Fall Spider Barrier Treatments

It's that time of the year again! Every fall as temperatures begin to decline and the days grow shorter, the guest list at your house starts growing. The problem is, all of your new acquaintances have eight legs...

For various reasons, a variety of spiders begin turning up in homes and offices in increasing numbers. For the most part, it's the same reason that you go inside: to stay out of the cold.

With very few exceptions, the spiders that tend to turn up in our homes around here are not harmful. Physically speaking, that is. How they affect your enjoyment of your home is another matter. 

I can help! With some simple and thorough spraying around the perimeter of your home or office, most spiders can be prevented from entering the structure and snuggling with you all winter. These applications also affect insects that enter the treated area - a nice bonus.

The products I've selected for this type of application have been chosen because of their longevity, which will allow them to continue working around your home well past first frost, after which nothing much will be crawling around outside. I also mix in an additive product that helps the mix stick to the surfaces it lands on, further enhancing the effect of the treatment. 

Interior work can be combined with an exterior treatment if you want more comprehensive spider control, or if you already have quite a few of them running around inside.

In the Walla Walla area, these treatments run $40 for either an inside or an outside treatment, or $60 for both if performed during the same visit. For places outside of this area, there's only a slight increase in the cost to cover fuel ($5 more in the Milton Freewater area, for example). In most cases these jobs take no longer than 30 minutes (and if it's outside only, you may not even need to be there when I do the work), so it won't take much time out of your day, but it will save you from many days spent with your new spider buddies.

If you're not interested in sharing your home with dozens of arachnid friends this fall and winter, give me a call! You won't regret it... but the spiders will.

509-540-7946

paul@zpestcontrol.com

Treat Overwintering Pests Now, Have Fewer in the Spring

These are European Paper Wasps, overwintering inside of a storage container belonging to one of my clients. 

These wasps were cold and largely unresponsive to my presence, but they were very much alive. They were clustered together on the side of this box that faces east, the eastern and southern sides of structures being the locations that will receive the most sunlight, be warmest, and therefore harbor the most overwintering pests. Had I not hit the wasps with an insecticide, they would have been the seeds of many new nests (and thereby many more wasps) in the spring.

I took this picture to show that even though it is winter and many pests are not immediately noticeable, they are indeed still present. At this time of the year, pests like these wasps are particularly vulnerable, so addressing them now goes a long way toward significantly reducing their numbers come spring and summer. If you have a "buggy" home in the warm months, I can help you reduce that with focused exterior crack and crevice treatments with long-term residual insecticides now.

509-540-7946

Expanded Weed Control Services

This is what growth looks like! Since its inception, Z Pest has offered weed control services, but those offerings initially were limited to smaller projects due limitations imposed by the available equipment. No longer! 

The larger skid in this photo, the one positioned directly behind the cab, that is Z Pest's new 200 gallon weed control skid, which is capable of delivering treatment over an area of approximately 2.25 acres per tank load! Whether you have a small lawn or a large field that needs selective weed control, Z Pest is ready to help!

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

-- Motto of the U.S. Postal Service

Nothing in that motto about killing paper wasps!

For that, Z Pest delivers. 

Ants, Spiders, Mice, Weeds - Z Pest Control LLC, Walla Walla, WA

European Paper Wasps: The Battle for Your Backyard!

It is once again the time of the year when these unwelcome guests begin to make themselves known around your home or business:

This is the European Paper Wasp, an invasive species in these parts that really puts the "invasive" in the term.  Right now they're flying around all over the place, looking for suitable sites to build nests. Their preference is for eastern/southern exposed areas with nearby food (shrubs and trees that harbor aphids are a favorite), water (yours and your neighbor's sprinkler systems), and a nearby source of raw wood they can take strips from to make paper (got a wooden fence?). These things put together ping this wasp's instinctual radar, and you will find them calling your home their home year after year.

Before you completely tear down your home and reorganize it to make it less appealing to these wasps, try giving me a call! Well-timed and properly placed insecticide treatments can greatly reduce the presence of these pests in your yard, restoring it to its proper function: your enjoyment. I've been ruining the party for these wasps for years, and it's something that I enjoy doing. Give me a call at 509-540-7946 and ask me to come by for a free quote. You won't regret it, but the wasps will!

The Dreaded Brown Recluse Spider

I saw this article this morning and wanted to share it. I get questions from folks around here all the time about the dreaded brown recluse spider. They can be somewhat of a problem, except for one major detail: in our part of the country, except for very rare cases probably explained by modern motor and/or air shipping, we don't have them. The key piece of information, from the article, entitled, Deadly Brown Recluse Spider Coming to a Town Near You?:

"The spider's habitat is limited to the Southeast and Midwest, stretching from Kansas east to the Appalachian states."

Why then the persistent myth that we have these spiders living around us? It's generally thought that the assumption is due to the similarities between the wound a brown recluse bite can produce (but not always) and other conditions. An infection of the skin by MRSA bacteria, for example, can produce lesions that appear similar, sometimes leading physicians to reach a hasty conclusion about what they're looking at and diagnose it as a recluse bite. There are also a few species of spiders that exist locally that have a similar appearance to the brown recluse. The media frequently doesn't help the situation either, hence this excellent quote by Rick Vetter, an entomologist who works at the University of California, Riverside:

"These are distorted reports ... hyperbolic media crap."

That isn't to say that brown recluse spiders never injure people, but the truth is that the extreme injuries are relatively rare. Around here, it's all but impossible.

That still leaves us with our local varieties, most of which are not dangerous. That does not mean that they're enjoyable, however. Even a physically harmless spider in your house is harmful if it causes you distress. It's your house, after all, and you get to say what is acceptable and what is not. I can help you get the spiders you do have out of your home (which at this time of the year you may be seeing more of), but hopefully you'll feel a bit more at ease knowing that among the spiders you have seen lately, the brown recluse is not one of them.

Call me at 509-540-7946 if you have more spiders than you want, inside or outside, and I'll help you get them sorted out.