Ask the Exterminator

Got Pests?

Ask The Exterminator provides expert advice for your pest control problems. Browse our categories of exterminator expertise and contact us with questions.


Camel Crickets

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Camel crickets do not chirp so you do not know they are present. They like to linger in dark, damp places. If they are in your home, your clothes and carpets may be at risk.

Bedbug Bites

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Bed bug bites are difficult to identify even for an expert like a dermatologist. Collect a sample of any insect you find in or around your bed to have it properly identified before buying expensive bed bug treatments or products.



Field Crickets

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Field crickets were often kept as pets in ancient China. They were prized for their songs and kept in golden cages. Today in the USA we often consider field crickets a pest and do not want them in our homes.

Mouse Trap

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Here is the scoop on how to catch a mouse with a snap trap or glue board. Learn the proper method of setting a mouse trap and save yourself hundreds of dollars in professional pest control service fees.

Bed Bug Bite

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Bed bug bites are difficult to identify even for an expert like a dermatologist. Collect a sample of any insect you find in or around your bed to have it properly identified before buying expensive bed bug treatments or products.





Grasshoppers

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Grasshoppers are known for their leaping ability and the chirping songs they create using their back legs and wings. They feed on plants, often causing damages to garden plants and agricultural crops.



Drain Fly

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The drain fly is a little pest that hang out inside drains. It looks like a tiny moth, so it is sometimes called moth fly or drain moth. These bugs love hanging out in stagnant water, so the best way to avoid them is to eliminate standing water and scrub off the slick scum from the inside of drains.

Millipedes

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Millipedes require lots of moisture to survive so look for areas where water accumulates around your house to discover where millipedes are gaining entry.

Signs of Carpenter Ants

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The signs of carpenter ants include damaged wood, noises coming from inside your walls and finding foraging ants in your kitchen at night.



Palmetto Bugs

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Palmetto bug is just another word for American Cockroach. These suckers are big, they can fly, and they aren’t scared of anything or anyone. Palmetto bugs are creepy, but getting rid of palmetto bugs can be a synch.



Acrobat Ant

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The Acrobat ant is not as cool as it sounds. In fact, the Acrobat ant is much more annoying than cool. This amazing article will tell you how to identify, locate, and eliminate them for good.

Oriental Cockroaches

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Oriental cockroaches are slow movers, can barely climb and few are capable of flight. But, don't underestimate the Oriental cockroach for what it lacks in maneuverability it makes up in other places.

Brown Banded Cockroach

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The Brown Banded cockroach is one of the smaller cockroaches around.  But, what it lacks in size it makes up in numbers.  Brown Banded cockroaches hitchhike their way into our homes and our lives.

Firewood Storage

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Improper firewood storage can provide a home to unwanted insect pests that suddenly make their presense known when you bring the firewood inside. Learn what you can do to avoid this experience.



How to Get Rid of Stink Bugs

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Stink bugs are nuisances that will invade homes because they are attracted to light. Be careful when trying to get rid of them because they will release an odor for self-defense!

Carpenter Ant Control

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Carpenter ants can do a lot of damage to your home if gone undetected. The presence of large black ants should send an important signal that all is not well with your house.

Crazy Ants

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The Crazy ant is a small ant, native to Africa.  It derives its name from the erratic manner in which it moves, rarely sticking to its own ant trail.  Crazy ant colonies are massive consisting of thousands of workers and dozens of queens.

Spider Webs

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Spider webs are not exclusively used by spiders to capture prey. They are also used as protection from predators, to travel by “ballooning”, or to encase egg sacs. Some spiders, by working together, can make huge spider webs that cover several acres of trees.

Centipedes

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Giant centipedes once roamed the earth, or should I say, slithered along the earth. Either way, it would have required a lot more than your average pest control professional to rid a home of one of those big fellows.

Carpenter Bee Holes

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Carpenter bee holes are often discovered in unpainted, exposed wood on siding, window trim, decks, and outdoor furniture. But, don’t look upon these holes as damage. Look on the bright side. You’ve got perfect holes and you didn’t even need a drill.

Clothes Moth

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Find a moth flying around your house and you are worried it is a clothing moth? Clothing moths like the dark, so you are probably safe. Read on for more info.



Indian Meal Moth

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Picture this. You are opening up a box of cereal that has been in your pantry for half a decade. Inside there are small worms with dark brown heads. You scream in shock and revulsion. You have just found larvae of the Indian meal moth. Want to know how to get rid of them?

Carpet Beetle

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Carpet beetles not only eat carpet but they eat wool, leather, silk, felt, and any other animal based organic material that appeals. Even entomologists hate them because carpet beetles also eat preserved insect collections.

Flying Ants

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a….ant? Yes, some ants have wings, but flying ants only come out once a year; kind of like Santa Clause but with antennae. Find out more about why flying ants fly.

Silverfish Control

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Silverfish eat paper, fabric, glue, and other organic materials. They move very quickly and only come out at night, so if your house is infested by silverfish you might not even know it.



Carpenter Ant Bait

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There are many types of carpenter ant baits on the market such as Maxforce Carpenter Ant Bait and Advance Carpenter Ant Bait. Proper placement and timing is key to successful ant control. The more carefully you read the carpenter ant bait label and follow its instructions the happy you will be with the results.

Ants Carpenter

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You discover you have carpenter ants and worry that the carpenter ants are hungry and will eat, eat, eat until the wall falls down. Ask the question, "What do carpenter ants eat?" You'll discover it is not you your woodwork that satisfies their hunger.

Citronella Ants

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Citronella ants live underground, so you rarely see them, but on occasion, they do find their way into homes. Citronella ants are bright yellow and have a strong citrus smell when crushed.

Carpenter Ant

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Unfortunately, carpenter ants will not build you new cabinets for your kitchen. The carpenter ant earned its name because it builds its nests in damp, decaying wood. Its name implies wood construction, but carpenter ants can actually be damaging to wooden frame houses.


Pharaoh Ant

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Pharaoh ants, despite their small size, are the most invasive of all household ants. Pharaoh ants build colonies quickly and the spread of pharaoh ants is difficult to control.

Spider Control

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Spider control is nearly impossible unless several changes are made to discourage their food source from congregating around and near doorways and windows.


Stink Bugs

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Every year stink bugs invade certain parts of the country and every year people search for ways to keep the stink bugs from getting into their homes. Exclusion! Exclusion! Exclusion is the only answer.


German Cockroaches

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German cockroaches are the most common household cockroach. German cockroaches can infest a home and contaminate it with feces, saliva and shed body parts that carry all types of unhealthy bacteria and organisms.


Boxelder Bugs

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Fast growing populations of boxelder bugs make control very difficult. As Boxelder bugs migrate from trees they often find houses in their migratory path, making the house likely spots to over-winter.


Weevils

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Through inspection is the key to successfully getting rid of grain weevils once weevils are discovered to have infested your stored food products.


Silverfish

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Silverfish are small, but they are fast and sneaky little prehistoric-looking insects. Silverfish often get trapped in sinks and bathtubs where they are unable to negotiate the slick ceramic surfaces.

Water Bugs

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We often hear homeowners say, “We don’t have any cockroaches, but we do see waterbugs in our basement.” The Oriental cockroach is often called a waterbug or water bug.

Roach Control

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Cockroaches still maintain their position of being one of our most common household and commercial pests. In spite of advances in pesticides and roach control techniques, why is roach control so difficult?

Tent Caterpillar

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The tent caterpillar, also known as the eastern tent caterpillar is mostly a nusiance pest, but it can defoliate certain types of trees, leaving landscapes looking bare and ugly.

Cicada

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If mud tubes are suddenly appearing around the base of your trees it probably signifies the emergence of periodical cicadas. One of the cicada species emerges nearly every year.

Millipede

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Drought or extremely dry conditions will cause millipedes to migrate towards the shady cracks along foundation walls. These areas usually hold moisture longer than open lawn areas. The millipedes find the smallest of cracks to enter the house, but soon die for lack of moisture.



Pill Bugs

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Sow bugs and pill bugs seem to invade basements out of nowhere. The presence of pill bugs is nature's way of tell you that moisture is collecting along the exterior foundation walls.

How To Get Rid of Ants

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Before you plunge your house or belongings into pesticide oblivion, it’s important to know that many ant issues can be resolved without a drop of insecticide spilled. Often, knowing the habits of ants will tell you exactly how to get rid of ants.

Cricket

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The common cricket is heard during warm summer nights. They are part of the environment that surrounds us, so there is little that can be done. But, we do have some choices when it comes to preventing crickets from entering our homes.

Centipede

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House centipedes feed on other insects, so having centipedes inside your house can actually be beneficial. But, who wants to share living quarters with a lighting-fast insect that can bite?



Odorous House Ants

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Odorous House ants can be kept from your home or office by carefully observing their daily activity and number. A pest control pro should be able to tell you where the odorous house ants are nesting once you provide certain key information.


Box Elder Bugs

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Box elder bugs are common pests found in most U.S. states. Their narrow red v-shaped lines on their backs make them easy to identify. They do very little damage to the trees they attack, but they can become a nuisance at certain times during the year. They prefer to enter structures along the south and west wall exposures, finding shelter in protected places like under windows and doors, cracks in walls and under eaves.

Cricket Control

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Crickets can certainly do damage to various types of garden plants, but there are ways to stop them using natural cricket control methods. You don't necessarily need to use pesticides for cricket control, if that is your preference.

Earwig

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Stuff your ears with cotton to prevent earwigs from climbing into your ear and burrowing into your brain. Believe that and I'll tell you another. Earwigs head the list of insect urban legends.

Wolf Spider

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The mere mention of wolf spiders make me worry about giant, hairy things ready to pounce. What is it about these the wolf spider that give us the creeps? And how serious are wolf spider bites?

Where Do Brown Recluse Spiders Live

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Black Widow spiders have a reputation for their spider bites, but the Brown Recluse spider bite packs a bigger punch.

Rid Of Carpenter Ants

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Carpenter ants do millions of dollars of damage to homes every year. Often, the answer to getting rid of carpenter ants is quite simple. Learn what steps you take to achieve carpenter ant control.

Carpenter Ants

The presence of carpenter ants usually means that moisture is an issue somewhere in the vicinity of where the carpenter ants were found. The follows paragraphs can help resolve your carpenter ant issues.



Pavement Ants

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Pavement ants are some of the smallest ants that invade our houses. The pavement ant often enters looking for food and may become numerous in a short period of time in a kitchen or outside on a patio. The presence of pavement ants or pavement ant swarmers also attracts other insects looking for a meal like spiders and wasps.




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