Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a hatred and disgust for pests. I’m not talking about the occasional house fly. I mean real pests – like mice, rats, roaches, mosquitoes, and ants. Ugh! Anytime I even think about them I want to puke. I think that one of the reasons that I hate pests so much is because I grew up in some old homes in poor neighborhoods. Often those homes were not maintained properly by their owners and we unfortunately ended up dealing with pests. Sometimes we’d find them in the kitchen or the bathroom if there was still trash that had not been taken out the previous night. Regardless, I thought they were ugly and my mom used to tell me to stay away from them or kill them because they probably were carrying some disease that I could catch. Gross. If you need pest control options, this is a great website for information.
In college I lived in Riverside, just outside L.A., and I had to take a science elective in order to graduate. That semester the only class available that satisfied the requirement was an entomology course. If you don’t know what entomology is, well, it’s the study of bugs! I was immediately turned off and grossed out at the thought of having to study the very thing that I hated. After speaking with the professor and a few students who made it through the program, I went ahead and signed up for it. To my surprise, we studied a wide variety of bugs, including ones I discovered I liked, mostly different species of butterflies as well as lady bugs. We also studied some of the ones I hated and a few I came to hate after the class – like spiders, mosquitoes, ants, and wasps. The one positive thing I took from that class was a realization that all these insects have a purpose on the planet. While they are pests to humans – it is our change of their natural habitat that causes them to come in contact with us – there are actions we can take to limit their interaction with us and the problems their presence in our lives can cause.
One of our projects was to take home some bugs as specimens to study and write a report regarding them. I was assigned ants as my specimens. One night while I was at work on campus, the ants got out of their sealed dish and started wandering through my dorm. It freaked out a lot of my dorm mates and the resident director had to contact someone to come in and complete pest control. Riverside must have had a lot of experts in that field, because they had someone come to the dorm within 15 minutes of when they reported the ants. I got in trouble but ended up getting a good grade in that class.
Even though I took the class about insects, I still advocate hiring a pest control specialist as a way to get rid of unwanted pests. In addition to the hired pest control for your home, you can also take steps to do practical things that can limit the ability of pests to live, reproduce, or hide in your home. If you’re trying to get rid of rodents like mice or rats, a simple strategy you can use is to make sure that you double bag all trash and tie it tight. If you have a dumpster that you can throw the trash in, do it before you go to bed. If not, try to keep it under the lid of your trash can. If you have pets, once they are done eating, removing their uneaten food off the floor and placing it in a closed bag and then inside an airtight container (like the ones you put winter clothes in during the summer) can keep insects like cockroaches from being attracted to your home. Sweeping and mopping your kitchen and bathroom floors on a regular basis can also help from attracting pests. If all else fails, feel free to contact a pest control specialist who can use more advanced techniques to kill potential pest offspring before they become an additional problem.
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