it, you’re going to need that respirator.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, and you know, not even just dark places like caves and attics and things like that out buildings and whatnot. I’ve actually even seen and heard of some bats. Case in point. Locally, we have a baseball park that has a two story building and a concession stand. But over that first story, there’s an awning that wraps all the way around the building. And you know, of course with the baseball park, they display their banners and you know, who won what championship? Or, you know, who was who won state or what have you. And I’ve actually seen some bats try to kind of take up residence even against the building behind those, those banners on the side of the building. So I mean, they don’t always get it right. They don’t always get it right. But from a pest control perspective, let’s just say that, you know, take Case in point, take this picture, you come up to this house, you see this Gable vent, there’s droppings everywhere, you know, below the gable vent on the ground or carport or wherever driveway. What’s the process, you know, kind of go through for the customer, you know what it is that we at Peskies do to get rid of the bats because you know, you can’t just go in and just kill them. You know, a lot of customers just kill them just kill it. Well, you you can’t. So kind of go through what it is that we do to mitigate this problem for the customer in a humane and legal way.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, of course, like like you said, bats are protected. And of course they are beneficial. I mean, they they’re going to completely knock down the mosquito population, moth population, a lot of flying insects, and they are pollinators. I know a lot of people are very concerned with honeybees. They’re there multiple other pollinators besides honeybees. And bats are one of them. They actually, when they when they carry fruit seeds, they drop that and that can that continues that that pollination. So here at Peskies Pest Control, we’re gonna do a full inspection. Once we find either the droppings in the driveway or on the side of the house and we do find that you do have bats we’re gonna get in the attic, find out how big the colony is, if it’s if it’s a huge problem, if it’s a small problem, and then we’re going to seal up all of the home except for where they’re actually getting into or a note they’re gaining entry. So we’re gonna go throughout the house, look for any cracks crevices around the house that they could be getting into, leave that other entryway open, we’re going to seal up and leave a small hole in order to for those bats to be able to leave. So once the bats can leave, it’s a special it’s called a bat valve. So or sometimes you have to use a screen it just depends on the situation. But with the with the bat valve, let’s say they’re going to flap they’re going to crawl through that bat valve, they’re going to leave and then once they leave, they cannot enter back in that bat valve. Bats have to land on something and crawl up into a crack or crevice they can’t fly. So the bat valve hangs off the house and just in just the space so they can’t fly land in the bat valve and crawl back to the hole it’s not possible for them. After about a week or two we inspect the house again making sure you know we’re not seeing any more signs of bats no love bats are left inside of the house. And then we fully close up that that one area and then you will be bat free. And then you have the option of us coming in and disinfecting cleaning out the bat droppings. And that’s that’s pretty much it.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, definitely recommend getting rid of the problem before it gets worse before the population gets larger before their mounds of waste get larger and larger to just a health hazard that you don’t want. Definitely a very beneficial creature. But you just don’t want to live in inside areas of your house or your outbuildings are they definitely belong in nature. They have their place, they have their own job and they do a great job at it. However you just don’t want to live in in your home.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, and I’ll say to that, you know, another another scary thing about bats is they do they can carry rabies. So that’s a pretty big, big problem around here. I actually just found out last week that they’re carrying they’re dropping off rabies blocks in in Hoover, Birmingham. I don’t know if they’re doing that in Montgomery or not but found three in my yard that my dog is actually chewing on out of helicopters, they’re just dropping it because we have such a bad rabies issue right now with raccoons and all that and I’ll say too, and just I know we’ve preached this in our in our other podcast and vlogs and stuff like that. So sealing up your house is so important and if you just if you do it beforehand, you know a little bit of you know mesh around the gable vent on the outside is going to stop that that problem, it’s going to stop that squirrel problem. A raccoon, you know, any anything. It’s going to save you a lot of time and a lot of money with something that’s very quick and easy to do.

The post Bats Are Making a Mess in Montgomery Alabama Attics! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control Montgomery.

View Details

The post Flies Are Buzzing Around Inside and Outside Montgomery, Alabama Homes! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

The post Powderpost Beetles are Eating Wooden Products in Montgomery, Alabama Homes! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

The post Dryer Vents Are Letting Rodents Into Birmingham, Alabama Homes! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

The post Silverfish Are Sneaking Around Montgomery, Alabama Houses At Night! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your hosts, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the River Region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, Auburn and any other surrounding areas for people just like you. Travis […]

The post ProFlo Seamless Gutters Of Montgomery Alabama Local Business Spotlight appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin: Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your hosts, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the River Region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, Auburn and any other surrounding areas for people just like […]

The post Yellow Jackets Are Invading Homes And Yards In Montgomery Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael, we do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, we Tonka pike road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you. Today, […]

The post How Often Should My Montgomery Alabama Home Be Treated For Pests? appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your hosts, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road and any other surrounding areas for people just like you. Hey, so […]

The post Earwigs are invading homes in Montgomery, Alabama! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Hello and welcome to another edition of the peskies pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road and any other surrounding areas for people just like you. Travis McGowin […]

The post Carpenter Bees Are Drilling Holes In Your Montgomery Home! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

The post Formosan Termites Plague Montgomery AL Homeowners! appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

The post Are Honey Bees a Problem in Montgomery Alabama appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so here on the peskies podcast, we like to talk about real life events, things that Travis and I experienced day to day. And one of the things the other Day got me thinking about just talking about customer expectations, and how sometimes miscommunication can cause bigger issues than you would think it would.

Travis McGowin
You’re definitely right. So communication is a foundation for anything, I don’t care if it’s servicing, pest control or any other type of service industry, job. Communication is important in all aspects of your life, whether it’s, you know, dealing with your spouse, your children, your family members, communication is huge, because effective communication, if not handled appropriately, can leave some things either up to misinterpretation, you know, it can, it can cause things to just not be handled appropriately. So effective communication will definitely help set expectations a lot easier than ineffective communication.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, and, you know, I think it’s, I think it’s good to say that, you know, pest control, wildlife control, road and control, mosquito control, any of that is a process, it does take time to get rid of some issues. Like we were just talking a minute ago, rodents can take a week. I mean, I’ve done them in a day, and had an not a problem. It could take a week, take a month, we have some that linger on for a little bit longer than that. But it’s definitely a process.

Travis McGowin
Well, there’s been plenty of times that I’ve been on site with the customer, whether we’re the first company, they’re called, whether they’re the you know, we’re the third company that they’ve called, or something like that. I’ve had customers after speaking about a problem, whether that’s rodents, whether it’s fleas, whether it’s ants, any of those things. It’s funny how many times they look at me, and they go, Oh, I didn’t know that. Or, oh, okay, well, that’s really cool. Because the previous company may not have explained things appropriately. And I’m not saying they didn’t do the job, right, or they didn’t do it, you know, the best way or what have you, they may have done it exactly like they needed to, however, not communicating those expectations of what’s going to happen next, how is this product going to work? How long is it going to take this product to actually take effect? can leave some doubts in the customers mind?

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, definitely, um, you know, over our Friday, and over the weekend, we had a an issue where we had a lady at her lake house, she was getting fire ants all over the steps. And we had treated it that the Friday. And for whatever reason, the communication did not get back that, you know, this, this particular issue takes about 24 to 48 hours to go away. So she had family over, over the weekend. And she was calling us. We were closed on Saturdays and Sundays. And you know, we got back to her Monday morning, right at 8am. And explained to her, you know, what was going on, went back out there and retreated and took care of the situation. But just just missing that communication of it’s a 24 to 48 hour period before those fire ants are gonna go away, was huge for her. So like I said, that was just an event that made us want to start talking about the expectations of like said not just fire ants, could be German roaches could be just general cockroaches, you know, restaurant issues, flies, dragonflies, all this stuff just takes time to get rid of it’s not it’s not always a one and done situation.

Travis McGowin
Sure, and with the knowledge that a pest control professional has, and I’m probably very, very guilty of what I’m about to reference or say next. My customers that I service on a regular basis would probably tell anybody this is that Travis sometimes over communicates. And I’m guilty of it, I promise you, I’m guilty of it. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I enjoyed the job so much, or I enjoyed the little tidbits of information that I think are kind of neat, or that interest me and I like to convey those over to the customer. But sometimes I find myself I’m like, I really I really just need to slow down and stop because I mean, they don’t really need to know all of these habits of this particular insect or whatnot. But I will say that if it is pertinent to the problem, if it’s pertinent to what’s going on, if it’s pertinent to the treatment type, and how long the treatment takes. Then, in my personal opinion, it is worth communicating that to the customer. And you know what they say about assuming if you leave things up to the customer to assume, then sometimes they’re going to assume wrong. And any problem that arises or any callback that arises May would have been completely squashed with just a few seconds of details from that technician to that customer.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah you know another storing think of carpenter base you know or wasp or any flying insect really you know we can control to an acceptable level or you know getting into the house eating into the woods, the Wasp, you know, wasp nest around the outside wasp nest in the, the, around the eaves or the gable van or something like that, but we cannot, we cannot control wasps and bees and, you know, any any flying insect from flying around your house, they’re just that’s not possible.

Travis McGowin
Well, and I love what you said any flying insect because key word right there they, they fly.

Michael Wienecke
So Zephyr mosquitoes, mosquitoes we, we can control.

Travis McGowin
Yes, we and we do a very good job. But, you know, a realistic expectation for a customer. With an insect like that with one that has wings, that’s a good flier is with the understanding that yes, there are preventative things we can do. And there are things we can do or our technicians can do while they’re on site. To mitigate some of those circumstances. For example, if you’ve got live or active walls nest or something like that, we you know, we always remove those, knock them down and try to get rid of those walls for you. And try to make those places where they’re at less inhabitable, if you will or make make things less than habitable for the insect to want to build their again, you know, such as applying dust or things like that. So, but but communicating that, hey, they fly, you can’t ultimately control where they come across from your neighbor’s yard to your house and then try to make their home on the side of your house. But we can definitely come and take care of the problem for the customer for sure.

Michael Wienecke
Definitely. And, you know, that’s part of our training too. We don’t you know, just train on on these our technicians learning how to apply pesticides, insecticides, anything like that or the machines that they use. We also were trying pretty hard on on, you know, getting that message across the customer, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and how you’re doing it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Montgomery Pest Control Customer Expections appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin
Hey, so today we want to come and talk to you about a pest that can sometimes come in and inhabit more specifically your kitchen, not just your house. But your kitchen. These little pests that you get are called stored product pests. And that can include a wide range of different insects. So Michael, why don’t you tell us just to name a few a couple of stored product pests that maybe you’ve come into contact with in some customers houses?

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, no problem, Travis. So the most common ones that we see you know, there’s there’s a bunch of different ones, but the most common one is always the Indian meal moth. And then you got weevils, not going to go into description description of what type of weevils, I know, you know, you had a really cool weevil the other day that we’re going to talk about but weevils are weevils or weevil. So you know, the biggest thing about stored product pests is just making sure that you’re rotating stock, you know, and I say that like a grocery store, because when they are moving, old product to the front putting new product in the reason they do that is so they don’t get this problem, because unfortunately, bugs can be in our food. It’s a nasty thing. But it just it is what it is. That’s what that’s what I tell our customers. So. But yeah, I mean, I had a call the other day where a lady had moss flying around her kitchen, and went in there and evaluated it. And we found out that her oatmeal, I believe was or oatmeal was out of date, and she had some dead ones in that meal. You know? So biggest thing is just making sure that when it’s out of date, you know, getting rid of it, because it’s going to cause a lot more harm than good. I know groceries are just outrageously expensive right now. But you know, it’s also expensive to have, you know, 1000 Moths flying around your house.

Travis McGowin
Yeah. And so I’m glad you said the Indian meal moth actually had a customer that went to a couple of days ago that had it. And during my inspection and speaking with the customer there on site, you know, I was advised that they had found whatever it was that the the moths were investing and had already disposed of it. You know, prior to our arrival, but any male moths, I’ve seen him in fest, like you said, oatmeal, I’ve seen him in fast food for geese, I had a customer that had a like a duck pond or a geese or Goose Pond behind their house. And they used to go by purpose made food for that, and couldn’t figure out where the Indian meal moths were coming from. And I found them in their pantry in a bag that was open. And I just didn’t realize it and there were hundreds of them flying around the pantry inside the bag. So we tried to remove as many of the adults as we could get rid of the food source. And then I never had another problem since. And yeah, you mentioned I did run into a new one that I had not seen before. I mean, I’ve seen weevils before, but actually got to see what’s called the cow pee weevil, which is a primary investor of soy beans and things like that. But they had actually infested some bags of black eyed peas that my customer had in their closet. Yeah, and then another one you didn’t mention too that I have seen before too is confused flour beetles. So that’s another one that I’ve that I’ve seen them, you know, in a customer’s home, so, but I like how you said that rotating your stock. I don’t know how long the customer had the Black Eyed Peas in their cabinet. You know, I’m not sure if it was bought rep for the new year. You know, a lot of people like to eat black eyed peas and you know, that sort of thing for New Year’s but the 100% end all be all making sure that you don’t have them or don’t have a problem with like he says rotating your stock, getting rid of them. And if you do end up with them, get rid of what they’re investing what they’re feeding on. Right.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah. So that’s one thing that I’m glad you brought up because, you know, there’s not, you know, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been to houses where there’s been 1000s flying around the house, we’ve got you know, the lava everywhere and that that requires a treatment, you know that that was vacuuming the house treating with an IGR adulticide you know, getting rid of that problem and removing the the adults. But as far as if you just see a moth in your kitchen flying around, you know, the Indian meal moth, it’s brown and light light tan colored normally, if you’re pulling out, you know, once you see that in your kitchen, you need to suspect hey, I need to go through my oatmeal, my rice, my corn, whatever it may be if your husband’s a hunter or you’re a hunter, then you know, check that horn. We had a you know back when we were the fire department. I had a lieutenant that was he had weevils all over his house and I wouldn’t you know, he didn’t he wouldn’t let me come over and see it. So he just he just kept asking me question after question. He finally found he had a bag of corn in his attic that had been out there for a long time. Um, so yeah, just, you know, not really need for a treatment. Honestly, what we say is we just get rid of the food source. And once the adults are once the you know, the pupa hatch, the adults die and then you don’t have a problem again.

Travis McGowin
Exactly, exactly just being very observant. Sometimes it takes a little hunting. I think the customer the other day that had the weevils was very surprised at how long actually hunted inside of the pantry to find this, but I finally did, it might have started at the bottom of the pantry and went to the top, I found it quicker, but I started at the top and went down. So that’s always how I guess, yeah, had I started at the bottom, I’d have found that like, you know, within two or three minutes, but anyway, she was very surprised at how long we hunted. But you know, I explained to her that they have to be coming from somewhere they have to be feeding on something if we found their food source, then we’re gonna take care of your problem. So and we did she was very happy and and, you know, we didn’t require any pesticides, the bulk of the bulk of what we had in there, we vacuumed up and then we threw away this infested bag of Black Eyed Peas and moved on.

Michael Wienecke
There you go. And I’ll say one other thing because you know, summer is right around the corner and a lot of people like to feed their birds and have you know, bird feeders outside sunflower seeds, bird seed, also a huge, huge problem, especially if it’s left, you know, over the winter and then the next year and all that so

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Montgomery Kitchens Have Bugs in Stored Products in the Pantry appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
So the other day, I got a customer called in and they were complaining about these little black flying insects all around her house, she had said that they were coming out of the drains, that she had tried pouring, bleach, baking soda, pretty much everything but the kitchen sink down the drains. So we got we got to the house, and we were doing our full inspection. As soon as we walked in the door, we had one of these little, these black bunny eared flies land on our on our shoulder, and it was a drain flaw. So Travis wants to tell everybody about drain flaws.

Travis McGowin
You know, a lot of people I think, probably assume that, you know, they’re, they’re exempt from drain flies. You know, like a lot of people probably assume they’re exempt from a lot of insects. But it’s really kind of a common problem for most households at some point or another. When you think about a drain, and a lot of people, you know, may not be really familiar with how plumbing works. But when you think about a drain, whether it’s your sink, in the bathrooms and the kitchens, you’re always going to have moisture in there. So you’re always going to have moisture sitting in the bottom of the drain. And that’s actually by design. I mean, obviously, you use a drain your wash something down the sink, it’s gonna get wet, but you have what’s called a P trap and the bottom that that holds moisture, 100% of the time, you know, there’s always something in the drain. And over time, these drains holding that moisture and then getting this matter. Rinse down the drain. Over time just creates a buildup. And that’s something that these drain flies love to eat off of.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so just you know with that with that P trap, if there’s not that plug of water there or anything keeping it you will have a horrible smell in your home. Because I’ve experienced that myself. And it’s not it’s not fun.

Travis McGowin
Well, not only just a horrible smell, but you also run the risk of having other insects, especially if you’re on like a sewer system for a municipality, you run the risk of having something else come up the drain.

Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah, say it with cockroaches, for sure. But yeah, with that organic matter in that drain, just building up hair, you know, all that nasty stuff, food, all that stuff, that’s just, you know, sitting in that that moisture, those those larva can feed off of that. And it just, it builds up over time. And eventually, once you’ve got the larva that of that of you know, the adults coming out of the drain, that’s where they’re pouring out of the drains. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got you an infestation, and you don’t know where it’s coming from,

Travis McGowin
you know, and the other crazy thing I’ve seen too, I was doing an inspection on a house that had a crawlspace one day. And as I was under their crawl, and I got up underneath the area of the kitchen, and I noticed that there was a gigantic puddle of water, like I said in the in the dirt of the crawlspace directly underneath the kitchen and the customer had a leak that they did not know about that was sitting there just constantly dripping. And when I shined my flashlight over to look at the water, it was like the water was moving. And there were adult drain flies, you know, on the bottom of the sub floor, you know where I could see. And then there were just 1000s and 1000s of these larva inside of this water that had leaked from the kitchen. So not always, they don’t always just come from drains.

Michael Wienecke
That’s true. And then I’ve had some where, you know, I had a customer we treated the dragonflies came back we treated they came back you know, after a month or so finally went up onto the house pulled the the clean out and his pipe was bent. So there was the gravity was just it was it was causing it to bow in the middle of the pipe. So it was just sitting there. Got our, our borescope in there. And I could actually see where same thing you’d said the water had built up right there and the larva would just crawling all through that pipe area. So ended up having to get a plumber out. And after that it did solve the issue after we traded for the fourth or fifth time.

Travis McGowin
Well, you can It’s funny you say that too. I had a customer also that that was having some dragonfly issues, you know, and we did the typical things we inspected, we treated the drains that sort of thing. And you know, nothing really ever seemed to definitively work like you said it would get a little better and then it would get worse. And so I started talking to the customer a little bit more. And I mentioned something about a leak or an issue with their drainage and you know, their plumbing system for their house. And it was like a light bulb kicked on and he said well actually it’s funny that you say that we’re working with the insurance company right now we have a pipe in that’s inside of our foundation I guess where the foundation that shifted and it cracked it and so they literally little bit further down the road had to have that concrete tore up inside their house and the drain fixed and then report concrete redo all the floors and everything was a big ordeal but and that is solve their problem. I hadn’t had a problem since. Well, I’ll

Michael Wienecke
say with that being said, you know, I would say drain flies. I mean Hear it pesky as you know, we cover that in our in our pest control program. You know, it’s it’s a hard problem to treat yourself I mean you can put something down that’s going to eat that organic matter but you know just just having a pest control company that you know you can rely on and of course they’re gonna give you a warranty even a one time pass if you if you come out, we come out we do a treatment like that. We’re going to give you a warranty on that and if they come back, of course we’re going to honor that warranty and come right back out and treat so

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Drain Flies Coming Out Of Montgomery Homes appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today I want to talk about one of the Hey, so today I want to talk about one of the most annoying, itchy paths that we deal with. And that’s the flea. Travis, tell us a little bit about fleas.

Travis McGowin
Alright, so typically your fleas can come from just a couple of different places. So obviously, most of the most of the people listening probably know, obviously dogs and cats, you know, dogs, cats notorious for bringing fleas into people’s houses. It’s probably, I’d say, you know, 90 95% of the time, that’s where they come from. But I mean, fleas can also come from other things like rats, mice, you know, that sort of thing as well. So, you know, if you’re seeing fleas and you didn’t have a cat or a dog or something like that, then you might need to start looking at an alternative, you know, animal that’s bringing them into your house.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, I would say one of the, the main animals a wild animal bringing into your house will be a possum. If there’s ever a possum inside your house under your house, and you’ve got fleas, and you can’t get rid of them. That’s definitely one reason. One thing I’ll say about flea treatments, it’s just, you know, it’s kind of like German Roach, I know, we’ve talked about German roaches on the podcast, and how some things you just can’t do yourself. And I for one believe that. It’s just better to hire a pest control company to do fleas. It’s quicker, it’s easier, it’s cheaper. You know, I had a customer one time that said she had spent almost $600 on flea treatments, trying to get rid of it herself, where we came in and did our service. And it was one and done. She never had a problem again.

Travis McGowin
You know, it’s funny that you say that, because anybody who’s listened to our podcast for any length of time has heard me say this. And this won’t be the last time I say it, I’m gonna say it again. Just because you go to the store, and you see something that says, fleas or that it kills fleas on it does not mean that it should be used to kill fleas. Because I’ll give you an example. Back when I first started in pest control, I had a customer called me that had a fleet problem. The very first product that I used to treat was not the best product, it was labeled for fleas. So I mixed it to the appropriate label and everything else and then treated. And then later that afternoon, the customer came home and said, Oh my gosh, is worse. It’s worse, you know, whereas we only had a couple jumping on us at a time two or three at a time now there’s like, no, no law 15 to 20 jumping at us at a time. And so I had to go back the next day and treat again, and thankfully use the correct product. Bisco around the second time, learned my lesson and also took care of the customers problem. And I’ve been doing it the same way ever since. And I’ve never had a call back on fleas. Anybody who we’ve taken care of with the way the method that we use has been 100% satisfied. Like I said, I’ve never had a call back.

Michael Wienecke
Well, in all fairness, you are trying something new. That, you know, the label said that it would kill fleas. So, you know, you learned the hard way that not all not all labels are correct, I guess you’d say

Travis McGowin
well, and it goes and it goes to for pest control providers not even just for the homeowner that goes to their department store or home improvement store and buys something that’s labeled for fleas now I mean, this even goes for people like you and me the ones who do this professionally and who do this day in and day out. I mean, I would be willing to bet that almost every single product that we carry on the truck says something about being able to treat fleas but there again I go back to what I said a minute ago, doesn’t mean it should be used to treat fleas.

Michael Wienecke
That’s correct. That’s correct. Tell him tell him about the time. You know if you have the time and this was way before Travis was even in pest control, but if you ever have if you have the time he did get rid of fleas on himself. So

Travis McGowin
yeah, so after this was prior to me being in pest control and I had done a lot of research and you know I did what every homeowner has done before I went to the store and I bought like fleece spray and I you know this from the dog and cat out pet aisle at Walmart or wherever it was and sprayed my floors and let it dry and all this good stuff and then it didn’t work and it didn’t work so did a lot of research online and found this kind of really cheap home remedy way to do it. And if you’re willing to go through with it, it does work. It is not as quick as having one of you know somebody like us come through but it does work. So basically what I did was I went to Walmart and bought a couple of like these really cheap 98 cents $1 Whatever they were baking sheets like flat baking sheets, but just you know the small add You’re on them. And as you take these baking sheets, you put a layer of water in them. And then you put just a couple of drips of dishwashing liquid like, you know, Dawn or Palmolive, or whatever it is you use, you put a couple of drips of dishwashing liquid, and then you take a desk lamp, and you got the bulb in there, and you hover it over the water in the pan and you turn off all the lights in the room. And the heat and the light over the water will draw the fleas towards it. And they jump in and drown. Because the soap breaks the surface tension on the water if you don’t put so the fleas can just like stand on top of the water. But if you put soap it breaks the surface tension, and the fleas will drown. And so after several days of doing this, I didn’t have a flea problem anymore. So I can say that it works. It’s just, it takes a lot of time and effort.

Michael Wienecke
Yes, that does sound like a lot of effort. You know, I feel like we’re getting off topic, but I’ll tell a story. So I, I had a customer and they were infested with fleas, they had a house that they were redoing, and they had had nine dogs living under their house, from the time of them buying the home. And then you know, getting the contractors out there and all that. So they had to get all these dogs out. And they had fleas. I mean, this was one of the worst flea treatments I’ve ever done in my life. That being said, we ended up getting rid of the problem, it did take quite quite a few treatments to finally solve that issue. But I brought them back to my house. And so

Travis McGowin
it’s kind of inherent risk of being in the job that we’re in, my wife always gets it he better not bring roaches and fleas and you know, whatever else back door.

Michael Wienecke
My wife was livid. So she’s like, Hey, you gotta get rid of this problem. So I mean, you know, I’m, you know, I gave myself my own review, like, you know, treated like, I’ve vacuumed the house, I treated with our products

Travis McGowin
as quality control right there. On your own house. Hey,

Michael Wienecke
that’s right. So, literally within you know, 24 hours, no more fleas.

Travis McGowin
Now, I will say I will say this, and kind of go over how we do this. But number one, if it is, if it is a problem that’s coming from one of your from one of your pets, your domesticated pets, excuse me past pet pets that are so close your domesticated animals, your cats or dogs, whatever your pets that you have at your house, get your animal treated, oh yeah, that’s step one. If you’re not getting regular treatments, we take our dogs to the vet, we get flea treatments done, or you know, in the form of like a pill that they eat. And it works wonders, we don’t ever have flea problems. But if you have a flea problem in your house, and you’re not getting your animals treated, then it’s only a matter of time after you call somebody like us to come in that you’re going to have the problem again. So step one is getting your animals treated. But Michael, whenever you go on site to start a Flea Treatment, tell us what the process is for how we treat for fleas, and kind of walk us through real quick here towards the end of the podcast.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so consultation with the customer is always key. So you know, talk to the customer. I know we’ve we’ve talked them on the phone and gone over that, but I do like a face to face consultation. So ask them how long it’s been going on again, just, you know, you know, reconfirm that they are taking their dog to the vet, where the most activity is in the house. After getting all that information, we’ll start out so we have a special pest vacuum that is completely sealed. If you try to vacuum it with your own vacuum, you know, there’s crack crevices, these fleas can fit through very, very tight areas, I mean, you can squeeze one with your finger and it can almost slide through your fingers. And they’re designed that way. So they can you know, just run through here very quickly, but so will vacuum the entire house. And another thing I’ll say is a lot of people will I don’t have carpet in my house, but I still have fleas, how’s that possible? Fleas can fit in, like I said, the tiniest cracks and crevices. So hardwood the baseboards all that not very hard for them to just, you know, wedge right in there and just have a home not not to mention blankets, clothes, all that other stuff. So again, we’ll vacuum the entire the entire house. After that we use an adulticide. And then we use an IGR, which is insect growth regulator. So the adulticide is going to kill the adult fully on contact. And then of course, it’s a 90 day product, so it’s going to last active for 90 days. And then we use that IGR which is going to kill any of the larva. So the vacuuming is to try to remove what we say 50% of the population it through the carpet or the floor or anything like that. And then also to try to get that pupa up because there’s not there’s not many pesticides out there insecticides that will kill a pupa. So then once we’ve vacuumed, we do a full treatment there. And then customers get to go they’ve got to wait about four hours so they can reenter the house and then nine times out of 10 they don’t see another flee after that tour. Even if they do see a few jumping around it doesn’t take much longer and they’re completely gone

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Fleas…An Itchy Problem in Montgomery Alabama appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today I want to talk about something a little bit different than what we normally talk about. And, you know, on this podcast, we always talk about how we’re trying to help the homeowner, save the homeowner money as best we can. And we talk about stuff that, you know, we’ve experienced, whether it be a pest issue or rodent issue, a wildlife issue, whatever it may be. And, unfortunately, we’ve been, we’ve been experiencing a lot of really poor exclusion work, really poor customer service, in my opinion, had some some recent customers that have just, you know, you know, completely my opinion, but they’ve, they just, they were taken advantage of, you know, this, this particular instance, this company charged them $50 per rat that they were catching, they had no intention of covering up any holes, they just trapped and trapped and trapped. And, as we’ve talked about in our previous podcast, you know, if you don’t cover up that hole, those rats are just going to keep on coming and coming and coming. I mean, they’re, you know, Travis, you can probably attest to this, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of rats in this world. So.

Travis McGowin
So just as of right now, I just finished up on a job. One home that caught 25 in the house, prior to the problem, ceasing, you know, after some exclusion work was done, we still call it 25. And, you know, unfortunately, the customer did not realize just how extreme the problem was, I’ve got another house, that is a duplex. And I have caught, I’ve lost count, but I know it’s well over 30 in in between the two units of the duplex so far. And if we were charging $50 Or at I mean, you know, these companies making money, and like you said, Either they’re not recommending exclusion because either a they don’t know about that don’t know how to do it or be there’s no end in sight, and they want to continue to make money by trapping rats, because you know, as well as I do, if you don’t solve the problem, they’re gonna keep coming in, they’re gonna keep coming back. It’s just an ongoing cycle. That’s never gonna

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, I 100% agree. I actually did the math. You know, how many rats Did you say?

Travis McGowin
I know, 25 and one, and then I’m pretty sure it’s now over 30 and another.

Michael Wienecke
So 30? Yeah. Yeah, so that’s $1,500. Just just in catching rats. So, you know,

Travis McGowin
we’ve been it doesn’t end there. That’s the problem is it’s not gonna stop.

Michael Wienecke
No, I mean, you’re, you’re, I couldn’t even imagine how much it would cost. So, you know, like I said, it’s all opinion based. But in my opinion, that’s definitely not the right way to do it. I feel like the customer is not being taken care of. And, you know, it’s just wrong. That’s not how we would do it at pesquisa. So I’ll just tell you, you know, this, this particular customer, they had been dealing with rats for a whole year in their house scratching, you know, dropping, droppings everywhere, urinating in their attic, the noises? I mean, he was just, you know, at his wit’s end, and just told me, he said, you know, this is this isn’t my house anymore. It’s the rats house. He said, You know, I can’t I can’t sleep at night. And he just, you know, they went into a hotel a couple times, and they just to get relief from this problem. And I mean, it’s not something that we normally talk about when I wrote it job, or a rodent infestation, or, you know, rodents getting in your house, can can do that to your, I guess, your mental state. But this this guy was literally, you know, at that point where he would do anything to get rid of this problem. So

Travis McGowin
how many, you know, many companies did he have come in prior to you coming into his house.

Michael Wienecke
So I want to say two or three. I know one of them was a big big chain company. And they just put bait boxes on the outside and put a few snap traps in the attic. He actually did his own reconnaissance, and he put his, his get, he put a ring camera up there, and he just, you know, the company would come out and they’d be like, hey, you know, we’re not seeing the evidence ARATS anymore. And he’d be like, well, they’re, they’re jumping up and down in my attic because I can see him on camera. So you know. So, you know, once I talked to him, yeah, yeah. And once I talked to him, you know, I told him, I gave him exactly you know what we talked about, you know, we were going to do it until the job’s done. We give a full guarantee. If I did All the work, and you know, you paid me and the problem wasn’t solved and I would give you your money back because I’m not going to have you pay me for something that did not solve your issue. We have just finished this job. And we are going I think two weeks in the noises has completely stopped in the attic. We’ve we’ve had no rodent activity as of yet. We are checking about every one week to week and a half depending. So our next follow up is next week. So but just to say that, you know, get a reference, if you’re going to call a company and you’ve got a big rat problem, a big squirrel problem raccoon, I mean, any kind of wildlife issue that really needs to be seriously taken care of. Not with just traps and bait boxes, you know, call around, get references, you know, here at pesquisas we have plenty of people that would would love to tell you their story and how we help them you know, their problem. You know, my claim to fame is and I know Travis you do too, you know, we’ve done Rodin jobs where literally they’ve had scratching, you know, Nolen rats in the house for a year. And then all of a sudden we come in, we do a full exclusion job and they’ve never seen a rat again.

Travis McGowin
Well, so one of my favorites. And you know, sometimes the most simple solution is actually the best solution in terms of access into a house and whatnot. But I had a lady and her husband had a very large rat run through their living room one day, while they were just sitting there in the daytime, it ran from the kitchen through the living room, kind of down a little flight of steps and into the laundry room. They had already had the rat, I believe, rats had chewed through the drain lines for their dishwasher that were up underneath there, their kitchen cabinetry flooded, their flooded their kitchen flooded their cabinets damaged all that. I believe we were the third company to come out. And within about 10 to 15 minutes, I was able to locate what I thought was where they came in at. And essentially, in looking around, I found that the rats had come through the exterior wall where there was no dryer vent cover on the dryer hose. So they came up through the clammed up the brake came up through the hose, and had chewed a hole through the dryer vent hose. And were just coming back and forth into the house through the at uncovered dryer vent to the outside of the brick wall on the outside of the house. I pulled back the washer and the dryer, there was all sorts of rat feces under there, the lady was mortified, she had never seen it never noticed it. None of the other company means that ever noticed it. So I literally went got the parts to fix it got her new dryer hose, got her new dryer vent cover all that stuff. And they never had another rat come in the house ever again. But just knowing what to look for, or being a little more, and trying to find it and then solving the customer’s problem, that’s one of my favorite things to do is just to be able to come into a seemingly hopeless situation like you were talking about with your customer just then had multiple companies come out. Problem had went on for over a year, like you said they felt like the customer was losing the battle against these rodents in their house. And that’s my favorite thing is to come back and help them take back the control of their house from these terrible things.

Michael Wienecke
No, I agree. 100%. I mean, you know, I think I think listening to our podcast and the way we talk. I mean, I think you can tell that here at Penske is we’re very passionate about what we do. And if you’re on if you’re on our team, and you’re not, then you don’t last very long. And I think we know that. So. But yeah, like I said, not not trying to talk bad about any company, because there are companies out there that do the right thing and that, you know, know what they’re doing. But it never hurts to just, you know, ask that company, Hey, can I get a reference from you know, the last couple jobs? You did? And you know, do you mind if I could reach out or, you know, if I could get some kind of a review or check their check their Google reviews or check their Facebook reviews, check what people are actually saying about them and who they’re talking about on the on the review, because, you know, naming someone saying, hey, so and so solved my rat problem in a day. You know, you probably want that guy out there, you know, solving your rat problem.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, I don’t think that I’d go with the with the the recommendations. It’s like, oh, well, you know, in about eight months, we didn’t hear any more. Yeah, I don’t. I don’t think that that would be the route that I would want to go for my own house.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, and I’ll also say too, I mean, every rep. Every rat issue at a house is different. You know, some take one or two days some take a couple of weeks. I mean, I’ve honestly I’ve had one that took four months to get rid of I stayed with the customer for four months. We got rid of it and free and clear hadn’t had a rat since. You know, we stand by our guarantee. Like I said,

Travis McGowin
Oh, and what people don’t understand too is that I’m, especially you know, someone who may not be really familiar with building construction, the way things are designed When a house is built, but Case in point the the house that I caught the 25 rats that we caught them in an upstairs closet. We caught them in a downstairs laundry room, we caught them in the garage, in another closet in another bed room. So I mean, there were just multiple areas like the living room. They were just multiple rooms. And these rats, when given access, will will go through wall void. You know, they’ll go through ceilings, though, they’ll go through attics, they’ll go through basements, and all of these different places. And like you said, Every house is different, some are more complex than others. So you really need to take your time or a technician needs to take their time and be thorough and you know, and try to examine all of the possibilities. Because sometimes, you know, the answer is the simplest sometimes it’s a little more complex.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, definitely. Well, like I said, you know, just just do your research follow up, make sure make sure that the company that you are hiring is the right one for you. And you know, that’s just the best thing you can do. I just I wouldn’t just trust anybody. I would get you know the information and make sure that it’s going to solve your problem.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Subpar Montgomery Exclusion Work Explained appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today I want to talk about rodent exclusion, something that I’m very passionate about. I know Travis is very passionate about. Good Brautigan, good rodent exclusion. Definitely, definitely very important. So we’re going to show some images talk about a little bit and just kind of go through how we do it differently. And, I mean, our track record is pretty good. Travis, would you not say?

Travis McGowin
I will, I would definitely agree with you on that. It’s frustrating, because I think exclusion is very, very overlooked in terms of the pest control industry, because you really think about it exclusion is the end all be all, sealing, you know, sealing rodents out, even sealing pests out, sealing things out is a guarantee that they won’t come back or that they can’t get back in. And you know, time and time again, we go on some of these, some of these jobs that we go to. And unfortunately, you know, there are there are companies out there that all they do is they throw bait boxes at it Wait, you know, if it’s a rat or a mouse problem, they throw bait boxes at it, or something of that nature. And they never really get, you know, to the root of the problem, which is keeping them out in the first place.

Michael Wienecke
Couldn’t have said it better myself. You know, we’ve had a lot of rodent callbacks is what I call it, not our callback, but another company’s callback. And the first thing I always say is, you know, did they give you a warranty? No, they didn’t give you a warranty, or you know, the customer guy, no, they didn’t give us a warranty, it was just, you know, as needed basis. And then, of course, rats are getting back in the house after a couple of weeks. And then so they call for a second opinion, we come out. So just wanted to show some pictures of what we consider, you know, not great exclusion work. And some of these pictures are excluded, but they left other holes wide open. So if you’re going to do one, you got to do them all.

Travis McGowin
That’s the That’s the true, that’s true.

Michael Wienecke
So here’s one we got right here, big complex, big apartment complex. So walking around looking around the outside, so we’ve got obviously a PVC drain line, some AC lines going in, and they found it. So they just they put a bunch of that foam not only does it look nasty, in my opinion, it’s it’s not hard at all for them to chew right through, they can get right in that, you know, in a couple seconds. I mean, it takes no time at all. So the way we would do it differently is we would tear all that out, and then we would either use an excluder, which is basically a composite of mesh along with a what’s the word I’m looking for? Help me out here, Travis. A fabric there it is a fabric with with with a mesh inside, so they can’t chew through it. And then we would mortar over that. So you’re getting two layers of protection. You’re not only getting the excluder, but you’re also getting the mortar. So of course, we are careful if there’s any gas lines or anything like that, we would not border that because we don’t want that gas line rubbing up against the mortar as it moves or anything like that. So this next one great exclusion job on the vents. Biggest thing, like I said, they are still having a road an issue. So you can see both of those PVC pipes coming out. And Travis, what do you say?

Travis McGowin
So right here, and I actually just had this same kind of issue. It wasn’t it wasn’t poor exclusion, there was no exclusion done on the house yet. And that was why the customer had called us, but actually had a very similar issue to this where the ventilation for the crawlspace was formed out of the brake work, which is fine. And we did have some pipe work. And things that ran you know, between those ventilation cracks, which is pretty standard. What I like to do in this situation, kitchen is the full gaps that have no PVC pipe or anything like that running out of them, I will use the hardware cloth, but in the gaps where the PVC pipe is coming out as long as there is adequate ventilation on either side of those. So you know, case in point with this picture, I’m assuming that there’s more ventilation going across the house a little bit further down on the left to the right side of this so if there’s adequate ventilation, so what I’ll do is I will go ahead and seal those two gaps up with pre mixed concrete.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, no, that’s perfect. Like like you had said as long as there is adequate ventilation which you’ve got two holes on the right and one on the on the left. As you can see, whoever did this, they left it open and I could actually stick my two fingers up under that mesh. Thus far a rat or a mouse can fit right through that hole and they’re right back in the building so

Travis McGowin
pretty The other thing I like about the the concrete is the I feel like that’s more of a stability thing, too, you know, some of those pipe work probably don’t need to be jostled around anyway. So you know, not only are we eliminating the problem that you see in this picture with the, with the hardware cloth, not adequate, but you’re also kind of helping stabilize the end of those pipes too. But,

Michael Wienecke
yeah, 100% Not only that, I mean, just with that hardcourt hardware cloth, 23 gauge, wire mesh, whatever you want to call it, rats can obviously chew through plastic. So if they really want to chew through that, and if you were going to use hardware cloth, I would have put something around that pipe to fill in that gap. If you know if that’s what you had, or that’s what you wanted, there’s, there’s, you know, 10 ways to skin a cat. So it doesn’t have to be done all the same way. Just biggest thing is excluding those holes. So keep going around. So same deal here got another AC unit, they found it, not not a hard one, this one actually actually had a small hole up under that gas line where something was getting in. So here are these are my favorite crawlspace doors, you’ve got a wooden door, matched up with the ground, as we know, pretty much any animal can dig. So a rat, a mouse has no problem fitting, you know, a small hole under there, and then right into the crawlspace, where they’ve got access into the entire building. Hey, you’re

Travis McGowin
just lucky that that house actually had a crawlspace door. Because mean time and time again, I come across houses that have no crawlspace door on them. So you know, there, there’s a step in the right direction there. But you know, that that crawlspace door that you just showed, probably pretty adequate for keeping things like cats out possums, raccoons, but when it gets down to something smaller Rats Mice, you’re you’re you’re you’re still looking to have a problem.

Michael Wienecke
Oh, 100% Man, I drive around my neighborhood all the time, see a crawlspace door. And I’m like, there’s probably a bear in there. So same here, so we’ve got a dryer vent. And you know, they excluded the entire house, but they left the dryer vents wide open. So we see it a lot where rats will get in a dryer vent, though they’ll chew of a very small hole, especially in that aluminum, bendy tube, whatever it’s called. And it’s hard to see. So getting in there and having that avenue to get right back into your house. You really got to seal that up. And you want

Travis McGowin
nobody, nobody looks behind their dryer. I mean, really, as long as there’s air flow and your clothes are drying, I mean, typically nobody looks but I did I had a customer. A while back that had the very same problem. There was no vent cover. They had rats running through the house in the daylight, they actually saw rats run across the floor from their laundry room to their kitchen. Rats had chewed through their water lines up underneath their sink where the water lines and the drain lines had went from the dishwasher. And you’re within about 15 to 20 minutes of inspecting and going around and looking through the house. I found the culprit which they said to other companies prior to us had missed, but they just never looked behind the dryer. And that was the main the main runway. So we added a dryer vent as well as a metal cover because these were some significantly large rats. So we did put an animal proof cover over that. And they never had another rat in the house again.

Michael Wienecke
Right, that’s all it takes is just like Setsuna all up. And it’s funny you say that because I would say the three main spots that are never looked at is behind the stove, behind the fridge and behind the dryer. Definitely. Same here, we got another dryer vent wide open, I honestly don’t even see the metal tube at all. It’s just a wide open square. So potentially, you know not even a rodent issue. That could be a raccoon that could be a possum, chipmunks, squirrels all that can fit through there. So same deal here, you’ve got your big line coming in your electrical line coming in and it’s wide open on that top part. So excluding the left right sides of the that area is fine, but you’ve got to do it all. So recap of that same deal with these big AC electrical lines going in just leaves a huge avenue for them to get back in. crawlspace door, same same problem around the building. Same lines, so we’re just kind of reiterate this one was my favorite. So it’s hard to see exactly. But you see the right side of the van is completely excluded with wire mesh, maybe hard to see but you can obviously see that the dryer vent and that gaping big square that they shoved in there just huge opening huge.

Travis McGowin
So it’s funny that you show this picture because that was quite literally the same case that I found at another house that had the brake formed out for the crawlspace ventilation so they What I ended up doing with that, because the gaps were too big to fill with with, with concrete. So I did seal up the existing ventilation with my wire measure hardware cloth, and then actually took and I had to, I had to actually drill into the brick on this one and actually make the wireframe go around the actual dryer vent itself on all sides to seal it up, because it was just it was just so large, there was nothing I could really do that was going to stay there for the long term and hold and keep things out.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that can be a difficult fix right there. But there are, there are several ways to do it. I mean, what we do is, or what I do is I pull out the vent, draw me a hole around the 23 gauge wire mesh, cut my hole and then fit it in there and screw it that looks nice and pretty. And you can barely tell is there so and I didn’t even mention in the photo. But right there. The cleanout is also wide open. And I’d say a mouse can probably fit through that hole right there. So all right, huge overlooked area are always gonna be tree branches. And we’ve talked about I feel like we talked about rodents a lot, because we we just see a lot of problems with rodents. But tree branches touching the roof line, right up against the the building always going to be an avenue for any kind of an animal to get on the roof and eventually find a way into that the property. As you can see,

Travis McGowin
I’ve even had some people. I’ve even had some people that have had limbs grown up against the side of their house that were so large, that over time, the wind blowing those tree limbs and those trunks of those trees has rubbed a entire hole into the side of the eve of the house. And then that was where they had rats getting in. So in the case of that customer, we literally cut down the trees that were touching the house and they never heard another noise in their attic after that.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, I mean, if you take away that ladder, there’s no way for them to get up on the roof. I mean, you know, it’s very hard for them to climb that brick over the facial in the soffit they can calm the brick, but it’s very difficult to get over that that roof edge. So and then our last one same deal here. We’ve had some kind of an animal I’m assuming a squirrel. We did not we weren’t able to get inside the attic because it was just so tight. But we do have cameras up and all that so we are we are treating this area. But same deal like said we would have covered the gable vents from the outside so nothing would be able to get into the attic. And then of course have that runway all the way throughout the apartment. So yeah, Anna Lee, biggest thing, like I said, we just wanted to show kind of what we run into every day, how we how we handle these situations, and what we would do. And of course, you know, it’s it never hurts to get a second opinion. And it certainly never hurts to see pictures of the work that’s been done. I mean, you know, if someone’s building a house, you would probably want to see their previous work before you just, you know, had them build your house. So again, you know, that’s just that’s how we do our stuff. That’s how we try to be different try to try to make everything as tight as possible and we certainly don’t want to call back.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Poor Exclusion Work, What is it Montgomery? appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin
Hey, so today we want to come and talk to you about I would, I would definitely say one homeowners biggest fear something that they don’t want inside their house, they don’t want to share their space with it, these little insects don’t pay rent, so they definitely don’t want them. They’re German cockroaches.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, German cockroaches are probably the hardest thing to get rid of. For a homeowner, they always try to do it themselves. And I mean, there’s just no good way to do it yourself. It’s just not, I personally have not seen it possible to do it yourself, you really do need a professional take care of it.

Travis McGowin
So one of the issues with with the German roaches, especially when it comes to the DIY person, and don’t get me wrong, it can be done DIY. But so let’s just say you go to the store, you go to the grocery store, you go to the hardware store, you go to the pest control products aisle where they’re, you know, they’ve got the shelves full of stuff. And you know, on the labels, cockroach killer, wasp killer, you know, killer, they’ve got all these things, and they’re all supposed to be targeted and specific for each pest that they kill. But I always tell my customers this, just because something says it kills a cockroach on the label or on the on the packaging or whatever. Just because it says it can kill them doesn’t mean that it actually should be used to kill the roaches.

Michael Wienecke
But it lasts up to a year.

Travis McGowin
That’s the best line. It’s tested. That’s the best line that I’ve seen here lately is lasts up to an entire year. And I’m like, Man, even the good products we use are three months, you know? So anyway,

Michael Wienecke
German cockroaches, but termites, mosquitoes, rats, mice,

Travis McGowin
and more. You know, crazy family members, you know, or whatever the case may be. So but yeah, so in particular. You know, we’ve we’ve had a rise of German roaches. And the funny thing about German roaches to me, is that they don’t really target a certain group of people now, yes, I mean, you can be more susceptible to get them if you have lower standards of cleanliness than say, you know somebody else. But I mean, Michael, give me an example. Just how easy is it to bring a German Roach into your house?

Michael Wienecke
It’s easier than you would think. We have seen, you know, I would say $50,000 homes, we’ve seen millions of dollars of home, million dollar homes, with German roaches, they they really do not discriminate. It’s all in the lucky person that gets to bring them home. One of the main ways that we see that they are brought home is use furniture. That’s a big one used appliances use furniture a lot of times coming from frigerators. I’ve seen him from a dishwasher, microwave couches, you know all that. So that’s our first thing when we always talk to a customer is when did it start? Did you bring anything new or used into the home? And then it started shortly after? And that kind of gives us a better identification? First of all, how long it’s been going on? And second of all, what is the cause of this problem?

Travis McGowin
Now definitely. And you know, a lot of times, whenever I do an initial inspection on for German roaches, the very first place that I’ll look is behind the fridge behind the freezer. And then of course, in my line of questioning to the customer’s always, you know, have you guys gotten any new appliances? Anything like that? You know, especially recently because that tends to always be a primary culprit.

Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah. I mean, we had a customer one time, you know, million million plus house, beautiful fridge, it was one of those that have the trim work all the way around, it’s, you know, into the wall, it just looks nice and full of German cockroaches. So they definitely weren’t happy about that. We ended up getting rid of it, of course, but just having to deal with that after you know, spending that kind of money on a brand new fridge is definitely not fun.

Travis McGowin
Definitely not. So, you know, I have stepped into some very, you know, I would even say horrifying, unbelievable houses in terms of having a very significant level of infestation. And I’ve actually got some photographs, you know, for people to see, this house in particular was probably I would have to say the very worst one that I have ever been in. When I first spoke to the customer on the phone, they advised me that they were localized to just the kitchen, and I walked into the house and immediately walked through the front door and I said, you know they’re they’re in every room. You just walked in and you knew it.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah. And I’ll say to you know, the biggest thing is, is just being honest with with the tech addition and saying, Hey, we’ve been going on this for a year, we’ve been treating ourselves that’s going to help us and help us, you know, solve your problem faster. Because if you tell us it’s just in the kitchen, that might may be the only place that gets treated. We may have not seen any in the bedroom or anything like that. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there. They’re extremely good at hiding, and you’ll see this in video we have that they can fit into very tight cracks.

Travis McGowin
Well take a look at this picture. There was no doubt they were in the kitchen.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, that’s a I mean, I would just by looking at that, that is a huge infestation. Right there. What Yeah, I’d say 300 Plus.

Travis McGowin
Oh, so So here’s the kicker about this house is notice the ceiling, that’s a drop ceiling. So there’s a void space above it. And you know, if you have a infestation, and keep in mind as well, that this is during daylight hours, this is not at night, it’s not like I just walked in there in the evening time and turn the lights on. This is broad daylight, if you have a level of invisible infestation in your house, that is this visible in broad daylight, you have a serious problem. More than just the roaches, you have serious health concerns and serious issues that need to be addressed. Yeah,

Michael Wienecke
I mean, their feces are going to cause asthma issues. And that’s another line of questioning we asked always asked them, How many are you seeing in the daytime compared to at nighttime because they are more active at night. So if you’re seeing, you know, two or three in the daytime, not a huge infestation, obviously, 300,000 Plus, you’re seeing in the daytime? Well, there

Travis McGowin
were 1000s plural. But just to kind of give you a tour of of this, of some of the spots that are dealt with in this house. So this was just Kitchen Kitchen Cabinets. And you notice there’s a course of cleanliness issue there as well. But you know, I don’t recall exactly how long they said this infestation had been going on. But as you can see, I mean, they’re all around the cabinets. And if you look right up underneath the countertop area, there’s I mean, there’s all kinds of feces and things from them to where they’ve just, you know, hung out up underneath that crack and crevice. I mean, even in just doorframes this was and this wasn’t just one doorframe, every doorframe in the house had roaches in the corners, you can see they’re all just piled there together. And this is I mean, it’s the worst that I’ve ever been in.

Michael Wienecke
And another thing you can tell by a really bad infestation is if you want to go back to that picture real quick. As you can see the different stages of life. They’re all kind of hanging out together.

Travis McGowin
So in this particular house, we had roaches, in the very early nymph stages, we had roaches running around with egg sack still attached to them, I mean anything and everything in between. And you know, speaking of the, the egg sacks I mean, there was one cabinet in particular that was completely full of execs all of those spots, those those little rounds, you know, spots in the in the cabinet right there on the cabinet surface are all hatched egg sacks. And, you know, each egg sack from one German cockroach can hold relatively, you know, 30 plus baby cockroaches in it. So if you multiply all those execs, you can just kind of get a mental idea of how bad the infestation was in this house. And that wasn’t even all the execs that was one cabinet

Michael Wienecke
well and that’s another thing too with German roaches they make they’re very hard to kill their greater survival because they will actually carry the egg sack up to hatching so they you know were your other roaches American smokey Brown, they will stick it onto something and it’s kind of survival of the fittest where these guys can can kind of time where they want that that their offspring to to be so just something to think about and like he said 1000s One female can create 1000s of babies in a year.

Travis McGowin
Yeah and so then the other thing too is it’s really bad when you walk in and you see this yes, this is obvious areas where roaches have have been and kind of hung out. Yeah, I don’t know if at some point I would assume that the homeowner had maybe a refrigerator or something like that in that corner at one point and you can see at the bottom there was a deep freezer there but there was obvious signs that there had been an infestation just kind of you know hanging out in that area at some point and the you know, and something had been moved or whatnot. But I mean they don’t just get into your kitchen. They don’t just get into your cabinets. You know this house had roaches in the furniture and all the electronics. The cable boxes, the TVs I mean there were roaches everywhere. I mean they got even into the laundry as you can see. You know they were literally crawling around on laundry baskets into your food. As you can see, this was a bowl of cereal that had been left on the table and I I don’t know how long it had been there. But I mean, you know, I’ve even heard customers complain of say, I can’t even leave something out on the cabinet or out on the counter for just a couple minutes. And there’s roaches in it. So definitely, yeah, exactly, exactly. And just definitely a problem. So so what we ended up doing with this house, after I walked in, I told the customer that we we did need to do a knock down on this house, we needed to try to get a grip on some of the population before we really started doing our standardized treatment. So they they allowed me to do that with a UL V. Fogg. And let me just show you the aftermath of the UNLV fog. So this was what I saw when I first walked up into the house. This was right through the front doors, you can see there’s, there’s dead roaches all over the floor. You know, going back into into every room of the house, they were just I mean, they were just dead roaches everywhere.

Michael Wienecke
Think I saw smokey brown in there? Yes,

Travis McGowin
yes, there actually was a couple of running around, he got unlucky he was he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you can see I mean, there were there were just roaches of all different sizes, just dead everywhere. All across the house from from where they had fallen from the ceiling, they come out of the cabinets. It was just a very, very bad situation. And I really hate to see anybody that gets, you know, that lives in a place where this level of infestation is gone for for this long. I mean, you know, I mean, you can just see there, there were 1000s and 1000s and 1000s. And I hate to report that the customer, we were able to treat two or three times and then they never would contact us back or get a hold of us again to continue. So you know, I’m sure that they’re, I’m sure that the level of infestation was better. But unfortunately, without allowing us to continue to treat. I really feel like most likely it read it probably rebounded back. And they’re probably back into a very similar situation that they were in, you know, before we got started.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah. And that’s like what Travis said, that’s very important to let us finish or whoever’s trading, let them finish the service. Because I have I had one a couple of years ago, just like that it took me a year and a few months to get it under control. She is still a customer. She does our quarterly program, but she has not seen a German Roach for almost two years now. And she we found out that she was bringing them from grocery bags, she got well not bags, the boxes. So she was getting the boxes from the grocery store and transport her food. And they were coming in through that. So she just she was getting rid of them. And then they were coming right back. And she didn’t figure out why. So once we figured out the problem, we stopped that that eliminated them getting back in the house, and she hadn’t had an issue since.

Travis McGowin
Yeah, and you know, the other thing too is people underestimate it, like a lot of people see. Face value. So the only only things they can see with their eyes. But I mean, these roaches can get into places that that we can’t physically get to cracks, crevices like I was saying in that other you know in that photo that I was showing at the beginning, the drop ceilings, wall voids, areas behind your your appliances, areas behind your cabinets. So and this is an example of that right here. This was inside of one of the closets, I believe it was the pantry and you see that the wood is kind of split. And I mean, there’s just hundreds of roaches that have made their home. And that’s in the customer’s pantry around the doorframe. You can see there’s all kinds of different life stages that were inside that doorframe. And I mean, they were just literally crawling everywhere. And Michael, you brought us some video footage to kind of demonstrate that as well. And also to show one of the roaches consuming some of the bait product that we use. So I’m gonna play that real quick for us.

Michael Wienecke
To see how quickly they can fit in a crack that I could barely fit, you know, my fingernail under. So just any type crack crevice there, they’re gonna be able to get into. And that’s why it’s so important to get into those cracks and crevices, especially with any kind of fog, any kind of bait, anything like that. You

Travis McGowin
know, and the biggest takeaway from this that I think I have for anybody who’s who’s watching and listening. You may not think that you have that big of a problem. And it may not be that big of a problem. Until all of a sudden one day it is and I think that that’s where a lot of our customers a lot of our phone calls come from is that people don’t understand the level of how bad the problem can be hidden up until it cannot hide any longer and I’m not saying that tomorrow, or a week from now that your problem is going to be as big because you know, the ones that we just showed in these photos and video. But if left to its own devices long enough, unfortunately, it can be that bad. You know, my customer even said, Hey, would you mind treating behind the headboard, because they like to go back there and then they crawl on me at night. So, I mean, something like that is a health hazard. You know, these roaches, they contaminate your food product, they contaminate your surfaces, your your utensils, your they contaminate your air in your house, I mean, you know, they can cause respiratory problems. You know, asthma, if you didn’t have a problem, you either develop one or any kind of health problem that you have, it can kind of exacerbate it and make it worse. So these are definitely insects that you don’t want to share your space with.

Michael Wienecke
Yeah, 100% I mean, and you know, like we said, it’s normally we try to help anybody do it themselves, if they so want to this is just not one of those one of those things that you can do yourself. You know, it’s I look at it like roof and a house. I don’t know anything about roof and a house. So I would never tried to found out. But German roaches, it’s a whole nother animal. And it can turn into, you know, like these pictures. I mean, it just, it’s it’s sad. And it doesn’t need to be that

Travis McGowin
way. Well, and I think a lot of people think that when they go to buy the over the counter products from the hardware store, the grocery store, that they’re doing some good and you know, I always tell my customers, yes, you’re going to see dead insects, you’re going to see dead roaches, especially if you spray and contact them with them, it’s going to do its job, it’s going to kill them. The only problem is, is that most of what people buy over the counter, ends up moving or relocating the roaches into a different room of their house. And that’s another question that I always like to ask my customers. I have another customer who I’ve been servicing now for a little while. And I said, How many cut how many companies have you had before us? And they said, I think it was like two or three? And I said How long have you had the problem? And they said, probably about a year and a half, two years now we’ve been fighting and dealing with them. And my next question, and I already knew the answer. But I had to ask anyway, as I said, after the other companies left, was the problem better? Or did it get worse? And they answered like I thought they said the problem actually got worse. I said, Did it move from your kitchen to your laundry room and your bedroom and your bed? And they said yes. So, you know, I’m not gonna say that every professional is trained in that every professional that works for a company out there, you know, has pinpointed exactly the right method to do it. I just know that I have never seen a problem get worse after we’ve taken over with the method that we use. And that that exact customer I was referring to told me after I’d come back for believe it was the second actual official treatment. And they told me, I don’t know what you did. But nothing’s ever been this good. Like it’s actually gotten better. And that’s just because that that with products they used or with products from other companies that other companies used, they ended up just pushing them around the house.

Michael Wienecke
Well, and I’ll say this, I had a customer about a month ago call us when they’re, you know, did the inspection found out Sherman roaches. Always ask for a list. Like if they’ve had a company come in, I want to see what they’ve been treating with because unfortunately nine times out of 10 it’s the wrong product. It’s the wrong combination. You know, we’ve done a lot of work to build our program or German Roach program to solve the problem. And they were using the same products we use, they bought the same products online. They just weren’t using it right. It’s, you know, having the tool and not know how to use the tool is not going to it’s not going to solve the problem.

Travis McGowin
Definitely application is is a huge part of it. So not just knowing what to get but definitely knowing how to use it. 100%

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post German Cockroaches Are Nasty Here in Montgomery, Alabama appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Hello and welcome to another edition of the peskies pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael, we do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Michael Wienecke 0:00
Hey hey, so today I want to talk about an issue that we see every now and then that really you can alleviate yourself is the flesh fly. So a flush fly normally will get inside your house around your house, if there’s something dead, whether it’s in the attic, whether it’s in the house, whether it’s in the crawlspace, or even, you know, the backyard. If you you know, wake up one day, or you just start noticing a bunch of huge flies buzzing around your house or inside your house. Normally, that’s what it is, this flashlight is one of the best ways to identify it is just, you know, the easiest way is it’s got kind of like, like a gray body with little white, white and black stripes going down it kind of the best way it’s not, they’re not really Stripes, they’re more like striations, I guess you’d say. But as far as you know, solving the issue of flesh flies, it’s always gonna be removing that dead animal. Where we come in as pest control professionals is that you can’t get to that dead animal. We can try to get rid of the dead animal, we can try to remove it. Most homeowners don’t want to pick up a dead animal. Travis, I know you’ve probably experienced that.

Travis McGowin 1:16
Yeah, most people are not really fond of, of touching anything that’s deceased, unless be real. A lot of the animals whether it be you know, rodents, or birds or you know, a little bit larger mammals that whatever it is. Some Yeah, some of those things. They don’t even want to touch when they’re alive. So you know, factor in the problem that they’re dead now, and the customer is really not going to want to put their hands on it.

Michael Wienecke 1:43
It’s funny. I was on a job the other day, and I had a customer and she was just like, what you do is just gross. I was like, Yeah, but I like it. So I’ve heard

Travis McGowin 1:53
that many times when dealing with many different things. It’s like how do you stomach what you do? And I’m like, Well, I mean, I don’t know if this makes me a weird individual. But I enjoy my job.

Michael Wienecke 2:03
Oh, yeah, no, we definitely love it, we definitely love it. So. So like I said, just the biggest thing that we as pest pest control professionals can do is you know, we’ll come in evaluate, obviously, that it is flesh wise, try to remove that, that dead animal, and then come in and do a bait treatment around the windows because those flowers are going to be trying to get out of the house. So they’re going to be coming towards the windows, and they’re gonna be done towards the windows. And again, they’re very large laws compared to like a house fly, or any other fly out there. They’re quite large laws. So, you know, will will bite the windows bait the doorframes. And they’ll eat that bait. And typically, you know, trash, what would you say about 2030 minutes, the flies dissipate. And they’re pretty much gone after that.

Travis McGowin 2:47
Yeah, you know, I’ve had a customer that had a very similar situation, you know, now that you mentioned that, about kind of waking up or coming back home and just there being this explosion of flies. And so I did I did just that I did inspect the house, I inspected the attic, the house was on a slab I did not find anything did and I hunted for quite a while, um, I even looked around the outside of the house. Like I said, I was looking for anything, any possible source of these flies. Just because overnight, they had showed up, I could not locate any dead animal. However I did, like you said I baited around the windows, you know, some of that fly bait in about 60 seconds to a minute and a half. I mean, the flies are once they contacted their dying, it works that quickly. And then by I believe, well the customer was going out of town. And she didn’t want a bunch of flies in her house obviously while she was gone, but when she came back, she said there was not a fly in existence, and they were all just did

Michael Wienecke 3:54
well and then the alternative, you know, for the customer, if they really wanted to go hunting a bunch of flies, I would recommend that electric floss water. I mean, you could have a file that’s just entertainment with 500 flies flying around, you kill a lot of fly

Travis McGowin 4:06
on their large targets too. So that’s, that’s just fun. That’s the kids going on.

Michael Wienecke 4:11
Or that that’s that gun that shoots the salt. So,

Travis McGowin 4:15
you know, I’ve had mixed results, but the electric flyswatter is where it’s at and there’s nothing you know, to me to use to the customers to people listening. Let me just tell you, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing one of those flies get electrified.

Michael Wienecke 4:32
Hey, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing them eat the bait and just drop to the ground. So yeah, I agree with you there and also I’ll go and you know, right so sometimes when we when we do get to a house and there is a dead animal on a wall, we can’t always get to that dead animal if it’s stuck in a wall void you know behind sheet rock and the problem is is that when something dies and it can die like for instance I my house I had a dead mouse in the light, the light socket and I looked over Were in try to find this thing I could not find it anywhere shove cutting all the sheetrock out and just starting to look never knew that it was in the light socket a couple of months later or the the wall outlet it went out and I pulled it out and you know bones and all that came out so it’s not always that easy to find something dead because like I said it could be in the wall void in the home and you could smell it in the attic you just you just don’t ever know but you know if we get in there in the crawlspace and he’s laying in the middle of the floor pretty easy pick it up attic Same Same deal just you know, removing that that dead source and then not not having to worry about those maggots, you know, turn it into flaws and all that so yeah, a little nasty but that’s just how it is.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Flesh Flies are Buzzing Around Montgomery, Alabama appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin 0:18
Hello and welcome to another edition of the pesky pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, we Tonka pike road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you. Hey, so today we’re going to talk about beetles and more specifically the Ladybug and the Asian lady beetle. Now, around this time of year, getting close into the fall and winter time, that’s typically when people start having issues with them, especially the Asian lady beetle. Now over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had a couple of phone calls, in reference to the Asian lady beetle invading multiple my customers houses. I had one customer in particular, who has a vaulted ceiling in their living room. And when I tell you there were 1000s of these Asian lady beetles up on the ceiling, just crawling around looking for a place to overwinter and to ride out the colder weather. So typically, the Asian lady beetle is commonly mistaken as a ladybug. But it is a very good copy. However, there are some subtle differences that you can look at to try and differentiate between the two beetles themselves. First of all, we’ll talk about the Ladybug. So the ladybug is actually a very beneficial creature. You want this creature inside of your gardens and where you’re growing your flowers where you’re growing your crops, they’re harmless, they will typically feed on other garden pests that you have. So that’s a good thing for you if you’re growing crops, and they usually stay outdoors. You recognize them by their red color with their black spots. But the one of the main differences between the Asian lady beetle and an actual beneficial ladybug is there’s an M, the letter M shaped spot on the back of the top of the head of the Asian lady beetle, whereas the ladybug does not have that little spot. Also, your typical Ladybug may be brighter, more vibrant and red color, whereas some of your Asian lady beetles are almost yellow, or very, very kind of a pale red, so they don’t look the same as the ladybug. The Asian lady beetles, actually can can cause odors, you know, they typically do invade your home, like I said, looking for a place to overwinter. They’ll come into your home, through cracks, crevices around doors, around windows around eaves and your attic. And they’re kind of aggressive, they have been reported by one of my customer who is allergic to actually bite and give her some reactions to those too. So some things that you can do as a home owner to try and just get rid of them or to stop them before they become an actual problem would be one to seal up the GAC the gaps in the cracks and the crevices around your outside of your house, whether that’s around your doors around your windows, around your eaves. One customer that I had in particular had an issue around their chimney, where there was large gaps where the wood siding on the house had started to shrink and become weathered over time throughout the years that the house had been there. And so these Asian lady beetles come back year after year after year through these gaps and cracks. And it was particularly on one side of the house where there’s a lot of sunlight, so it’s really warm. And it’s just a really desirable location. So as with all pests, sealing up their access is really the number one thing that you can do, that’s really the best thing that you can do to prevent them from coming inside your house. You know, so you might be asking yourself, what now I already have him in my house. That’s a good question for you to ask because call us call us and let us come out and take a look at your house. Let us see what the extent of the problem is. In the case of my customer that had the vaulted ceilings that I mentioned, I found several accesses inside the attic where there was just huge gaps to the outside of the house. So we did seal those up. We also treated the attic space to try to get rid of the ones that were in the attic. And then we also treated with the UNLV fog inside their house just to go ahead and eliminate the ones that had already made it inside the house. And as a consequence of treating it inside the house. After I was finished. I went around and looked on the outside of the house and there were hundreds if not 1000s these Asian lady beetles rolling around on the outside of the house where I had actually ran them out of the house with the UNLV fog, and then I was able to actually treat them on the outside of the house too. So don’t get discouraged, you do have options. But like I said, the best thing to do is to call us before it becomes a problem, and solve the problem before it starts. So seal up that house, get your pest control provider to get some good treatments going on around the inside and outside of your home, in preparation before they actually make their way into the house. Because once they make their way into the house, whether it’s in the attic, whether it’s in wall voids, they are there and they’re there to stay all throughout the winter. And it’s next to impossible to try to get rid of them completely. So definitely be vigilant when you start to see signs of them, reach out to us or reach out to your pest control provider. And let them knows that that they can come and stop that because you know if you have a house, for example, like that’s a log cabin, or that has wood siding, where you have wood that contracts and grows and shrinks and based upon the weather and based upon the age, you’re gonna be open to a lot more issues with these beetles when they decide to make their way into your house. Hey, and thanks for listening to the pesky us pest control podcast here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and, Michael. If you have any questions in reference to what we discussed today, please give us a call at 334-595-9055 and you can ask for me Travis McGowan. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you. And don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and family. And subscribe to us on Apple, Amazon, Google and Spotify. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Montgomery Alabama Has Visitors from Asian, Asian Lady Beetles appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin 0:17
Hello and welcome to another edition of the pesky pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael, we do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka pike road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you. Hey, so today we’re going to talk about another very aggravating and somewhat invasive pest for your house. And that is the brown marmorated stink bug. So these little creatures, or accidentally introduced from Asia, into the US, as you know, most pests are that we, you know, didn’t have up until a couple of years ago, or several years back, you know, and due to shipping and due to things like that, these pests tend to find a way, you know, even across oceans and across continents, to places that, you know, they weren’t normally indigenous to. So these little, these little aggravating bugs tend to show up right here at the end of summer and into fall, and then going on into winter. And they’re, you know, most of the time, they’re actually attracted to your house because of the heat from the sunlight. They look at it as a place to just bask and to warm up. And then lo and behold, of course, they find these cracks, crevices around your doors or in your windows, around your at eaves up into your attic, anywhere that they can go. And they start to look for a place to Oh, to do what we call over wintering, which is to find a place to basically hang out that’s warmer out of the weather up until the point where they can reemerge, you know in the spring when it warms up. So, but what’s the significance of this brown marmorated stink bug, one of the main significance is of it is it’s damage to actual crops, it’s agricultural damage, you know, they, they can damage anything from fruits, apples and things like that to other vegetable crops like corn and tomatoes, soy beans, and then other ornamental plants and things like that. So they can cause significant damage in large enough numbers to agricultural products. But you as a homeowner, that’s probably not what you’re worried about, you’re probably worried about their significance in your house and then to your health or your family’s health. And they can cause some allergic reactions for you and your family. They can cause you to have runny noses, and conjunctivitis, they can also flare up anybody who is sensitive to bad odors, which are living up to its name, the stink bug, it can actually have, you know, an influence on someone who is very sensitive to odors. Um, they typically don’t cause a lot of damage to your home. You know, maybe if they’re crushed or sucked up into a vacuum or something like that, they can really kind of have an odor that you would really notice. But more more often than not, they’re actually just a nuisance. I had one customer at one point, who swapped to us from a different company just because the other company could not figure out a way to get rid of these pests. And we ended up determining that they were coming in to the house from the outside through the attic, and then of course getting into the living space of the house. So we were able to treat the attic of the house and much to the customer’s happiness, they were gone. They didn’t have any more issues with those stinkbugs getting into the house, and basically crawling all over everything, and flying and getting into their face and landing on their food and things like that. Like I said it was just more of a nuisance and it was an allergy or something like that. So of course what do we do the best method, seal them out before they come in. Knowing that this time of the year they become more prominent, they start to look for a place to hide for the wintertime that’s warmer or something like that. You really want to make sure that you’re vigilant or that your pest control provider is vigilant and making sure that they’re stopped, whether mechanically by sealing them out or you know by the usage of some sort of product that’s labeled for them. You want to make sure that they stay on top of that before it becomes a problem. Hey, and thanks for listening to the pesky us pest control podcast here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host Travis and Michael. If you have any questions in reference to what we discussed today, please Give us a call at 334-595-9055 and you can ask for me Travis McGowan. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you. And don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and family. And subscribe to us on Apple, Amazon, Google and Spotify. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Stink Bugs are Stinking Up Montgomery Alabama appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin 0:19
Hello and welcome to another edition of the pesky pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael, we do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Michael Wienecke 0:37
Hey, so today I want to talk about what I would consider for most of our customers, the scariest moment in their pest control experience. And that is how bugs are entering in your house.

Travis McGowin 0:51
Well, I was actually having a conversation with the customer about two days ago. You know, we were we were talking about pest control in general. But I do remember specifically stating to that customer that no matter how well your house is built, doesn’t matter if it’s got the latest and the greatest technology, it doesn’t matter if it’s the latest and greatest building practices. I don’t care who built the house. There’s always going to be some way shape or form of avenue for a bug to enter the house.

Michael Wienecke 1:26
Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind when you say something like that is a slab home, because what do they do when they pour a concrete slab? What happens to that slab? It cracks. So when it cracks? Well, I’m a bit over time, you know, it crack so so over

Travis McGowin 1:44
time due to settling and the ground shifting and moving and whatnot. Yes, it cracks.

Michael Wienecke 1:50
Yes. So you know, and that’s where we see a lot of millipedes coming up through, you know, a slab home, and extremely hard to control because you’re right there under that that house. So that’s one thing like said, this comes to my mind. You know, big, big issues, as far as keeping pests out, is always going to be you know, your product, your technician treating the house, definitely going to help but keeping them out 100% is just not possible. I mean, you’ve got vents going towards your attic, you’ve got weep holes in your brick, if you’re on a crawlspace. I mean, it’s it might as well be wide open. There’s really not a way to seal a crawlspace, especially in Alabama, just for the fact that we have so much humidity and they really liked those crawlspace vents open to get that airflow and keep everything nice and dry.

Travis McGowin 2:36
Now the two of the most common access points that I see other than you know what you mentioned, one, one of which is where your H fac lines go into the house, I see a lot of people whose whose coolant lines and control lines that go to the outside and unit, you know, and it goes through the sidewall of the house. Just a huge gap. And you know, that’s not even just an insect problem. That’s a rodent problem waiting to happen to but then the other one I see a lot of is, especially around homes that have a brick veneer on the front or around the house where the brick goes and it meets the the eaves of the house. If you just look up to where that junction is, I mean, there’s some times you can just shine a flashlight up and just see wood members inside the attic space. It’s a direct opening right up into the attic. And like I said, not only is that an insect problem, but that’s asking for a rodent problem as

Michael Wienecke 3:34
well. Yeah, rodents, snakes, chipmunks, I mean, you know, all sorts of different things. I’m glad you said that. Because, you know, we’ve had a lot of people tell us when they have a brick house that that they can’t, you know, they can’t they can’t get you know, termites, they can’t get bugs in the house because it is a brick home. And the brick veneer is very important because you do have that gap between the actual wood structure and the brick so there’s just a runway between between that house where something could enter and go through. Just I just had an experience the other day I had a customer that really never had a roach problem and all of a sudden they’re killing six a day 12 A day in the top and the living part of the basement really wasn’t the issue I went over there for my inspection to start the RE service and pulled up and notice the siding was was brand new house now the siding was just kind of falling off the side of the house were some of those boards and started to warp in the sun and just kind of wide open access to the attic so get in get in the house start doing you know the inspection on the inside. Oh, and I’ll say this to the the right hand side of the house. They were building another house so of course that’s going to start stirring up things past rodents I mean all all sorts of different issues. Get inside the house, do my full inspection and find a window open In the top, and after I finally found a dead Roach to try to figure out what kind of roaches we were dealing with, we were dealing with smoky brown roaches, which are typically going to be found in an attic, or the higher part of the house. So with that window being open, we kind of figured that out close the window, retreated the house, it’s been about seven days, and we had had 100% success.

Travis McGowin 5:25
Yeah, and you know, sometimes it takes just starting with those most obvious places, like you said, for example, just a window being open, you know, some houses a little bit larger, you know, this customer doesn’t go in every room every time forgets that they left a window open and you know, ended up with insects or other types of animals inside the house, just because they, you know, they gave them an easy access point. And, you know, a lot of insects prefer cracks and crevices and small spaces. But, you know, realistically speaking, a lot of them are going to take the path of least resistance. So closing those windows, making sure that you have gaps around the outside where your H fac and power goes into the house closed. Making sure that you have weep holes, you know, where they’re still able to do their job, but also covered so that you know, small insects and animals and rodents can get in there, just as those simple things can save you a lot of trouble and heartache in the future.

Michael Wienecke 6:32
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I said, I’ll say another thing too, the reason the window was open is because the AC unit was out. So but just just talking to your customer, you know, trying to find out what where that problem is. And they kind of give you that roadmap, and then you just go from there. And like I said, you know, I’ll just say, I feel like we have great technicians and they do a great job problem solving and solving those problems for our customers.

Travis McGowin 7:00
Hey, and thanks for listening to the pesky pest control podcast here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and, Michael. If you have any questions in reference to what we discussed today, please give us a call at 334-595-9055 and you can ask for me Travis McGowan. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you. And don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and family. And subscribe to us on Apple, Amazon, Google and Spotify. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

The post How Bugs Get In Your Montgomery Alabama Home appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin 0:18
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael, we do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka Pike Road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Michael Wienecke 0:37
Thank you. So today I want to talk about our service our general past, and how we how we do our thing, how we are a little bit different from other companies, and just kind of give a whole layout of the service plan that we offer and how we can cater our service to you, Travis, take it away.

Travis McGowin 0:55
Yeah, so I like to kind of touch on the point of what you said a second ago, which is, how are we different and I can definitely say, in comparison to what I’ve seen, from services, when I’ve come up after a different company has service to house or, you know, kind of doing a side by side comparison of a house next door to where I’m treating that’s maybe being treated by somebody else, a different company and a different service provider and a different technician. I can I can honestly say yes, we are different. And I can also honestly say is that no, that is not a bad thing, either. In terms of the effort that our technicians put into the service, the amount of time they put into the service, and the amount of care and attention to detail, in my opinion is second to none.

Michael Wienecke 1:48
Yeah, I mean, I’d have to agree with you. I’m obviously a little a little biased there. But, you know, when it comes down to it, I think people just want, you know, what they want to get their money’s worth. And if they’re paying X amount of dollars, they want to make sure that they feel like, you know, it’s justified and completely understand that. So, you know, my my kind of, I guess funny saying for this is, you know, we don’t do contracts, here at Petoskey is, you know, we want you to be happy if you’re not happy. We don’t we don’t want to be like the cable company and have you locked into a contract for a year where you can’t get out of it. If you’re not happy, you know, I want you to find someone else. And, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Travis McGowin 2:28
Now, that’s right, I mean, customer services is the top priority and should be the top priority. Not even for just us. But for any company. And in a world where there’s so many fakes or cheap knockoffs or things that you can spend your money on that you don’t see a return from. I’m very excited to say that we’re different and because we give people what they pay for it.

Michael Wienecke 2:53
Yeah, definitely some detail about the service that we provide for your general household pest control. So when you sign up for with pesky pest control, you’re going to get a technician at the door. We’re going to come in the inside we’re going to first of all we’re going to do an inspection as we’re kind of treating so we’re going to treat you know spot treat the baseboards, we’re going to be baiting behind appliances, cracks, crevices, pipes, this includes you know, your shower covers, all your funding your sink, all your pipes, getting a bait or you know, a dust between that barrier to keep those pests or to get to those pests where you’re not even seeing them. After that we go outside we remove spider webs, wasp nest and dirt daubers nest as long as they’re not around the window, I will use that as a disclaimer because we definitely don’t want to break anybody’s window

Travis McGowin 3:43
and electrical lines.

Michael Wienecke 3:45
Yes, and electrical lines we do stay about three feet away from any power lines and that’s just a safety feature for us to to not get electrocuted. So after we deal with you know, we’re removing all those spiderwebs around the windows, the downspouts the garage around the door so you’re not getting hit in the face when you when you walk in and out of your house. I will say there’s nothing worse than that. We do a liquid treatment, depending on the product. You know, the the product that comes to mind as far as how high we can treat is about three feet up and three feet out. There are different products with different you know, parameters to that. After we do the liquid treatment, we do a baiting foundation treatment. So that’s around the ground, Baten in your mulch beds, any kind of area where you know pests are going to be kind of walking towards that house.

Travis McGowin 4:36
Yeah, I think that’s pretty pretty well a good overview of how you know, especially your starting services go and then also to add in there as well. Talking about the granular bait around the exterior of the house but also, you know, within a certain distance from the foundation of the house, taking care of some of those ant beds to you know, while we’re while we’re at it during the service

Michael Wienecke 5:00
Oh, yeah, yeah. So there are, you know, fire and beds are included up to 30 feet from the structure after that, it would be a whole whole different treatment. But definitely, definitely are covered. And another thing too is, you know, we don’t want you to think that you’re just getting a generic service, you know, we do cater, when our technician, when we come out whatever it could be, you know, we’re looking around looking for problems. So we’re not just going to use the same product at every single house, it does change, you know, base based on the problems that you are having. Yeah, that’s,

Travis McGowin 5:31
and that’s why we always train our technicians, myself, Michael included, when we do a service, we always train our technicians in this way to is that every service is not just a service, but it’s also an inspection as well. So like you said, when when walking around that structure, walking inside that structure and identifying problems or potential problems, that that inspection is going to allow us and our technicians to be able to pinpoint exactly what the best thing to use in that situation is going to be. So that it can, you know, give the best outcome for the customer to make sure that we keep their home pest free.

Michael Wienecke 6:14
Yeah, of course. And I mean, that that can go as small as Hey, cutting bushes away from the house, you know, we’re having constant problems, and we just can’t get it under control. Because, I mean, let’s face it, chemical is not the 100% end all be all of getting rid of a problem. It’s definitely part of the plan. But if you have a tree branch touching the roof, and those ants are crawling right up that tree branch and bypassing the entire foundation of the home, then you know, you’re just kind of, you know, you’re blindfolded, you know, throwing darts.

Travis McGowin 6:42
Yeah, and training the technicians to identify those potential entry points and entryways and gaps and cracks and crevices and ways that pests can circumvent, you know, the products that we put out. You know, that’s, that’s part of our our training program as well, like I said, with the ultimate goal, and that, you know, liquids and granules, and things are great, and they have their place and when used appropriately, they are very helpful. But ultimately, the best way to keep a pest out is to do that, keep them out.

Michael Wienecke 7:21
That’s right. And I’ll go a little bit more into the service. So we do offer quarterly monthly, like I said, whatever you prefer, we can cater to whatever, whatever type of service you want, I will throw this out here, all of our products are 90 days, just from all the research we’ve done, we don’t see any need of putting product in your house every single month or every single quarter unless it’s needed. So that’s, that’s something we do that, you know, we just don’t think it’s necessary to just douse the inside of the house with product when we’re controlling that problem from the outside.

Travis McGowin 8:00
No, I do I get a lot of interesting looks. Sometimes when I discuss that with the customer. And I’m you know, I say that, you know, the bulk of our services are exterior only services. But you know, if your pest control provider is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, in terms of keeping the pest out, treating with appropriate products, and the appropriate manner that the product is supposed to be used, then that is going to be your most effective, your most effective course of action to begin with, I mean, you know, the bugs have to come in from the outside at some point. And so strategically applying those products in the ways that they’re supposed to be applied, is gonna make the most difference.

Michael Wienecke 8:43
Oh, yeah, of course. And you know, we have a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee warranty. I mean, if you’re still seeing something inside of the house, we come back completely free of charge. We never charge. We never charge any, any addition for us ever having to come back inside the house and retreat.

Travis McGowin 9:01
Hey, and thanks for listening to the pesky us pest control podcast here in Montgomery, Alabama, with your host, Travis and, Michael. If you have any questions in reference to what we discussed today, please give us a call at 334-595-9055 and you can ask for me Travis McGowan. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you. And don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and family. And subscribe to us on Apple, Amazon, Google and Spotify. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

The post General Pest Control Montgomery, Alabama, How Peskies is Different appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin 0:17
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael, we do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Michael Wienecke 0:36
Hey, so today I want to talk about weather change and how weather change affects different bugs and, you know, different bug sightings in your home.

Travis McGowin 0:46
Well, first of all, let me just go ahead and say that, thank goodness, the weather is changing.

Michael Wienecke 0:52
I am looking forward to it. Yes,

Travis McGowin 0:54
I’ve waited so long for fall to come along and cooler weather and less humidity and all of those those rough things that we deal with, you know, from the time spring kicks off and all the way through summer in Alabama. So I’m highly looking forward to the weather change.

Michael Wienecke 1:12
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Mosquitoes are about to be gone completely. And we’re looking forward to that, because the mosquito season has been been pretty rough this year.

Travis McGowin 1:22
It has it has, you know, and, you know, all throughout the summer, we were able to get a fair amount of rain fair, a fair amount of moisture. But here’s we’ve crept in the fall, it’s kind of tapered off. So it’s got the bugs going a little crazy.

Michael Wienecke 1:38
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, just like we talked about another podcast, you know, bugs, they need harborage, they need plenty of heat and moisture. So you know, as we’re starting to get into that wintertime phase, your house is a great source of harbourage and a great source of heat and moisture.

Travis McGowin 1:57
Yeah, I don’t think people realize just how much the weather not even just temperature. But you know, like you were saying moisture. So rainfall and humidity. I don’t think a lot of people realize just how much of an effect that actually has on the insect behavior in the insect population. You know, in terms of when it starts to get cooler, the insects go into that mode of searching for a place to overwinter and to ride write out those cooler temperatures for the cooler months, then, you know, your home just becomes a prime target.

Michael Wienecke 2:32
Yeah. Because you know that that I think a lot of people think that just the bugs just die. And they just they’re just gone. During the during the winter was don’t get me wrong, some do die. But it’s it’s more of a, you know, going dormant and then reemerging once that that humidity and everything outside starts to take a take place.

Travis McGowin 2:56
Definitely. So why don’t you kind of elaborate on those typical cooler weather pests that someone might see trying to enter their home. And I’m not even talking about just insects. I mean, there are other pests such as rodents that like to try to find a warm place to lay up for the winter. So once you kind of elaborate on that for us.

Michael Wienecke 3:16
Yeah, of course. So you know, first thing that comes to my mind are gonna be cockroaches, cockroaches are 365 days a year, they can, you know, survive a lot. So, just because you don’t see cockroaches in your home in the wintertime doesn’t mean they’re not there. They can get those cracks and crevices those tight spots. And that’s, you know, one reason why it’s so important to, to continue trading your home in the winter, because you’re gonna have a much better success rate when those roaches do start to become less dormant, and then come out and you start seeing them on your kitchen floor and your bathroom. And you know, places like that, you know, with with rodents trying to get in your house wasn’t going to make this about rodents, but I feel like we can always we can always talk about rodents and how they get in your house. But yeah, I mean, same deal. You know, it’s freezing cold out there warm, warm blooded creatures. So they are looking for a nice, easy place to sleep, feeling safe and then having a meal. So you know, just with that weather change, you can you may not see so many pests, but you have to understand that they are still there.

Travis McGowin 4:29
Definitely, you know, one of one of the most troublesome and aggravating pests that some of my customers will actually two of the most troublesome and aggravating pests that my customers deal with, especially in that weather change period. I see a lot of stinkbugs trying to get in aureus for that as well as a lot of Asian lady beetles.

Michael Wienecke 4:53
Yeah, honestly, we haven’t had too many calls on those yet. I know it’s coming and it’s always it’s always spunda You don’t have to get up there and start treat addicts and all that fun stuff. So

Travis McGowin 5:04
problem with him is that once they’re there, they’re kind of there. So if people wait until it becomes an issue, you know, they can go ahead and assume that their attic is invested their wallboard or infested, they’re just many different places those animals or excuse me insects can get into from the outside, just to hold up for the wintertime. So, you know, I’ve got one customer who’s got a log cabin style home. And the spouse is actually she’s allergic to allergic to the Asian lady beetles somehow or another. And so that’s a major, major ordeal for them. So we did handle their problem pretty well last year, but we were a little bit more proactive in terms of our treatment this year. And it’s been overall actually so far successful. I think that they said that they have seen one live one in the house. And since we treated they have seen none. So you know, there are ways to be proactive to some of these pests and the way that they overwinter. But you just have to catch them before it becomes an issue.

Michael Wienecke 6:09
Yeah, and I’ll say that for any pest issue. I mean, if you know, I always got a German roaches, because you always think of that as like your infestation or even fleas. You know, if you’re seeing one or two fleas in the house, or you know, a couple roaches in the house, you know, get it get it taken care of as soon as possible. And then you’re not going to have you know, 10,000 fleas jumping all over you in the next you know, couple of months.

Travis McGowin 6:32
Yeah, always better to get a jump on those things before they before they get blown out of control. Because it’s much easier to not have to play catch up.

Michael Wienecke 6:43
Yeah, so like I said, just biggest thing with the weather change is just understanding that, you know, you may not be seeing as many pests as you normally would in the in the summertime. But they’re definitely still there. So I wouldn’t get comfortable thinking that, you know, you had a big pest issue in the summertime, and now you’re not having it in the wintertime. It’s still there. It’s just not as as active as you as you would think in the summertime.

Travis McGowin 7:09
Well. And the other thing that customers and listeners need to remember too, is that if products and services are not continued through the winter time, let’s just you know, let’s just say for example, we’ve got a customer that’s on a quarterly service plan, and their next quarterly services due in December, but they choose to forego that quarterly service. You know, when those weather changes start coming back around for spraying those barriers that were there or not that that should have been there are not going to be there at that point. And so you’re asking for another major influx of insects to get into your home. Or when some of these insects that have overwintered are kind of coming back to life so to speak. You’re asking to see a huge influx. So not the best idea to just cancel off what you had going on. Just because you’re you know, your pest pressures lower, you’re seeing less less than six.

Michael Wienecke 8:04
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, we’ve seen that firsthand. People who have quit, you know, or cancelled service during the winter, and then in the summer calling us back and said, you know, they’re worse than they’ve ever been. So I think I think you’re right, I think that’s 100% important.

Travis McGowin 8:18
Hey, and thanks for listening to the pesky pest control podcast here in Montgomery, Alabama, with your host, Travis and, Michael. If you have any questions in reference to what we discussed today, please give us a call at 334-595-9055 and you can ask for me, Travis McGowan. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you. And don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and family. And subscribe to us on Apple, Amazon, Google and Spotify. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Pest Control Affected By Weather in Montgomery Alabama appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

View Details

Travis McGowin 0:00
Hello and welcome to another edition of the pesky pest control podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your host, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the River region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, we Tonka pike road, and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.

Michael Wienecke 0:18
Hey, so today I want to talk about the wolf spider otherwise known as fake brown recluse spider.

Travis McGowin 0:26
No, definitely. It’s one of the most, I would say, falsely identified spiders, you know, here in our area, I mean, they’re everywhere. For starters, I know outdoors around my own personal house, there seems to be a very large population of them. And they’re often very, very well miss identified as being a brown recluse when really they’re just playing a wolf spider.

Michael Wienecke 0:53
Yeah, and, you know, just on looks alone, I mean, the wolf spider is a pretty creepy looking spider, you know, it varies. It can be kind of blackish dark brown tan, has, you know, that that coloration on it. And that’s why and Harry and Harry and sometimes carrying its babies on its back, which is just kind of a a freaky looking looking site. So and

Travis McGowin 1:16
I think that that’s one of the facts that most people don’t appreciate at all, is when they do go to squish one. And then, you know, looks like the ground around, it starts moving because there’s always babies going everywhere. And it does it freaks people out for sure.

Michael Wienecke 1:30
Oh, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Well, let’s talk about like, where this spider, you know, kind of calls home. You know, I know, we see a lot of them around Birmingham. Just you know, woodpiles piled up rocks, play houses, cinnamon sandboxes, you know, where the water meter is, you know, sometimes we’ll check there and treat that area as well. So, on the outside, that’s, that’s where we see a lot of Wolf Spiders,

Travis McGowin 2:00
you know, another another place that’s often neglected that you see them, I have actually had several customers who had brand new pine straw put into landscaping around the outside of their home. And when I tell you that I went to do the, you know, the service for those customers, and the amount of Wolf Spiders of different, you know, life stages and sizes that came out of that pine straw during the treatment was just impressive. And you know, the customer had already told me that they were having an issue with the wolf spiders, and it was almost like, whereas I doubt that the pond straw itself was brought in with Wolf Spiders, that apparently was an attractive location for them to be in the customer’s yard. So that’s one thing to consider when you’re doing your landscaping around your house.

Michael Wienecke 2:46
Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And just, you know, biggest thing is, as far as preventing Wolf Spiders from being around your house, another thing we didn’t talk about is, you know, where they live in your house. Very similar to the brown recluse spider, you know, they cracks, crevices, crawlspace attics, you know, around windows kind of anywhere that there’s gonna be a good food source for them to hunt at nighttime when they come out of those cracks and crevices. So yeah,

Travis McGowin 3:12
I’m, you know, I’m glad you mentioned nighttime, another little kind of cool fact about them as if you walk outside at night in the dark. And you take a flashlight or something like that, and you shine it down towards the ground in an area where there’s Wolf Spiders, they have iridescence to their eyes, you know, they’ve got really good night vision. They they’re primarily nighttime hunters. And if you look close enough, there’ll be two, you know, a couple little teeny tiny eyes with an iridescence to them on the ground. And those are Wolf Spiders.

Michael Wienecke 3:42
Yeah, yeah, it is. That’s a freaky sight, but a cool one at the same time. So yeah, so

Travis McGowin 3:48
yeah, I mean, if you’re, if you’re freaked out by spiders, probably not the best part. But let me ask you, Michael. So if, if by chance, you were to come into contact with a wolf spider and it was to bite you, what could somebody expect? Yeah, so

Michael Wienecke 4:03
Well, spider wolf spider bite is really harmless. You know, the, they’re not poisonous to us. One of the only concerns is, you know it, it obviously is going to break the skin. So if you don’t keep it clean, you can’t get an infection from that or you know, have to have to see a doctor that way. But as far as poisonous or you know, kind of like the brown recluse it’s not going to, you know, rot your your flesh or anything like that.

Travis McGowin 4:29
Well, definitely an unsightly spider. People don’t like seeing them but relatively harmless. That’s right. Hey, and thanks for listening to the pesky us pest control podcast here in Montgomery, Alabama, with your host, Travis and, Michael. If you have any questions in reference to what we discussed today, please give us a call at 334-595-9055 and you can ask for me, Travis McGowan. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you. And don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and family. And subscribe to us on Apple. Amazon Go Google and Spotify thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Wolf Spiders Are in Montgomery Alabama appeared first on Peskies Pest Control.

Peskies Pest Control Montgomery Alabama Podcast: Recent Episodes

Peskies Pest Control Montgomery Alabama Podcast