Tips to Keep General Pests Away in Montgomery, Alabama!

Podcast Transcript:

Michael Wienecke 0:00

Steve, hey, so today on the Peskies Pest Control Podcast, we would like to talk about solving pest issues without chemical application. So we’re seeing a lot of especially this month, last month, with the amount of rain we’ve had Travis, I think you can, with Montgomery, I think you can attest to that, that it’s just rained every other day,

Travis McGowin 0:24

Every single day, and it’s and it’s unseasonable. I mean, realistically unseasonable for, you know, May into June and then even into July. I mean, this is just not something that we typically have. It’s just pretty much downpours and heavy downpours every single afternoon. But, I mean, on a side note, my yard looks great.

Michael Wienecke 0:46

Well, I can’t cut my grass, so my yard, it’s cut now, but you know, it’s hard to cut it in the rain, which also leads us to, you know, the whole issue of pests. If you if your grass is, you know, knee high, expect to have some pest issues,

Travis McGowin 1:02

Right. So, you know, when you talk about rain and home ownership, the first thing that comes to mind, I mean, when we’re just kind of talking about a broad overview of things and a broad overview of pests and pest problems that you can, you know, potentially solve yourself. I know I can speak for my yard and my house. When I tell you that they’re right off hand, I can think of right now, there’s two pretty much clogged gutters right now on my house. And knowing that clogged gutters mean that it’s got leaf debris, it’s got different tree you know, pine needles, different things from trees, the debris is there, meaning that it’s not draining properly. It’s holding water. So Michael, what? What insects am I having a problem with from my gutters that I have not cleaned because I’ve just frankly, been lazy.

Michael Wienecke 1:53

I can think of a few, but the main one would be mosquitoes.

Travis McGowin 1:55

Right! So we have a large amount of mosquitoes now. Granted, our houses, our lot is kind of low lying. We do get a lot of drainage off of other lots around ours that comes through our house. So we do get a lot of standing water, especially when it rains day after day after day. If we don’t cut our yard, then we get a lot of standing water. So we’ve kind of remedied that. But mosquitoes, I mean, that leaf debris is going to bring roaches, things like that, that. Yeah, people don’t realize how much standing water is actually left in your gutters when you don’t actually clean them out. And then, you know, mosquitoes can breed in as you know, think the size a container, the size of a bottle cap. So think how much water is actually up there. It’s more than a bottle cap.

Michael Wienecke 2:35

That’s right. And I mean, it’s, it’s hard to clean your gutters out when it’s been raining every other day, because can’t get up there and do that. So it’s just been, it’s been a very hard, I would say, two months.

Travis McGowin 2:46

It has. It’s just been out of the norm for Alabama. But I’ll tell you one thing that has continuously been coming to my houses or my house, is cardboard boxes with the word Amazon on the side. So we get deliveries every single day. So we take the items

Michael Wienecke 3:07

Can we say Amazon?

Travis McGowin 3:08

I don’t know. I think we just did. I don’t think it really matters. Amazon, Walmart, their Target. Okay, I got a bunch out of the way. So Amazon boxes are a staple. I see Amazon delivery drivers come through. You know, our area all the time. We’re in a rural area, so Amazon’s really just everywhere. But we pulled the item we ordered out of the box. We throw the cardboard box on the back porch, and Michael, what happens next?

Michael Wienecke 3:31

Well, I’ve got the same issue right now. Spiders, ants, millipedes, roaches, silverfish, earwigs, wasps, bees,

Travis McGowin 3:43

Small children.

Michael Wienecke 3:45

Just about anything that likes a warm environment.

Travis McGowin 3:50

Well, not only that, but what happens with all the rain we’ve had the the boxes get soaked. They absorb water. They never dry out, and it just creates this nice little habitat for for pests that, you know, you wouldn’t normally have out there, but there again, we didn’t, you know, throw away the boxes. We didn’t burn them. We just decided we needed to stack them on the back porch.

Michael Wienecke 4:09

Well. And that brings up a great topic is, how do they breed roaches when they’re, you know, in a lab, or something like that. What do they use to breed roaches?

Travis McGowin 4:18

Oh, certainly, cardboard or other types of paper material. I mean, it absorbs and holds moisture. It’s good cover for them. It packs down good, and it just gives them a perfect environment.

Michael Wienecke 4:29

And one of the worst outside termite issues I’ve ever seen was a customer that put cardboard as their weed control. So instead of using the plastic, it’s a, it’s great, it’s it’s eco friendly, but it’s also a great food source,

Travis McGowin 4:47

Right, exactly. And, you know, that brings up another thing, not even just cardboard, but talk about things like scrap wood around people’s houses all the time. I see where, you know, I get it in the wintertime. You. If you got a fireplace, a wood burning fireplace, you want that firewood close to your structure. No one likes to run out outside in the cold and try to get a couple more logs for the fire. Totally get that was the same when I grew up, too. But inevitably, you stack wood on the outside of your house and you’re going to have a nice habitat for it. There again, general household pests, things like roaches, earwig, silverfish spiders, black widow spiders, brown recluse. Yes, large cockroaches, like American roaches, are going to love that. And then, of course, a homeowner’s worst nightmare, termites.

Michael Wienecke 5:35

Well, and we’ve seen that firsthand. You know, we had a customer a couple of years ago that she was storing firewood in her garage, and found a termite, you know, infestation in the garage due to the firewood,

Michael Wienecke 5:46

Right, good point that you don’t even have to have it stacked along the outside of the structure. If there’s gaps, cracks, crevices, you know, damage or cracks in the foundation, they can come up right through that from underneath the house and go straight up into the firewood. It could be sitting in your living room, it could be sitting in your garage, and you could still be susceptible to that. So wood, scrap, pallets, like I said, firewood, any type of boards where you’ve done remodel or construction and you just discarded them out of the side of the house. All of that stuff needs to be moved away from the house.

Michael Wienecke 6:19

100% and I mean, when we go to our, you know, a new start, or someone that’s having an issue, that’s something we look for, you know, we’re looking for mulch bags that are sitting right up against the house, that have been sitting there for a couple months, or leaf debris stacks of pallets in the backyard. The other day, a rotten door was in somebody’s backyard.

Michael Wienecke 6:42

If you recall you, and I actually went out on a termite inspection. This has been months and months ago that had a crawl space, and you went into the crawl space and lifted a piece of scrap wood under the house, and there were live termites, actually, and eating the scrap wood underneath the house in the crawl space.

Michael Wienecke 7:00

Oh yeah, I’ve seen that with wooden ladders. I’ve seen it with pallets. I’ve seen it, you know, having wood under your house in a crawl space is is not a good idea.

Travis McGowin 7:07

Well, I like what you said, too, about bags of mulch or different types of ground cover that people use underneath their shrubberies and in their flower beds. I can’t tell you how many times. I mean, we all have good intentions. We’re going to go, you know, we’re going to go to, oh, I’m going to say some more box stores. We’re going to go to Lowe’s or Home Depot or Marvin’s or Tractor Supply, or wherever it is that we go and we shop, and we’re going to buy the mulch that’s on sale. It’s like, Oh, great. I’m going to go get X amount of bags of mulch. We’re going to get this done, and you spread one or two the rest of them. Sit there and sit there and sit there because you run out of time, or you got to go to the ballpark, or whatever it is that eats your time away away from your home. And then I can’t tell you how many times I’ve moved on these bags, and there’s like a gigantic ant infestation all wrapped up inside of these bags because they’ve just sat there.

Michael Wienecke 7:53

Yeah, and it doesn’t even have to be mulch bags or wood a ladder. I had a customer the other day having ants all over the property, inside, outside. And they were coming from more than just the ladder. They were coming from a lot of the crape myrtles around, but the ladder was giving them that, you know, that warm environment under, under where the ladder was, was resting on the ground. And they were just going right in the house, between the ladder and the house,

Michael Wienecke 8:19

Right, and we’ve talked about ground but people don’t realize, not even just around the, you know, the lower portion of your house, but things that they can do to keep pests, such as, you know, carpenter ants, things like that, off the side of their house is trimming your trees back. Like I I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen these improperly trimmed crape myrtles, or, you know, these large, healthy, grown trees around the outside of the house with the limbs overhanging and eventually touching the eaves of the roof of the structure. You know, just a couple weeks ago, I had two basically back to back calls for carpenter ants from trees and and, you know, one of them was literally the bridge to the house. Was a large limb. The carpenter ants had a nest inside this kind of worn out, hollowed out tree, and the ants were just trekking along, going across to the roof line and getting in the house.

Michael Wienecke 9:14

Oh, we see it all the time. I feel like you’re calling me out though I have a crape myrtle, or, I’m sorry, a Japanese maple that is touching my roof line. I’m like, When am I going to get a squirrel on my roof? I just know it’s going to happen.

Travis McGowin 9:23

Inevitably, squirrels, roof, rats, all of these things. Love to have an easy and a clear pathway. Crape myrtles are just on my hit list. I’m not even going to lie like they’re, like, the bane of my existence. Just not a huge fan of crape myrtles, especially because they’re, they’re a lot of them are not properly maintained from a trimming standpoint, you know, and then a lot of times they can get different types of molds and funguses. But we’re not going to go into the whole lawn and ornamental thing, but they can actually attract other pests such as Wasp and ants and different things, and actually make it a. More desirable location in your yard just because the trees improperly maintained. But, like, that’s conversation for another day.

Michael Wienecke 10:07

Look, London, that’s All Seasons all day long. So exactly, um, yeah, with the crape myrtles too. You see a lot of people that are planting them right up against the house, and they’re they’re nice, you know, when they’re trimmed back, like you said, but when they start growing out of control. They normally grow right up, you know, right next to the gutter, up into the roof line. And then again, it’s just that ladder that causes that issue for wildlife and and pest.

Travis McGowin 10:31

I’m even seen where they get so thick and so overgrown that when the wind blows, it causes the tree limbs from the crape myrtle to rub onto the eve of the house, actually tearing a hole into the side of the house. And I’ve seen people with rat infestations inside of their attic. Had a duplex over towards Millbrook that had this happen with the tree, literally rubbed in a second story of a house. The Eve had a hole in it from the tree, and I think I trapped between the two units, over 50 rats. Wow, yeah, significant problem. And that could have been really resolved had they just trimmed the tree limbs back.

Michael Wienecke 11:10

Well, and that’s a lot of you know, that’s what we always kind of preach. Is that proactive? If you cut your tree limbs away from your house, it’s going to save you a lot of money in raccoon, squirrels, you know, roof rats, potentially Norway rats, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it’s just getting that cut back to where you don’t have to worry about it. They can’t get on your roof, especially if it’s if it’s a type of house that the eaves are all the way around the house, it’s very, very difficult for them get on the roof.

Travis McGowin 11:38

Right, so kind of to put it all together, because we have covered a broad range of things, but from the top to the bottom of your house or homeowner’s house, people can do little things here and there to help prevent pest problems from beginning, like we said, removing debris from the gutters to allow water to flow freely, so that it’s not held there, making a great environment for mosquitoes and for cockroaches, removing debris and scrap wood and different things from around the outside of the structure, so that you’re not creating harborage areas for these different insects. Just a lot that homeowners or property owners can do to help themselves out so that they don’t end up with a, you know, large pest problem just from some little things that they neglected around the outside of their property.

Michael Wienecke 12:26

100%, I mean, and that goes on the inside too, you know, pulling that stove away from the the countertop and seeing all that stuff that’s falling between the stove behind the, you know, I can’t tell you how many times I pulled a fridge and there’s just been stuff that the customer would have never known was back there.

Travis McGowin 12:41

Right, so just little housekeeping things around the inside and outside can go a very long way. You’d be surprised how many times you go to do an inspection at a house and you just point out a couple of little things and then the customer’s problem is completely solved. So just be vigilant around the inside and the outside of your home. Make strides to keep things picked up clean and not create a pest harbor area. And I promise you that in the long run, it will help you, and you’ll be happy with the result, as you’ll be a lot more likely to be pest free.

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