Scientists in California have been going around closely counting the number of arthropods (insects, spiders, scorpions) that inhabit homes. They found that the more affluent neighborhoods have more vegetation, called the luxury effect, and variety of plants make an attractive environment for the creepy crawlies. More
The Luxury Effect Here
Except for cockroaches of course. 🙂
Most of the bugs around my house come from the neighbor’s house. He lives paycheck to paycheck, doesn’t give a shit about his property and never kills weeds or bugs. Half of the products I use to control weeds and bugs gets applied to the property line, the other half takes care of 12,000 sq feet of my own property. The fscking ants that come from his place are unstoppable, I bait and drench them almost daily, but they keep coming over by the thousands.
My house is in the woods. Insects aren’t that bad, but spiders are everywhere.
… with all the undocumented this IS surprising.
“…admits that her study has some important limitations because she only had data for 50 homes, all of which were freestanding and found in middle-and higher-income neighborhoods.”
Basically this is purely a theory from some leftist university professors that assume being affluent always gives you an advantage. I call BS.
I’m must be extremely rich if you count bed bugs.
@anonymous; maybe not so much. I watched a documentary a number of years ago about the desert life around and in Phoenix. Apparently Phoenix will attract all kinds of bugs because of the abundant amount (relative to the surrounding desert) water in the city. Not only the water but the plant life that is grown by the citizens will attract them. Along with your basic bugs comes scorpions, Black Widow blown in on strands of silk and other little critters. I can understand where a high end house with lots of green space as well as gardens will attract a lot of different creatures where a bare and scratchy lawn and surrounding will not. As a side note, that documentary is the reason I will never, ever visit Phoenix even though two of my sisters and their husbands winter there.
I used to do a lot of phone work in Beverly Hills, and let me tell you, that place is a rodent haven. Damn near every house there has a rodent infestation, and it really is because of the shrubbery that they plant for privacy. There’s so much of it that it provides hiways for rats and other critters.
On the other hand, my 10 acre property in AZ has tarantulas, black widows, mice and rats, but that’s because I’m in a rural area.
Pest control industry here. Left Coast Dan is referring to the German cockroach. Lots of other kinds found outside in the shrubbery and ground cover and wood piles and such. Germans though, they live with people. I can’t tell you the times I’ve had folks tell me their German cockroaches are coming in from outside. Nope, Leroy. You got German roaches because you won’t clean your stinking house.
Oh, side note. Germans refer to German cockroaches as French cockroaches.
Eternal, you need a product with fipronil in it.
Search for buying Termidor. Ebay and doyourownpestcontrol will have it cheaper than my supply houses – even with shipping included.
Follow the label for ants. Do NOT use more than the label prescribes. Non-professionals do that all the time thinking higher concentration is better.
It’s not. This is a slow killing chem that gets some molecules on the foragers and when they get back to the nest they feed and groom each other which transfers the fipronil to the nurses, queens and all the others that don’t leave the nest.
It will wipe out whole colonies that way.
If it is too strong, the foragers will die too quickly and the nest won’t be affected like it should be.
It works on the mitochondria. Energy only goes out and they die from all their moving parts moving constantly.
It works so well, I stopped charging the contracted customers for Carpenter ants, which usef to be $400 jobs with 4 month warranties.
Get a cheap sprayer from Home Depot, Lowes – whatever – and make one gallon at a time. At .8 oz per gallon (full strength) you get 25 gallons of usable spray.
You may need to spray areas you missed later on, but you only need to spray their trails. Do not spray broadly over a whole yard like you would for fleas or mosquitoes!
I also will spray the bottom of tree trunks. Especially Crape Myrtles.
Also you must not use any other chemical with it. Not even residue in a previously used sprayer!
Quick-kill chems will defeat this effort.
Termidor has solved neighborhood-wide ant problems for me. One by one they dropped their bugman and used me because I used Termidor and cleaned out properties that were never completely ant free before.
Termidor SC 20 oz bottle
You will be very happy with the results.
There are plenty of bugs and critters around my place. And I’m still flat broke! The only ones that I have to make an effort to kill are the ticks, centipedes, ants, and brown recluse spiders.
The frogs, lizards, guinea hens, bats, birds, snakes, skunks, dragonflys, preymantis, and dirt dobbers take care of most of the other insects.
The mosquitoes are always a pain in the ass, no matter what you do — unless it is real windy, they don’t like the wind.
Spiders are the only bugs allowed inside my house, non-poisonous of course. They will trap and kill any other insects. And my beaner friends tell me they are good luck to have in the casa.
🙂
For my recent ant problem I found that 20 parts jelly to 1 part Borax will kill most of those little bastards. Eat and die, you little pricks!
School of utube.
Thanks, Dad, I’m making a note of that. Here in N.C., formerly Ohio, my six year old had our first encounter with fire ants a few weeks ago. Just a few bites on the foot, she’s fine, but where there’s a few there’s thousands. Any suggestions beyond what you already posted?
Johnny, You are are right. You also only get German roaches two ways.
They either get brought in or you moved into a place that has them.
As for rats. We are talking about roof rats and Norway rats if they are living in your home. Mostly, almost exclusively, Roof rats.
A few facts about Roof Rats:
1. They have lived around man since we had a bone pile outside the cave. They are commensal – They eat from the same plate with no benefit to us.
2. They are not natural in America. That is why you always find them where man is or has been and not discovered all by themselves out in the wilderness. Also why ritzy places have so many. Wealth doesn’t matter except for the fact they hire people like me more often than the poor do. They came to America on the ships from Europe. Forget the diseased blankets – these sons of guns are still here and everywhere, and whitey brought them. On this point, I thank God BLM does not actually study history – we’d never hear the end of it.
3. They breed faster than rabbits.
4. Their coloring/coat patterns, are so varied you can’t tell by that alone if it’s a Roof rat. You’ll need to know their physical characteristics to identify them. Ears, tail and general body size are enough, but behavior is useful too.
5. If you are catching rats with cheese, then you don’t need the cheese to catch them. That’s cartoon stuff and not really a preference of theirs. The body smells, urine and droppings a previously caught rat leaves behind are powerful attractants. “Hey! Louie’s been here! He gets all the good stuff first! Let’s see what’s here.” That’s what’s really happening when cheese finally gets accepted as bait.
5-a. The best/quickest accepted bait is whatever they are already eating. Just like fly fishing. Give them what they are expecting and know they like already. They’re helping themselves to the cat/dog food?, Halloween candy?, Cereal?, bird seed? Use it.
5-b. Peanut butter is ok, but is not magically better than everything else. I have caught a lot of rodents with a single hard candy ball/sucker taped to the trigger of a trap. Over and over and over with ONE hard candy. Peanut butter can be licked off without triggering the trap. Trust me on this one.
5-c The crack of rat/squirrel bait would be sunflower seeds. Once they have one, they won’t stop until they’re all gone or they are caught. Salted David’s in-the-shell off the snack rack is just fine. It may be even better than unsalted, but I haven’t bothered to find out because it works so well.
5-d Once their smells are all over the trigger area – you don’t need to bait any more. They will definitely investigate their relative’s smell left behind.
That goes for squirrels too. Found that out 30 years ago when I reset a trap on a Friday, but had vacation plans for Saturday and Sunday. Boy was that a lesson in how left-behind odors work in trapping. 12 more squirrels caught over the next few weeks without a single morsel of bait being used.
Now, fleas. The most misunderstood life cycle I have to explain to…
I’m available for educational speeches at your local neighborhood meetings.
Grool, There are products with fipronil in it in granular form for fire ant control on lawns/open ground. I wouldn’t use the liquid form, but it may very well work just fine. But it’s probably not labeled for entire yard application. I am certain Termidor SC is not.
The labels of the granular products say it will keep fire ants out for a whole year. They are being modest in my opinion.
The last customer that wanted that treatment is still clean of fire ants 3 years later now. They have leaf-cutting ants lately but not fire ants.
Top Choice is the original product and is what I buy. It is very expensive but a 50lb bag of it will treat about 1/2 acre. And it works. Like garbanzo, it works.
The problem is Bayer is uber tight about it’s distribution. I seriously doubt it can be found outside of a professional’s supply house. Maybe there is a pest company willing to sell it under the radar. Seen that more than once. They risk their approval by Bayer to buy it legally, though. Yeah, we have to be approved and assigned a buyer’s ID.
But it has been around long enough for other companies to market their versions of it now.
Here is one I found. If you follow the directions stringently (equal distribution of the right amount of the granules – harder than it sounds – and watering it in enough – but not too much), you’ll get the results you want. Again – follow the label – they have to spend millions to get it right. Don’t start thinking you know better than the manufacturer. Pretty much guaranteed failure.
https://www.solutionsstores.com/taurus-g-fipronil-granules-topchoice
This is just the first I found. If I were you, I’d do a more thorough search to find the best deal.
In the past I treated for fire ants, but many of us here in Florida let them alone now. The little monsters are ravenous and they protect the property from termites as well as most other bugs. They really keep other bug populations in check. Easy enough to spot their mounds and avoid bites.
Unruly refugee, I have fun with some of the newer customers when they bring up these little helpers.
Spiders? ‘They’re my little helpers! Do I have to kill them? And no, you are not getting bit by spiders. Stop it. There are only a few in Dallas area that even CAN bite you and you’d be seeing a doctor if they did. They are that bad.’ Brown Recluses are #1 bad guys here, Black widows #2 – and you don’t have them, Ma’am. Tarantulas can be a pet, if you want, but they’re #3. Nothing else ranks here.
Geckos? ‘They’re my little helpers! You really want me to put glue boards down for them? Meany.’
Mud Daubers? ‘They catch spiders! They’re my little helpers! They won’t even sting you!’
Bottom line that I want them to know: sterilizing their property is actually bad. Some balance should be maintained because things that are naturally kept in check can get out of hand if their predators are taken out of the equation.
“The little monsters are ravenous and they protect the property from termites as well as most other bugs. They really keep other bug populations in check. Easy enough to spot their mounds and avoid bites.”
Never thought of that. The only reason my kid encountered them is she accidentally stepped on a small mound that was hidden under a bit of grass at the edge of the driveway.
Being bit by a recluse in middle school (still got a scar on my ankle) left me with an odd affinity for spiders. Was terrified of them before that, but never again. Now when those husky brown dudes come inside in the fall (I call them wood spiders, not sure what they are, and they’re usually males) I pick them up in my hand and put them back out in the yard.
Will also keep mud daubers in mind now.
Ayup
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@ Dad of 4 – Thanks bunches for all the info.
I’m freakin grossed by wood roaches (live in a virgin forest and they come in for 8 weeks in the spring). I’ve literally found them in the track of my sliding door in February. Hate, hate, hate centipedes. I can sense when one is in the room.
Scientists in California? We sure they aren’t talking about liberals?
“those husky brown dudes”
If it’s husky, it’s highly unlikely a brown recluse. Their bodies are quite small and hairless. Fiddle shaped markings are common and not enough to identify one. It actually sounds like a wolf or one of the grass spiders that you’re describing. They are everywhere, they’re husky by comparison. They have what can pass for fiddle a shaped marking on their backs also.
Even a full grown brown recluse is tiny once it balls up when dead. Very thin legs have it look bigger when alive. They are very quick runners as they catch their food on the run rather than build a web.
They are called “recluse” for a very good reason. You won’t see them in the middle of your yard, in the grass or even trying to get in your door. It would be a rare thing if that happened.
They have a translucent quality about them. The main coloring is very even with only the very dark, thin, fiddle on it’s back. Pictures do not do it justice. You really have to see them live to get the differences of size, coloring, markings.
They are a small, thin spider compared to a wolf or grass spider you might pick up.
“I’m freakin grossed by wood roaches”
You have a lot of company on that point. That is why I have a biz in the first place.
American and Smoky Browns (large outdoor roaches) are the most prevalent ones here and why I have regular customers.
We live in their neighborhoods.
The best description of my work is that I help people feel comfortable in their homes. Not that I kill things.
I think all my customers share your disgust.
Well, except for that one Jewish guy that doesn’t want to kill anything, even rats or ants. It was his wife that hired me for mosquito work last week, not him.
Um, I wouldn’t advise anyone to depend on fire ants to keep their house free of termites. I’ll just leave it at that. o.0